SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY

WHAT EXACTLY IS A COMMUNITY?

Now we understand what a community magazine is we need to understand the meaning of the word 'community'.

A community can describe "a group of people living in a particular area" or "a group of people with common interests". It is possible, therefore, to have a community living within a community as with "a group of people having ethnic, cultural or religious characteristics in common".

According to 'Wikipedia', a community is:

"an amalgamation of living things that share an environment. The individual living beings can be plant or animal; any species; any size. What characterizes a community is sharing interaction in many ways. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs and a multitude of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the degree of adhesion within the mixture, but the definitive driver of community is that all individual subjects in the mix have something in common."

"If the sense of community exists, both freedom and security exist as well. The Community then takes on a life of its own, as people become free enough to share and secure enough to get along. This is the "spirit of community."

It is upon this "spirit of community" that my own community magazines are based and it is this which gives them such appeal.

In modern society 'community spirit' exists to a lesser degree than it did some generations ago. Families are now much more independent and it is possible to live next door to your neighbours for a number of years without ever getting to know their first names or what they do for a living - but of course, it hasn't always been this way.

Your community magazine needs to focus on the time when "people were free enough to share and secure enough to get along", a term which I feel characterises the way our parents and grandparents lived their lives.

The 'spirit of community' was clearly prevalent throughout the first six decades of the 20th century, as confirmed in the many letters I have received since I began publishing my own community magazines. Although now considered of far less importance within modern society its ideals remain treasured by those who experienced it while it is something that we ourselves can but aspire to.

©2006 Michael Norfolk

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