Article

Damien Ferguson

Published by Damien Ferguson on the 25th of January 2016

Starting Your Own House or Local Community

Building your own.house or local community can.be frustrating, disheartening and a lot of hard work. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it in the end, If you cant find what you are looking for…. do it yourself cause no one else will.

First you need a true vision.Real goals, realistic expectations. Plan, plan, plan. Figure out what type of house you want, Will magic or a spiritual path be involved heavily? Is it more family orientated? Then figure out how it will work, will titles be used,what is acceptable in behavior?

After all that draft up a mission statement and purpose. A true plan others can see, look at it and decide if it would be good/right for them. Start looking up places to meet others that are local. Find other locals thru forums, sites, groups, etc. Set a meeting time and get to know each other. Share what you are trying to do and your vision. Some wont want your vision, and that is okay. If you keep at it you will find others who love your vision or even already share it.

Once that is all done(the planning phase) it is time to find places to meet! I would suggest very public places for awhile so everyone can feel comfortable and get to know each other. Find multiple venues. Most really don’t care if a group of folks meet there, but it is always respectful to at least buy some food or some such to accommodate the niceness of the business.

Next it is time to start looking for folk. Of course a good place to start is online vampire groups/communities but I have found I have better look finding local folks for offline things outside of the online vc groups. Local pagan groups, gaming groups, alt lifestyle, even bdsm. I have in the past even found a few putting an obscure add up on craigslist. Meetup.com although costly to use can be a good resource. Also signing up for “local were/vamp/otherkin” interests can let you see others who are interested as well. Not everyone who is interested or you meet in your search will be the real deal of course and you should always take precautions( Safety Tips here and here are good guides on offline and online safety)

It is pretty easy to find others believe it or not. Another thing to take into consideration is travel. Some folks may be 30 minutes to 5 hours away. There is no reason to exclude them! If you cant put in the effort to meet someone with a little drive to build your local community you are not committed enough. Once you have planned, found some locations, found a few folks to possibly go..promote it in places locally, even in the online vc/kin groups cause you never know if any locals might be lurking!

There are models of other communities you can look at for help or ideas, such as AVA, VCA, Gotham, Houston,NOLA or do a simple search for vampire/otherkin meetups or houses and see what you can find!

Hope this can help some folk start to build local communities and as always any questions feel free to ask. Any suggestions or advice to add please feel free to as well!