Growing Kinship at Landwell
Greetings and Happy Lunar New Year from Landwell!
From those of us who live, work, and steward this place to our wider Landwell community, we want to begin with gratitude. We’re excited to share a few updates and reflections as we complete our first year as the Landwell Housing Cooperative—and to offer some invitations for what’s emerging next!
Becoming a nonprofit housing cooperative has been a meaningful and hard-won milestone. That excitement is amplified by the privilege of co-stewarding Landwell as a wayfinding place, a community-of-communities, and a shared vision for a more regenerative and equitable future. Landwell is held in partnership by the Landwell Housing Cooperative, the Innovative Learning and Living Institute (ILALI), and Living Lands Trust—each bringing distinct roles, responsibilities, and gifts in service of long-term care for the land, the people, and what is unfolding here.
A Year of Grounding and Commitment
Just over a year ago, the Landwell Housing Cooperative secured the resources to purchase the title to the Landwell property—an enormous milestone that placed this land on a path of long-term stewardship beyond speculative markets. In the spring of 2025, Landwell co-steward ILALI received a multi-year grant from the NoVo Foundation, helping stabilize and deepen the cultural, educational and community work unfolding at Landwell.
Together, these commitments wove both land and people, creating a stronger foundation for what is emerging here—rooted in care, continuity, and long-term responsibility to place.
Deepening Community Partnerships
Over the course of the year, Landwell also deepened relationships with key and emerging partners, including Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation & Open Space, North Bay Organizing Project, and the Ah’neh Indigenous Revitalization Council. These relationships are supporting ongoing conversations about land protection, community resilience, and shared governance. We are currently exploring two land easement pathways with Sonoma Ag + Open Space, while ILALI continues convening organizational partners around bioregional capacity-building across ecological, economic, and cultural resilience.
Cultivating Shared Governance
As Landwell continues to mature, so does how we care for and govern the land together. Over the past year, the newly formed Landwell Housing Cooperative deepened its internal governance while also helping form the Kinship Council—a co-stewardship body including the Landwell Housing Cooperative, ILALI, and Living Lands Trust, held in relationship with the Land itself.
This work reflects a commitment to governance that is relational, place-rooted, and oriented toward long-term care. It also reflects a shared understanding that the land itself is an active teacher and steward—shaping how we listen, decide, and respond.
Landwell is both a place and a community-of-communities, grounded in a larger vision of supporting regenerative and equitable ways of living during these tumultuous—and often initiatory—times. As residents, we are on our own Wayfinding journeys, learning how to live well with land, difference, and uncertainty, so that we may better support others walking similar paths.
Loving the Land, Together
Throughout the year, Landwell continued to host Land Loves—residential and community land-tending days that support the health, beauty, and vitality of the land and HeartSeed Farm. These days weave together hands-in-the-soil work with art, music, education, and shared meals, cultivating a culture of care that is both practical and relational.
In support of this work, Landwell received a second grant from Ma Earth, strengthening our capacity for land restoration and regenerative agriculture at HeartSeed Farm. This funding supports soil health, ecological resilience, and food systems rooted in reciprocity with place—deepening Landwell’s role as a living demonstration of regenerative stewardship.
Through collaborations with SoundWell, MaMuse, BeeHive Learning Center, ILALI, and others, Landwell has remained a place for place-based learning, creative expression, and community gathering—where care for land and care for one another meet.
NAVELLA - Cultivating Bioregional Resilience and Community
The Navella Initiative is a growing collaboration of trusted nonprofit partners working across Sonoma County to strengthen local resilience—from land and water stewardship to livelihoods and shared civic life. Over the past year, ILALI has convened partners through conversations and working sessions that built trust, alignment, and shared purpose.
That momentum deepened during a two-day Navella convening at Landwell, moving the collaboration from exploration to commitment. Navella brings together people who don’t often share decision-making—farmworkers, Indigenous leaders, small business owners, organizers, faith leaders, and longtime residents—to work on practical, place-based priorities like watershed health, local economies, food access, and community preparedness. By focusing on shared needs rather than ideology, Navella turns cross-class trust into visible improvements that make our region more resilient—economically, ecologically, and culturally.
Navella Convening’s graphic notes integrated and created by Narrative Artistry’s Mari Shibuya
Upcoming Community Offerings
Landwell offers community gatherings that invite people to connect with one another and with the land itself.
Land Love - Tree-tending Ritual
One such offering is Land Love—a community land-tending practice offered in partnership by the Landwell Housing Cooperative, ILALI, and HAPPI. Through monthly Land Love hours and quarterly Land Love gatherings, we come together for hands-on care of the land, storytelling, land listening, and collective nourishment - including a shared meal.
Our next Land Love gathering for the wider community will take place on Sunday, March 1st from 10am- 2pm. We’ll be sharing lunch together, so if you’d like to join us, please be sure to RSVP.
This season marks tree-tending time! Max Kee of Landwell’s Heartseed Farm will be sharing story and guiding our annual tree-tending ritual. We invite you to join us for a day of communion with one another, with the land, and especially with our tree-kind—followed by lunch, generously sponsored by HAPPI.
Heart Sprung Tongues - Music. Poetry. Open Mic.
Heart Sprung Tongues is a recurring storytelling and performance gathering hosted by ILALI at Landwell. Blending poetry, music, ritual, and open mic, these evenings create space for shared voice, beauty, and truth-telling in relationship with land and community.
Each gathering features invited poets and musicians alongside an open mic and DJ set, and is connected to ILALI’s Narrative Artistry Living Praxis Community.
Our next HST gathering will take place at Landwell on Saturday, April 4th at 7pm. If you’re interested in attending or would like more information, please email: info@ilali.global.
Landwell Community Mural on Imagining a Regenerative Future. Led by Narrative Artistry’s Mari Shibuya
We are living during an intense, initiatory time and the importance of building trust in our communities cannot be understated. We invite you to join us at Landwell as we focus our energies into coming into right relationship with the land and each other, fostering deeper connection, compassion and holding a vision for humanity and place-making beyond our time.
Thank you for your support,
The Stewards of Landwell