The story of this project is the story of Ecovillage Pioneers - an obsession with community and low impact living that began in Gower, Wales, traveled to Australia, Spain, Scotland and Ireland and returned full circle (or spiral) to where it began. If you want to hear the story, help us out and buy the DVD of the full 50 minute film- or you can watch the whole series in segments from this website.

Undercurrents started documenting the rise of low impact development in 1995, when the small community of Holtsfield in Gower, Wales was facing eviction. We made a short film, which appeared on VHS as Undercurrents 7.

Our interest in living on the land grew and we traveled to Scotland to follow the story of the Carbeth Hutters (VHS Undercurrents 9) and Brithdir Mawr (Undercurrents10). On a visit to Australia in 2001, (when we didn't realise the damage which flying does to our climate) we visited Crystal Waters, the first Permaculture village and some little shacks near Sydney. A pattern was beginning to emerge...

Times moved on and so did technology. By 2005, Undercurrents were exploring video on the internet and we were invited to make a series for the Community Channel about a local project in Wales. Lammas was a new ecovillage model looking to take advantage of the new "Policy 52" from Pembrokeshire County Council supporting low impact development in the open countryside. We made a series of 6 programmes looking at the history of ecovillage development in the UK. Those 6 programmes soon turned into 12, which turned into a 50 minute film - Ecovillage Pioneers. 10,000 copies of this film was distributed by Permaculture Magazine and the film has been screened all around the world.

By the time the film was finished, Lammas still did not have planning permission, but the Living in the Future online series had a huge following. So we kept making short films and uploading them to a growing internet audience. Lammas finally got planning permission in August 2009 and our series now has 20,000+ RSS subscribers via the Miro guide alone. Please join us.

The landscape of low impact development in the UK and around the world has altered dramatically over the last 12 years. Many more communities are being given permission to experiment, which is a good thing, considering the way we humans continue to exploit resources and pollute the environment. The Living in the Future video project is more popular- and necessary- than ever, so we are still making programmes- but we need your support!

The Living in the Future project is self-funded by the media charity, Undercurrents. The only outside funding for this project has been a one-off small grant from the Autonomous Geographies project (thanks!) This cash input helped us get the project started but we now need your help to continue.

Each episode costs us about £500 to research, travel, film and edit. If you can offer a donation or your company can sponsor an episode, or you can buy the DVD - it all helps immensely - thank you for all your support.