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Dear Communities contributors and friends,
Communities magazine is currently seeking articles for Issue #206, “Ecovillage Visions.” The issue will be out in March 2025.
Please send your article ideas to editor@gen-us.net as soon as you can. We ask that your final article reach us by Friday, November 22, 2024.
1. Theme articles: Ecovillage Visions
Please share your experiences, stories, and perspectives in response to any (or any combination) of the following questions:
- What is the future of intentional communities? What role will they have in a changing world? In 10 years? 20 years? 30 years? 50 years? 100 years? 1000 years?
- What transformations need to happen in the wider society? How can ecovillages lead the way?
- What are the necessary steps in creating legal, economic, political, and cultural support (rather than impediment) for the development of resilient, human-scale, earth-friendly settlements?
- For innovative projects to move forward and succeed, does leadership need to come from the bottom up, the top down, some combination thereof, or somewhere else entirely?
- What models from the past suggest what our future communities will look like?
- What utopian fiction or other stories of a mythical past or possible future do you consider to be relevant to envisioning our own collective future?
- Do you have thoughts on any such stories (whether told through books, movies, theater, etc.) that would be helpful to share with our readers? (If so, please consider writing an article/review.)
- Have you created any such stories or works yourself? (If so, please consider submitting them to the magazine.)
- What elements of present-day society will endure into a regenerative future? What elements need to be shed?
- What forces, ideas, technologies, organizational principles could unwittingly lead us to dystopia rather than to eutopia or protopia?
- How does your real-life experience in community compare with possible future scenarios and/or any ideal visions you are familiar with?
- What vision did you have when you sought out or joined community? What did you find? Are you less hopeful now, or more hopeful, that intentional communities hold keys to a viable future?
- What are the “ecovillage essentials” that present and future generations will want to learn and implement? What design principles, understandings, and skills will prove essential as we adapt to a changing world?
Please remember that we are looking for stories, personal experiences, and concrete examples in your responses—these are what will make ideas and observations most “real” and relevant to readers.
[Please forward this link to anyone you think has a good story on this theme for Communities.]
2. We are also seeking articles about:
- Creating community in your neighborhood;
- Starting a new community;
- Process and communication issues in community;
- Ecological sustainability in community;
- Social justice issues in community;
- Networking to build the communities/ecovillages movement;
- Historical communities, especially as viewed through the lens of an issue’s specific theme; and
- Seeking community to join.
Suggested submission length is from 300 to 2500 words (although we sometimes stretch these limits). We invite submissions ranging from short vignettes to extensively-developed articles, and also invite suggestions of recommended resources and article leads. We’re seeking articles written in a reader-friendly, popular-magazine style, rather than in an academic style. We ask contributors to share stories and experiences, not just ideas; write about challenges, not just successes; and describe specific situations that will help your story come alive for the reader. Before you start writing, please check gen-us.net/communities or contact us for our full Writers’ Guidelines–and let us know your article idea so that we can give feedback on how it may fit into Communities. Contact Chris Roth at editor@gen-us.net.
If you don’t want to write an article but want to submit photos, please check gen-us.net/communities or contact Yulia Zarubina at layout@gen-us.net for our Photo Guidelines.
I. What “Submitting an Article” Means. We will promise to read your article, but we may respectfully decline it and not publish it, or save it and publish it in a future issue. We also reserve the right to edit, shorten, or revise your article. We always attempt to contact authors about this ahead of time and get their comments, corrections, etc.
II. Getting Permission Ahead of Time. Please send the article only when you have permission from anyone you need it from, such as fellow community members. We endeavor to present a diversity of views on community, including controversial or critical views, in a respectful and cooperative manner. If your article may generate controversy or strong reactions, or if the group(s) would want the chance to review it, please share your draft with group members to get their input before sending it to us. (Please see our Writers’ Guidelines for additional details.)
III. Publication Rights. Once your article appears in Communities, we own first North American Publishing Rights. This means your article appears in Communities the first time it appears in North America. In addition to appearing in Communities, your article may also appear on our website or in future compilations. You retain all other rights to it. If you’d like to use it elsewhere, you can, and we would appreciate your using an attribution line saying, “This article first appeared in Communities: Life in Cooperative Culture, (date); for further information on Communities: gen-us.net/communities.”
IV. Photos. If we publish your article, we want to accompany it with compelling images that illustrate your subject. You know your subject best, so we are appealing to you for images. If others in your community or group like taking pictures, they might already have great images to go with your article. If you would like to submit an article but cannot supply photos, that’s fine; however, please give us plenty of advance notice so that if we use your article we can get an illustrator. Please check gen-us.net/communities or email us for our full Photo Guidelines. You may also choose to send us an author photo to accompany your short (several-line) author bio.
Thanks for your contributions!
Chris Roth
Editor, Communities
Writers’ Guidelines—Communities Magazine
Communities magazine is a 64-to-88-page quarterly exploring sustainable intentional community living and creating community where you live now. By “community” we mean organized neighborhoods (sometimes called “virtual communities”), ecovillages, cohousing neighborhoods, urban or rural group households, artists’ collectives, housing co-ops, income-sharing communes, retreat and conference center communities, back-to-the-land homesteading communities, ashrams, meditation centers, convents, and monasteries. We also publish articles about creating community in the workplace, in worker-owned or buyers’ co-ops, in nonprofit or activist organizations, and in neighborhoods. Communities is published by the Global Ecovillage Network−United States (GEN-US) (gen-us.net).
Our magazine covers what people are learning about how to live cooperatively, how to solve problems peacefully, and how individual lives can be enhanced by living, working, and/or sharing together with purpose and intention. We seek articles on seeking to join a community; starting a new community; community living and why people choose it; creating community in your workplace, apartment building, or existing neighborhood or town; descriptions of what’s difficult and what works well; news about existing and forming communities; or articles that illuminate community experiences—past and present—offering insights into mainstream cultural issues.
We’re especially seeking articles that touch on some of the following issues about your topic:
- What have you learned? What worked for you? What didn’t work? What will you do next?
- Seeking a community to join: researching, visiting, choosing, and/or the first steps in the membership process
- Starting a new community
- Creating more community in your life where you live now—e.g., at work, with friends, in your neighborhood
- Communication and process issues in community; conflict and resolving conflict
- Membership issues in your community (new members joining, people leaving, etc.)
- Raising children in community
- Growing older in community
- Love relationships in the context of community
- Permaculture or other sustainability practices in community
- Economic issues in community.
What we’re seeking: We accept articles, interviews, and occasionally poems that are particularly relevant to an issue’s theme. We are interested only in writing that directly or indirectly relates to intentional communities or to some aspect of cooperative living or an organized neighborhood.
Please send your idea first: Before you start writing your article, please email the editor (editor@gen-us.net) with your story idea. We may be able to give you feedback on how to shape your article to give it the best chances of fitting into an upcoming issue. We also appreciate knowing in advance that an article will be submitted, so that we have a better overview of the material we may be considering for publication..
Article content: Although we’re looking for practical information and brief overview how-to’s, articles need not be all facts—it’s best if they’re vivid and lively. And while we’re definitely interested in success stories, we would also like to hear about the difficult times, the failures (and why), and the challenges of dealing with community living.
Our contributors: We want to hear from anyone with a story to tell: community members or seekers, writers, budding writers, people with specialized knowledge, or academic researchers. Write about your community, cooperative venture, or neighborhood, or one you’re familiar with, or about several, comparing and contrasting.
Writing style: We value the personal touch: We’re seeking articles where we can see, hear, and feel the people you’re writing about. What did the scene look like? What did you or the people you’re writing about feel when they made that decision? How did they respond to the result? What did they say? Please help the reader feel as if he or she is meeting these people on the page.
Instead of abstract, academic pieces in which the writer outlines ideas and concepts, we seek articles that include descriptions, examples, and anecdotes to tell a story.
Create a “lead”: In longer pieces, the “lead”—the first paragraph of the article—convinces the reader that your article is interesting enough to read. Be as vivid, concrete, and visual as possible. What did it look like? Any sounds? What did people say? Alternatively you could use an anecdote, including dialogue, to set the scene. The second or third paragraph can give the overview and/or state your main point; the lead paragraph is what gets the reader’s attention.
Your experience: We would particularly like to hear how you personally may have been affected by your experiences. How have your opinions been changed, validated, or surprised? How might your story help others who are living in or interested in communities?
Advice from Laird Schaub: Laird Schaub, former Executive Secretary of the FIC, the nonprofit that used to publish Communities, and our all-time most prolific writer, recommends the following as elements of a good article:
Tell a story. Give enough specifics to make it easy for the reader to join you in your story. Do not give so many details that your story loses momentum. You want it to be vivid and to flow.
Questions to address:
• What challenges did you face?
• What did it feel like?
• How did you figure out how to respond?
• What obstacles did you encounter in trying to deal with the challenges?
• How well did your response deal with the challenges?
• What did you learn?
• How were you and others changed by this experience?
Length: 300 to 2500 words. (We occasionally use longer articles.)
Include specifics: Please include the context of the community or group you write about (size, location, purpose, how old, how many people, values, etc.). Include anecdotes, examples, and stories to illustrate your points. Please give specific facts, rather than general facts. Do include quotes, and brief bits of dialogue, if possible.
Please write in the active voice, rather than the passive voice, and replace passive construction with active construction whenever possible. (“Community members built a strawbale house” rather than “A strawbale house was built by community members.”)
We welcome your suggestions for sidebars (shorter sections within the article set off in a box).
Author bio.: Please also include two to three lines of autobiographical info. (where you live, your interests, community affiliations, contact info. or website if you choose to share it, etc.).
Author photo: You may also send a photo of yourself to accompany your bio.
Permission: We endeavor to present a diversity of views on community, including controversial or critical views, yet we hope to do so in a respectful and cooperative manner and prevent antagonistic back-and-forth dialog in our letters-to-the-editor section. If your article may generate controversy or strong reactions, or if the group(s) would want the chance to review it, please share your draft with group members to get their input before sending it to us. If you are unable to do this, we will attempt to contact them ourselves to offer a chance for response. If you and group members cannot agree upon a version, and you and we still decide to move forward with possible publication, we will offer the group(s) a chance to share alternative perspectives via a sidebar or letter to the editor. An alternative in some cases may be making the group(s) anonymous or pseudonymous. We generally do not allow authors themselves to remain anonymous or pseudonymous.
Likewise, before sending us your article, please be sure individual community members specifically named in your article do not object to being identified or to your descriptions of them. If they do object, please make alterations and/or offer them a chance to respond.
Article format: Please email your article to editor@gen-us.net as an attachment in “.doc” format. Copyediting preferences: 1) single-spaced within paragraphs; 2) one space, not two, between sentences; 3) double-space between paragraphs.
Photos: Please see our website (gen-us.net/communities) and/or contact our Art Director (layout@gen-us.net) for our Photo Guidelines. We’re seeking high-resolution digital photos or hard-copy photos or snapshots of people and/or communities to illustrate your article.
We will assume that any people in your photos have already given you permission to appear in Communities magazine—or you already know they will be fine with it. If you think this will be a problem, please take care of it before sending us photos. Thanks very much.
If you can’t provide photos to accompany your article, please let us know that when you submit it. We may still run your article, but will need plenty of time to arrange illustrations.
Your submission may not be published: Because have more submissions than we can use, we will select the best-written, those that best fit our theme or other specific article needs, those that best complement the other stories in the issue, those that are least repetitive of recent Communities pieces, and those with the most relevant, helpful information. We may edit, shorten, or not use your article, or publish it in a future issue.
First North American Publication Rights: Our publishing your article constitutes a contract that we own the first North American publishing rights to your work. This means that it must not have been published previously in Canada or the US. If you or another publication would like to reprint the article exactly as it is laid out in the pages of the magazine, we may grant permission upon your or the publisher’s request, in which case we will ask you to include a copyright statement and attribution, as below.
In addition to appearing in Communities, your article may also appear on our website or in future compilations. You retain all other rights to it, which means that you or another publication can re-publish the words of your article, using your own or their own format (typeface, layout, etc.) in another publication or on a website. If you do, we ask that, as a favor to us, you please include the following attribution line when your article is published again:
“Copyright [year], [your name] and Communities magazine. This article first appeared in Communities: Life in Cooperative Culture, [date]; for further information on Communities: gen-us.net/communities.”
Our thanks: If we use your article you will receive a one-year subscription (four issues) or four copies of the issue in which your article appears—your choice. We also offer digital copies and digital subscriptions, often preferred for international contributors.
(Guidelines updated 12/31/2019.)
Photo Guidelines for Communities Magazine
(for authors or photographers)
revised 12/31/2019
No matter how you send us your photos, please remember to include information for the caption, as well as the full name of whomever we should credit for the photo.
If we publish your article, we want to accompany it with compelling images that illustrate your subject. You know your subject best, so we are appealing to you for images. We hope this guide will help you. If the task seems overwhelming, see if someone else in your community likes taking pictures. They might already have great images to go with your article.
If you would like to submit an article but cannot supply photos, that’s fine; however, you must let the photo editor know immediately, so that if we use your article we can get an illustrator.
Thanks for your contributions, and have fun!
Content of the submitted images:
If the story is focused on a certain person or group, include a photograph of them. Always get as close to your subject as possible. Photographs of your subjects engaged in their work or in their environment make for interesting photos. We will assume that any people in your photos have already given you permission to appear in Communities magazine. If you think this will be a problem, please take care of it before sending us photos.
You may also include additional, ambient photographs of a home, like a table setting, food, art, or landscape, for example, along with your people shots. We are a magazine about people and communities, but every picture does not need to have people in it. Maybe the image is a row of colorful shoes next to a playground that suggests children, for example.
Modern digital cameras put the power of making beautiful images in all our hands. Use the power and have fun!
Color cover photos:
If you are interested in submitting images for the cover, please study the Call for Articles posted for that issue. The best way to achieve a winning cover is to study the magazine. Be aware that your image must work behind the masthead, cover titles, etc.—normally the top of the image should not be vital to the image meaning. We are seeking thought-provoking approaches to visually communicating community—images which speak in new and interesting ways. Surprise us. Think about what you would want to see/say on a newsstand. Feel free to contact the Art Director with images or suggestions. You will need at least a 6 MB camera at the highest resolution of capture for cover photos.
HOW TO SEND US YOUR PHOTOS:
There are several ways to submit images, illustrations or graphics to the publication.
Please choose the method that is simplest for you.
Submitting images electronically:
Please submit your images as original full color jpegs if possible. It is important that you set your digital camera to capture the images at the highest resolution or 8” x 10”; then we should have enough file size to print to the page. As native jpegs, they should still be less than 4 or 5 mg. Adobe (1998)RGB is the preferred color setting.
Though different cameras have slightly different formats, your image will be roughly 3264 by 2448 pixels at 300 pixels per inch (the preferred resolution for our print process).
You do not need Photoshop to send us images—downloading directly from your camera to the desktop is just fine as long as the files captured in the camera are at the highest resolution. Check the camera manual if you don’t know this info. Also, it is best to have your camera color mode set to Adobe RGB, not SRGB if that is possible.
To check file size if you have Photoshop, you can go to image size, uncheck resample and set the resolution to 300 ppi. You will notice that this produces an image that is a little more than 8 x 10”. Do not convert the images to tiffs; this produces unnecessarily large file sizes. All we need is the jpeg as it is downloaded from your camera. Please do not worry if your images seem too dark or too light and attempt to doctor your images in Photoshop, unless you have well-trained or practical skill with this software, and a color-corrected monitor.
Photo-Sharing Websites:
The preferred way to share images is via an online sharing site. Some suggestions:
picasa (Google)
flickr (Yahoo)
photobucket.com
myfabrik.com
snapfish.com (hewlett-packard)
smugmug.com (ad free)
jamuse.com (safe, free and copyright protected).
facebook
…and a host of others!
Just open an account, upload the images you want to share (be sure to use the caption features—captioning every picture with names, location, etc. is very important) and send the link to layout@gen-us.net.
Email:
Alternatively, you can send your images via email. If you have access to both low resolution & high resolution versions of your photos, you are welcome to email us your low resolution versions for our evaluation and we can get back to you with a shortened list. If you email high resolution photos, then please, only one or two images per email.
Scanning:
If you need to scan images to send, please scan them as full color rgb and save as jpegs. Your settings are like those of the digital camera, set for the highest resolution or 300 ppi. Scans can be uploaded, burned to a CD or sent via email. Also, contact layout@ic.org if you have questions about scanning.
Snail Mail:
If you can burn your photos onto a CD, you are welcome to mail them to us USPS. Contact layout@gen-us.net for a snail mail address.
Submitting hard copies of photos:
If you need to send hard copies of photos or CDs of your images, please email layout@ic.org and the Art Director will send you a snail mail address. For those of you who may not be electronically inclined, snail mail submissions might be the best option. Just shoot your images at the highest resolution in full color with a digital camera, take it to your best local Kinko’s or drug store and ask them to make a CD or make 5×7 snapshots, if that works for you. Be sure to pack your hard copies well, either in a cardboard envelope or with extra packing to keep them from harm and include a return address. Five to ten images per submission is standard, but more or less is also acceptable, depending on the situation. We will be responsible for return postage.
Use of photos:
Unless you specify otherwise, your submission of photos constitutes permission for them to appear in our print magazine and also possibly on our website, in digital editions, and/or in future compilations.
Thanks again for helping us create a beautiful magazine.