Finding community -- how did you find yours?

I was wondering how people found/researched the community they are currently living in?

I am planning on moving from back to the UK (Devon/ Somerset) from Spain but don't know the area and don't really know what the communities are like.
I am originally from the north east and a lot of the areas up there have a lot of problems with decline due to the de-industrialization and lack of employment. This has really impacted the community since most young people I know left to go to the city.
Are there similar problems in the agricultural areas like Devon/Somerset or are there still strong communities there? Is this something that exists more in wales?

One idea I had was to just drive a car around but i figured this will take ages and there has to be a smarter way I can do some of the work from here.

I thought about looking up permaculture projects there and visiting them so i can get an understanding of the areas. I also thought this must be much more of a problem in the US since everything is so much more spread out.

Any thoughts are welcome.

Mark

To address the first part of your query about how people find the intentional communities they settle on, i'm guessing a lot of folks use the directory on the FIC website....

https://www.ic.org/

Seems like there needs to be a better way to help funnel people to where they want to go as far as intentional communities, ecovillages, permie projects etc. To me the lack of information available has been kind of frustrating

mark best wrote:I was wondering how people found/researched the community they are currently living in?

I was living in Boston, having some troubles in my marriage, and my sister-in-law told me to go to New York to take a class about having better relationships. Turned out the people giving the class were from an intentional community in California, and they were presenting the results of their on-going experiments in living together pleasurably.

I had no idea what an intentional community was, but the course material was good, and I took a some of their classes in New York and Boston over the next few years.

When I moved to California I went and visited them. They are on an edge of the San Francisco Bay area, about 15 miles from where I lived.  I kept in touch with the group, and five years later I moved in. I've lived with the group for about 15 years now, and have learned enough that I can teach some of the classes.

Best resource for finding a community in the UK is diggersanddreamers' website.

Hello Mark,
I'm from Gloucestershire, just near Somerset, but am currently in Australia and I'm planning to move back as soon as I can, pandemic permitting, and work towards starting a smallholding (which will be an extremely steep learning curve, I should think!). I know you posted this a couple of years ago and I'm wondering if you did move to the south west and if you've got any tales to tell about finding community.