Co-creating rural regenerative futures, as a community, from the ground up.
Building the capacity, confidence and connection for rural communities in Somerset and Dorset to lead systemic change and build pathways towards a regenerative future— together.
Why we beganWe formed as a community interest company in early 2024 to do what’s often overlooked — deeply listen to the people, land and patterns of our place.What we found was both inspiring and urgent: a vibrant ecosystem of action and care, but fragmented and under-resourced.This Living Place exists to reconnect that web — building the relational, cultural and systemic infrastructure rural communities need to thrive.
VisionA reciprocal tapestry of joyful, creative and equitable rural places - where communities work collectively to steward thriving ecosystems, economies and cultures of care.
MissionTogether with our rural community, we design and nurture the conditions for deep systemic and relational change; weaving care, connection and agency into resilient, place-rooted pathways towards equitable and regenerative futures.
Our team has grown from three to five in 2025! Five women, rooted across our rural bioregion.
From left to right: Laura Tyley (Somerset), Huda Javed (Dorset), Deanne Tremlett (Somerset), Emma Butterworth (Devon), Jennifer Morisetti (Dorset).
Deanne's bio
Deanne joined This Living Place as a non-executive director in 2024. She is a long-standing community organiser with a background in the arts. She was one of the driving forces behind The Gugg in Stalbridge—one of the most inspiring, people-powered projects in our region. The Gugg has played a huge role in bringing people together, tackling local challenges, and showing what’s possible when creativity meets community care. Deanne is deeply knowledgeable about what it takes to hold space, manage community hubs, and use the arts to build connection. She’s a brilliant person to learn from if you’re curious about how art and culture can bring communities to life.
Emma's bio
Emma joined TLP in 2025 to help shape the next phase of our journey. With a background in strategic consultancy, she’s worked with all kinds of organisations—including big businesses—helping them move through change with clarity, vision, and practical plans. Emma brings this experience into TLP, supporting us to build roadmaps, develop structure, and stay aligned to our values as we grow. She lives in Devon and holds a Master’s degree in Regenerative Economics from Schumacher College. A real land lover, Emma has spent years involved in land-based learning and community projects. If you want to learn how strategy can shape systems change—or what’s stirring in Totnes and the world of regenerative economics—Emma’s a brilliant person to talk to.
Huda's bio
Huda joined This Living Place in 2025 through a partnership with the Youth Environmental Service, taking on a shared role as a Communications and Engagement Coordinator across This Living Place, Dorset Community Energy, and Wessex Community Assets. A recent graduate in International Social and Political Studies from University College London, with hands-on experience in community-led food and energy projects, Huda brings a deep interest in environmental and social justice, grassroots movement building and participatory engagement. She is particularly interested in how storytelling and creative facilitation can help amplify local voices and connect people with land, place and heritage. Huda lives in Dorset and is excited to be working within the rural landscapes and communities that have shaped her.
Jenny's bio
Jenny joined This Living Place as a non-executive director in 2024. She is a passionate advocate for sustainable living and is currently Chair of Sustainable Dorset. She also runs a brilliant textile project near Shaftesbury, called Hawkers Recreatives, helping people reconnect with practical skills like mending and making. It also hosts the amazing Defashion Dorset event ever year. Through the many initiative she is involved in, she supports environmental awareness, circular economy thinking, and community connection. Jenny is especially interested in local energy, community resilience, and creative ways to support people to live more sustainably.
Laura's bio
Laura started This Living Place in 2024 after years of working with inspiring nonprofits focused on local economies, food systems, Indigenous conservation, and place-based change. Along the way, she learned from people doing incredible work, but became frustrated by how hard it was to actually do this kind of work in rural areas, especially as a paid role. TLP grew from that realisation: that deep, systemic change needs to be rooted in place, and that people doing the work need to be resourced to do it fully. Laura was born and raised in Somerset and Dorset, and has also lived in Devon and Bristol. She brings experience in systems thinking, community organising, and communications, but also a deep love for land nad growing veg.
What We DoWe’re transforming the cultural, relational and systemic conditions that shape life in rural places.
Relational Infrastructure – We build trust and connection between people, projects, and places. Through convening and collaboration, we strengthen the social fabric that allows ideas, energy, and care to flow — turning relationships into collective action.
Cultural Infrastructure – We nurture shared meaning and belonging. Through storytelling, creativity, and exchange, we surface local wisdom, celebrate overlooked gifts, and grow a culture of care, courage, and stewardship.
Systemic Infrastructure – We design the conditions for lasting change. By mapping systems, supporting networks, and embedding participatory processes, we help communities organise in more democratic, regenerative, and place-rooted ways.
We work on the deep patterns - cultural, relational, and systemic - that determine how change happens within a place.
What’s emergingOur first year was a stepping stone—a year of deep listening, learning, and understanding what’s needed to rebuild thriving places. Before we could design ways forward, we had to map the gaps, build trust, and explore how collaboration could work here.
400+ hours of deep listening and community consultation
500+ hours of direct, hands-on support for local projects
200+ new connections made across sectors
50+ site visits to grassroots initiatives
40+ events attended
20+ projects supported
Our supporters and partners
Our first year focused on deep listening - to the land, to people, and to the patterns already present.
Over our first two years, we’ve been laying the foundations for a new kind of rural community organisation — one rooted in listening, connection and collaboration. Together with local partners, we’ve:• Brought Retrofit Reimagined to Dorset, in collaboration with Wessex Community Assets — reaching more than 17,000 people and sparking practical conversations about how communities can retrofit homes for a regenerative future.• Launched the Living Places Network, a peer-learning community of ten place-based practitioners from Northern Ireland to Devon, building solidarity and shared learning across rural contexts.• Seeded a Female Landworkers Collective, helping women across Somerset connect, share resources, and strengthen their collective voice.• Partnered on Dorset COP for two consecutive years, helping the event evolve into a more participatory, community-shaped gathering.• Led live mapping processes at community events, helping people visualise the social and ecological transformation already unfolding in their towns and villages.• Collaborated with Transition Together, visiting almost every active Transition group in the South West to understand what enables and hinders local change — insights now shaping wider regional work.• Supported local organisations, from Sustainable Dorset to smaller rural initiatives, to revitalise their structures, strategies and impact.• Advised national funders, ensuring future funding programmes genuinely support grassroots, place-based efforts.• Partnered with the Youth Environmental Service to prototype a rural apprenticeship, creating a new entry route for young people and increasing representation in the environmental sector. This pilot connects three small rural organisations that could not otherwise hire full-time, addressing barriers of cost, access and succession, and modelling a new collaborative approach to building rural skills and representation.• Delivered talks and workshops, from the Environmental Funders Network and Be The Earth’s Festival to Dorset COP — amplifying rural grassroots voices and calling for a rewiring of how change happens, from isolated initiatives to place-based, community-led collaboration.• Amplified unheard rural stories, from endangered heritage crafts to community gatherings — uncovering skills, creativity and local leadership, and sharing them through a range of media channels to celebrate the people shaping regenerative futures in our region.Each of these projects strengthens the living infrastructure of our region — the relationships, skills and confidence that allow rural communities to lead transformation from the ground up.
We are here to help communities to rediscover their agency and collective strength in these turbulent times.
Our work weaves four threads of change1. Living Spaces & Places: Reconnecting people and place through community journeys.
2.Living Culture & Narratives: Nurturing belonging, stewardship culture and regenerative narratives.
3.Living Networks & Movements: Connecting practitioners and communities for collective impact.
4.Living Systems & Flows: Redesigning how power, wealth and knowledge move through place.
Our working hypothesis: When all these strands work together, they generate multi-level change — shifting power, redistributing resources, nurturing inclusion...
We’re now seeking support to launch a new series of projects shaped directly by what our region has told us it needs. They’ll deepen the work already underway, building cohesion across towns and villages, linking local action into a stronger ecosystem, and showing how rural communities can lead their own regenerative futures.These projects respond to the deep pressure points within our rural system — power, ownership, inclusion, livelihoods, story, and connection — and together, they build confidence, care, and collective agency.By 2030, we want to see a region more connected and courageous: communities with the relationships, culture, and shared capacity to meet whatever comes next.We’re weaving the living infrastructure for rural transformation — and inviting partners to help it grow.
📩 Want to collaborate or learn more? Get in touch: laura@thislivingplace.co.uk
laura@thislivingplace.co.uk
This Living Place is a registered not for profit Community Interest Company (CIC) - 15429630
