Loch Arthur is a working Community with a thriving social enterprise. We run a farm and a garden, care for our woodland, make cheese and other dairy products and produce bread and crafts.
There is also all the usual daily housework of cooking and cleaning. Our farm shop and cafe create a popular outlet for our own and local produce, as well as a wide range of organic products, crafts and books carefully sourced from other suppliers.
Our working life matters to us because it answers a fundamental need to be useful and active. It offers challenging opportunities for meeting and engaging with other people and it gives us a shared purpose, helping to create a sense of community.
For those who need support to contribute to the working life of the community, this support is given in ways which allow each person’s abilities to find expression. Each day there are also a few people living in the locality who are supported to participate in our working life. We try to find a balance between the needs of productivity and our wish to collaborate and involve everyone in the team.
Giving & receiving
None of us who live at Loch Arthur are paid directly for our work – why do we try to keep work and money separate? Well, we hope that if we can feel we are a part of the community, then we will want to contribute with whatever abilities we have.
Feeling a part of something that has a purpose gives us a sense of responsibility and satisfaction, even if our individual contribution may not seem very important on its own.
As far as money is concerned we don’t want what we receive to be a measure of what we have contributed. We do not go without things or without money. The aim is to encourage us all to become more responsible for each other.We want to avoid turning work into something which values one person more than another because of individual ability. Work is about collaboration, not competition.
A number of people who live locally are employed to support the workshops, houses, administration, farm shop and cafe.
