Ways to Get Involved

We have the following ways to get involved:

• An annual open day in the autumn
• Open volunteer afternoons during the spring and summer (email for details)
• Weekend residential volunteering, usually for woodland management during the winter and camping weekends with garden work in the summer
• Short term residential volunteering for 2-3 weeks throughout the year
• Longer term residential volunteering and residency

Information on our events, including the open day and the volunteering weekends, is on our Events page.

During the rest of the year Tinkers Bubble is generally not open for day visitors or brief stays as we are busy maintaining our land, although we may enjoy meeting people from other land-based and community projects.

Volunteering

The way most people get to know us is to volunteer with us, either joining us for 2 to 3 weeks throughout the year or for a woodland management weekend during the winter. Woodland management weekends are listed on our Events page, and are dedicated to felling and processing trees, and working in our Hazel coppice, using only hand tools.

2 to 3 week volunteer stays can be arranged about 3 months in advance throughout the year, in which you join in with community life. The work we do is dependant on the season and the requirements of the community - typically a lot of weeding in the summer and wood processing in the winter! Volunteers work with a resident for about 7hrs a day, monday to friday, in exchange for food and board. Accommodation is usually in the communal guesthouse, which is comfortable, if basic. If you don't want to share with others then camping is also a possibility, but staying in vehicles is not possible due to our planning restrictions. The guest house has a wood burner, but we spend most of our time outside so please be prepared for cold, rain, and mud.

We get a lot more applications than we can accomodate and so must turn down most requests. Please only apply to volunteer if you are committed to coming, and if you are interested in being at the Bubble in particular. Let us know if you have prior experience of land work or community, but we are keen to support new entrants too so experience isn’t the only deciding factor.

Please remember that Tinkers Bubble is a low impact community - we don't allow the use of fossil fuels on the land and we strive to live as sustainably as we can. Our diet is determined by the seasons and what we can produce from the land, which means that at times providing for special diets (including veganism) will be fairly basic, or possibly prohibitory. Land work can be demanding and community life intense, which means that life here isn't always easy and isn't for everyone. Other volunteering opportunities can be found on websites such as WWOOF, Diggers and Dreamers, and Workaway.

Residency and Longer Term Volunteering

As well as short-term volunteering, we also usually have a few people staying with us on a longer term basis (up to 6 months). Long Term Volunteers participate in the daily running of the community, with a focus in summer on the growing season and in winter on woodland management.

To avoid conflict and to ensure that we continue the aims of the community, the process towards residency is quite a long one. Living here requires a full commitment to our ethos of living off-grid, to land-work, and to living in community. Potential new residents start by volunteering with us for two to three weeks. If we each feel from this that a longer stay would suit, and if space is available, then you would return for a longer-term stay in which you join in with the same schedule as the residents, and start to take on more autonomy and responsibility. During this stay we will all get a feel for whether residency is an appropriate option for now.

Residents and Long Term Volunteers are expected to work for part of each week on various land-based projects, to join in with communal tasks such as cooking and animal care, and to pay a small rent to cover food bills and ancilliary costs. More information on the structure of long term volunteering and residency can be found here.

Applications

To apply to volunteer with us, please contact us about 3 months in advance of your preferred dates at tinkersbubble@riseup.net or fill in this Google form. We tend to accept people initially on a 2-3 week basis. We like to know why you are interested in coming to the Bubble in particular, what skills and experiences you bring with you and are hoping to gain, and how being here might fit into other aspects/aspirations for your life. There is nothing in particular that we are looking for, and no 'minimum requirement' that you need to meet, but as we get a lot of requests it is important to us that we offer places to people that will particularly benefit from being here, as well as being able to meet the rigors of our lifestyle. Having some engagement already with land-work, community, off-grid life, and/or activism is especially interesting to us.

Diversity and Accessability

We see ourselves as an inclusive community, although our context as a land-based intentional community in rural Somerset means that we can present, and often recreate, various forms of normativity. If you have concerns about how your identity may affect your experience of visiting us, you are welcome to contact us about it.