01.Who is Heart for?
Heart is for the people of the movement: the members, builders, elders, wisdom-keepers, organizers, and everyday participants of intentional communities across Europe and beyond. The ones whose stories are mostly happening collectively, in kitchens and circles and workshops, and who rarely see those stories reflected back in any serious printed form. Heart exists so the field can hear itself. The range is wide: long-time residents of established eco-villages and people in their first year of a co-living experiment; founders of land-based projects and members of urban housing co-ops; permaculture practitioners, conflict-resolution facilitators, governance designers, child-raisers, gardeners, cooks, artists, and researchers embedded in community. It's also for the people drawn to community as a systemic response to industrial growth society: those choosing this life as healing, as ecological practice, as a way out of the confines of the mainstream. And for those further out: allies in adjacent movements, journalists looking for a serious editorial frame on the field, and inter-island travelers curious about traditions other than their own. We're not trying to be 'for everyone in the regen space.' We're a focused, slow channel for the people who are actually building this, and for the people who want to hear from them.
02.What's an 'ecovillage' to you?
Our working definition comes from Daniel Greenberg: an ecovillage is a community holding high quality of life with low impact on the earth. Both at once. We hold this definition deliberately loose, and the wider field Heart serves is broader still. Some are land-based and multi-decade, established federations like GEN Europe or legacy ecovillages like Findhorn and Sieben Linden. Some are urban cohousing, contemplative communities like Plum Village, care communities like Camphill, anarchist enclaves like Christiania. Some are extitutional prototypes like Feytopia, residencies blurring the line between community and lab. Some are distributed networks like Agartha, operating across geographies rather than from a single piece of land. From traditional ecovillages to emergent regenerative networks, Heart covers the spectrum. We're more interested in the practice than the form. Eco-village identity is contested across the movement, and that contestation is itself part of what's interesting. Heart's editorial position is to honor that ambiguity rather than enforce a single line.
03.Is Heart just a magazine?
No. The magazine is our first artifact, the most legible form for what we're trying to do, but the project is bigger than that. Heart exists to give the voices of the movement back to the people who carry them. Across Europe and beyond, members of intentional communities are doing extraordinary work: building new ways to share land, resolve conflict, raise children, govern themselves, grieve together, eat together. Those stories mostly stay inside the communities that live them. Heart is a vessel for returning them to the field. To honor them. To let people see what they're part of. To empower the people of the movement to share their stories on their own terms. Other forms will follow as the work asks for them. The intent stays the same: helping the wider movement hear itself, through the voices of the people inside it.
04.How does Heart publish? (frequency, print, where to buy)
Annual. One issue per year, released in July. Print and digital. Printed on 100% recycled paper with vegetable-based inks at an Imprim'Vert eco-printer in France. A5 format, saddle-stitched. Made to last. Pre-order Issue 1 at heartofecovillages.org/support. Founding edition launches July 2026 at the European Ecovillage Gathering at Nature Community, Bavaria. Subscribe at the bottom of any page on this site for issue announcements and occasional notes.
05.How can I contribute, partner, or get involved?
Several ways. Writers, photographers, artists, researchers: pitch us at heart-submissions.vercel.app. We're especially looking for first-hand voices from inside communities. Networks and organizations: partner with us at editor@heartofecovillages.org. We're building a meta-network across Europe and value reciprocity. Spread the word: tell people in your community about the project. Word of mouth is how Heart actually moves.
06.Who's behind Heart?
Heart's editorial team is Cassandre Torres, Gustaf Palm, and Vincent Rueda.
07.What does Heart's partnership with GEN Europe actually look like?
We have a formal partnership agreement with Global Ecovillage Network Europe, signed in April 2026 and reviewed annually. The intent is symbiotic: GEN gives Heart expertise, visibility, and access to its member network; Heart gives GEN's members a high-quality print and digital platform for their work, and acts as a megaphone for the network's values to audiences outside GEN's existing circles. In practice, GEN Europe has a dedicated editorial section in each issue, with Heart retaining final editorial say. GEN members get a discount on print copies, GEN promotes each new issue through its channels, and both organizations operate non-profit with any surplus reinvested into the magazine and the broader movement. Heart remains an independent project. The 'In partnership with GEN Europe' mark is mutual support and shared values, not editorial endorsement.
08.What does the magazine look like?
Format: A5 (148 × 210 mm). Binding: saddle-stitched. Paper: 100% recycled stock. Ink: vegetable-based, low-VOC. Printer: Imprim'Vert-certified eco-printer in France. Edition size: small first run, under 200 copies for Issue 1. Structure: four recurring sections. The Commons (network pulse), The Garden (practical knowledge), The Firepit (essays and reflection), The Workshop (case studies and innovation). The materials, the size, the print run: all are deliberate. Heart is not trying to be a glossy industry quarterly. It's trying to be an ecologically sound, small, lasting object that travels well.
09.Why a print magazine in 2026?
Because print slows the field down at a moment when nearly everything else in this space lives at the speed of feeds, conferences, and updates. A printed object survives the scroll. It travels through a community, passed between members, left on tables, read in stretches. It commits us to editing seriously, because what's printed can't be silently changed afterwards. It also protects the people making Heart. A monthly cadence would burn out the small team. Founder sustainability is a strategic asset, not an indulgence, and the rhythm of the magazine reflects that.
10.Do you cover non-European communities? What languages do you publish in?
Primary focus is Europe. That's where the team is anchored, where our networks live, and where a coherent inter-community conversation feels most possible. The magazine is published in English as the working language of the European movement, with the intention to translate selectively when it serves. We do cover non-European communities case by case, when a story from outside Europe genuinely helps the European movement see itself more clearly (for example Auroville's century of experiments, North American intentional-living traditions, Indigenous Terra Madre work). We're not trying to be a global publication; we're trying to be a European publication that doesn't pretend Europe is the world.
11.How does Heart hold the responsibility of being a platform?
Editorially, we work in what we call a critical-care register: neither promotional nor cynical. We take the work of communities seriously enough to interrogate it. That's a posture, not a position on any specific group. We're also aware that being a platform means we shape narratives in two directions at once: collectively (how the movement sees itself, what gets attention, whose names circulate) and personally (people share difficult, formative stories with us, and we hold the responsibility of carrying those stories well). Both matter. In practice this means: we move slowly on contested material, we name our editorial stance where it matters, we credit contributors carefully, and we revisit our own framing when communities push back. We make mistakes; we try to acknowledge them publicly when we do.
Question we haven't answered?
editor@heartofecovillages.org