Fundraiser: Help Kate & Owen to find their new home

Hi everyone, we are Kate & Owen and we are currently in need of financial help. 

Seeking: a campervan

For: rest, shelter, warmth, comfort, mobility: to find new opportunities and community, and share our gifts in society.

For those who are more new to the platform, Kate is one of the main contributors to SunBeings and has shared some of our off-grid life in her videos and blogs. Owen also contributes his music and creativity and you may have seen his interview with Carina in the Conversation Series.

We have followed our deepest instructions at every turn, heeding our intuition, taking our responsibility to lead our own change, and try to directly embody our values in the world.

We try to stay practical, yet take the risks when a dream asks to be made real. 

Those instructions took us completely out of our old lives, concepts and comforts — and it brought us to a semi-pristine wilderness in a mountain forest, to a ruined village where nature’s voice is especially strong.

We initially hoped to attract community here – it is free land for anyone – and we put great effort into that, but we soon learnt this is a place only for rebirth, not plans. 

Through the challenges, fears and silence, we feel born anew through this land. But now, after 17 months, we need to leave. And this is where we are asking for help.

It’s rough here, with very basic shelters. The clean water ran out in summer, and now even the muddy water has run out, and our electricity is failing at the same time. And now this week, the high humidity is causing our stoves to leak monoxide into the rooms, forcing us to spend half the night outside as we air them out. (We’re lucky to have the alarms!) We have no transport, a very uneven road, and insufficient funds to rent or buy a car. (Our part-time neighbours bring us water and food by van.) 

We want to reach out and return to society, So here we are! We’re doing our best, but it looks like we cannot get out of here alone.

Every avenue we look at, we always come back to needing a campervan. It is the only thing that meets all our needs in one. It is cheaper than renting a house or even a room; allows us to explore, and gives us the rest and recharge we need that volunteering on other people’s projects can’t.

It meets our need for movement, storage, rest, basic comforts and autonomy. It would let us discover communities and meet people freely. As creatives, we need to share our gifts with others, and share the silence we have grown by living here. 

We remain very adaptable and strong in spirit. Our bodies, however, deeply need rest with no obligations, to be able to return to our art and share it. We have given so much to the care of this land, but our other gifts can’t be used much here.

After 16 months here, we are craving access to hot water, privacy and rest without the need to immediately work and exchange for lodging.

Our hope is to receive enough donation to make a deposit towards a camper van. We have saved a bit, but not enough for the full deposit (which would probably be around £5,000-6,000). The deposit would allow us to pay manageable monthly instalments on the rest of a campervans cost (probably around £15,000 for a reliable 2nd hand one).

(If we can’t secure enough for a deposit, then we would seek a van or 4×4 big enough for overnight stays.)

We’re also grateful to know of any supportive place of rest in the UK, Iberia or France, but we are much too tired and run-down to volunteer.

Kate would also like to thank everyone for their donations to SunBeings as this has allowed us to continue the work we do here. Kate works very hard to maintain and update SunBeings, but lately the exhaustion of off-grid life has prevented her from maintaining her contributions in the way she would like. She would love more energy to give to SunBeings again, as nurturing our community is her passion.

We know many others are also with few financial reserves. We ask only because we must. We want to model the world where everyone’s needs can naturally be met because nobody’s afraid to be natural: free just to ask when in need, to give when inspired, or wait if there’s no movement. We think that normalising free exchange would enrich everyone and deprive nobody, so we hope our asking brings that forward for everyone!

There is culturally a lot of shame and judgement around asking for help, but when you have tried for so long to meet your own needs, and it is not coming naturally, then we can’t feel it is disempowering us to ask. On the contrary – it would be unhealthy not to.

If you would like any more information, or just to reach out, please do ask us!

Thank you,
from Kate & Owen

MORE ABOUT US:

A video we made before coming to this land:
Our Mountain Diary 

Kate’s paintings here:
katealexandrapriestley.com

Owen’s music & videos here:
owenhanner.com

Kate’s blog of our land on SunBeings:
sunbeings.org/category/blog/kates-life-in-the-spanish-pyrenees/

(If you like our creations, you can also donate for that cause, if you wish. It’s all for our art and wellbeing.)

DONATE: