Changing Places

Where to go for that crucial conference? The choice can say quite a lot about what you are up to - and could well determine what you come back with, too.

Kindersley Centre

The food is seasonal, local, natural, and sustainable. Peter and Juliet Kindersley want visitors to the conference centre on their family-run organic farm to experience its workings “all the way from pasture to plate”. You can take time out to watch wheat being ground into flour, enjoy freshly baked bread from the wood-fired oven, or take a farm tour of some of the 2,000 acres of Berkshire downland.

Combining the traditional with the modern, the conference centre features the most advanced technology, from a high tech sound system to a multimedia lectern. The building seems undramatic - until you step inside, and take in the sweeping spiral staircase, domed roof, and vaulted wooden ceilings, all achieved using recycled materials.

It’s so well insulated that two small gas-fired boilers are all that’s required to heat the place, while all water is treated naturally through a reedbed system. Inspiration can even be found in the toilets, where cubicle partitions are made from recycled toothpaste tubes and the washbasins from recycled CDs.

Location: Berkshire
Capacity: Up to 200
Cost: £60+VAT pppd
Atmosphere: Upmarket rustic
Typical client: Waitrose
www.sheepdrove.com

Green & Away

For the ultimate low-impact venue, get your camping gear out and head for the fields of Worcestershire - the home of Green & Away, a tented conference centre powered on 100% wind and solar energy.

The eco-settlement, with village green and campfire, gets reconstructed every summer at a secret spot (they won’t say where till you’ve booked). The main marquee has a straw-bale seating room for 140, with separate canvas spaces for  small-group sessions, craft making or that naked sweat-room experience. There are no formalities here - the aim is to get away, combine work with play, and leave as small an eco-footprint as possible.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, although the compost loos are surprisingly user-friendly and the wood-burner-heated alfresco showers could be construed as romantic. For a few extra pounds you can rest secure from the elements in a luxury yurt, comfortably equipped with rugs, cushions, and hot water bottles. B&B at the nearby village is a fallback option - but if that’s what most of your punters want, you’ve picked the wrong venue.

Location: Worcestershire
Capacity: 50-140
Cost: £25-£35 pppn
Atmosphere: Resourceful hippy
Typical client: Friends of the Earth
www.greenandaway.org

Pines Calyx

When they designed the award-winning new Pines Calyx centre, experts from the field of integrated health were closely involved - helping create something they describe as “nutritious for mind, health and ecology”. The amount of imagination and mental exertion that must have gone into the building is certainly enough to set your mind racing. The timbrel vaulted roof domes are things of beauty in themselves, and part of a sophisticated combination of ancient and modern sustainable construction techniques. The walls are made of rammed chalk excavated from the site, and on the inside the building’s intelligence is replicated in the use of heat exchangers to warm and cool the place by the flow of coastal Kentish air, ensuring a constant healthy humidity level.

The building makes maximum use of natural lighting throughout, and a ‘virtual daylight’ computer-aided system is programmed to optimise benefits such as alertness and focus - so useful for staying awake in those challenging post-lunch sessions.

Location: Kent
Capacity: Up to 200
Cost: Bespoke
Atmosphere: Creative eco-chic
Typical client: Ethical PR companies
www.pinescalyx.co.uk

The Genesis Centre

Genesis - ‘creation’ or ‘coming into being’ - lies at the core of this venue. The design is purposefully flexible to allow for future incorporation of greener alternatives, creating a truly ‘living’ building that will keep growing as new technologies emerge. It is centred around six intersecting pavilions, each focusing on different materials - earth, straw, clay, timber, glass, and water - and each offering a hands-on glimpse of contemporary approaches to the challenge of sustainability. The Earth Pavilion, for example, demonstrates traditional cob construction and rammed earth, while the Water Pavilion, doubling as the toilets, promotes the latest water conservation techniques. Conference-goers will also benefit from up-to-the-minute technology, with a choice of auditorium, seminar room, glass atrium, or office space to let. Throughout the Centre, parts of the walls are stripped away to reveal the materials and techniques behind their construction. DIY-ers and architects who get itchy fingers on the spot can buy materials, products and tools at the green store on site.

Location: Somerset
Capacity: Up to 200
Cost: Whole centre half day: £395; full: £740
Atmosphere: Dynamic practical
Typical client: Kevin McCloud/Grand Designs
www.genesisproject.com

Commonwork

Jonathon Porritt describes Bore Place as “one of the very few places I know that provides absolutely everything you need, and then lets you just get on with it”. If you’re pressed for time and need to do just that, the tranquillity of the 500-acre organic farm and gardens, and the converted historic farm buildings dating back to medieval times, provide a relaxing environment. But if your schedule’s not too hectic, the ‘learning-by-doing’ activities on offer include clay work, field trail night walks or permaculture talks. Perhaps you can fit in a spot of bread making or tree felling between conference sessions to stimulate mind, body and senses... The aim is to demonstrate the possibilities of sustainable solutions to farming, the environment and education - the main objectives of the organisations behind Commonwork. Always learning themselves, they have come up with a ten-year plan to achieve a ‘zero fossil energy farm’ to meet and exceed the government’s longer-range target of a 60% CO2 emissions reduction - and to create a model that can be replicated more widely.

Location: Kent
Capacity: Up to 100 daytime, 46 residents
Cost: £35 pppd; £74-£114 +VAT pppn
Atmosphere: Peaceful detachment
Typical client: Forum for the Future
www.commonwork.org

Holy Island

With an ancient healing spring and the hermit-cave of a 6th-century monk, Holy Island is exactly what it says on the tin - a place to “experience inner peace, to discover creativity and to find meaning”. It’s located off the west coast of Scotland, led by a Tibetan Buddhist monk, offers a retreat programme and has a Centre for World Peace and Health available to hire.

Respecting the environment finds practical expression in the water - drawn from a spring, heated by solar panels, and treated in a reedbed sewage system. There are plans to go fully wind-powered for electricity, too. Food is vegetarian and guests are encouraged to get involved in the daily tasks of communal living. Everyone must follow the ‘Five Golden Rules’ - so killing is right out, there’s no stealing or lying, and you can dismiss any thoughts of getting intoxicated or ‘sexual misconduct’.

Location: West Scotland
Capacity: Up to 100
Cost: From £5pppd; from £45 pppn
Atmosphere: Zen
Typical client: The spiritually oriented
www.holyisland.org

Just for the day?

The Hub, Islington. Eco-savvy urban space among the networking techno-nomads. Also available with a West Country accent in Bristol.
Container Futures. East Enders get it together in a repurposed shipping crate.
Earthship Brighton. It’s a whole other planet inside this completely self-sufficient building made from tyres, cans, and bottles in the South Downs near Brighton.  
Ecotech Centre, Norfolk. Futuristic timber-framed building sitting peacefully cheek by jowl with Swaffham’s best-loved wind turbine.
Brock’s Hill, Leicester. Renewably powered, rainwater-flushed and sustainably insulated centre in the County Park.

Research by Irma Allen

2 May 2007

Irma Allen