#354 The Stewardship Freehold Village – an idea whose time has come – with Michael Taite
“When we build, we first remove the soil and replace it with rubble, concrete and tarmac. When we grow, we exclude all life from the land bar the one crop we want. Where we belatedly recognise our ultimate dependence on nature, we confine it to intensive ‘nature only’ areas such as rewilding zones, field margins and beetle banks.” Michael Taite 2026
Our guest this week has just completed a Masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and has written his thesis addressing this very problem and today, he comes to talk to us about his concept of the ‘Stewardship Freehold Village’, which feels like one of those ideas that is so obvious, it’s amazing nobody thought of it before – but nobody did, or at least, if they did, it is lost in the toxic chaos of a trust-less planning system that rewards the most predatory of predatory capitalists.
Michael Taite started his professional life working for a huge London developer – now long gone – and towards the end was responsible for a portfolio of thirteen developments with big residential schemes in Docklands and other sites in London, Manchester and the north east of England. While there, he passed over a dozen professional exams, which, amongst other things, gave him insights into the arcane depths of planning law. Since 1996, he has been self-employed and has split his time between his business, environmental and local community concerns. So, for instance, he served 19 years as the lead operational trustee for the Environmental Law Foundation, a UK national charity which secures free legal help for communities under threat. He has also served as a parish councillor and as a trustee of his local village hall and, with his wife Gail, ran their small brand strategy agency whose signature process was a system for consulting whole organisations to secure genuine, broad stakeholder support when radical change was scary but necessary. The agency’s slogan was BRAVE = SAFE which feels genuinely Thrutopian.
Having attained his Masters from SOAS, Michael is now working on progressing the concepts which emerged from that process, in the hope that they might contribute to averting some of the worst aspects of the intertwined global catastrophes that we address all the time on this podcast.
More from Accidental Gods…
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass.
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is ‘DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE’ which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 – 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! – We’ll be out of summertime then) – details are here. You don’t have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you’d like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you’d like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you’ll find us here.
If you’d like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Masterclass, the details are here
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you’d like to contact Louise, details are here.
In Conversation
You may also like these recent podcasts
Making Glorious Trouble with Uffe Elbaek, activist, system builder and author of Doubt, Hope, Action
We talk a lot on this podcast about the need for a new system: politically, culturally, in business, media and art…in everything we do. And yet, we don’t often have the opportunity to talk with someone who has set up a new political party – still less one explicitly predicated on the core values of courage, generosity, transparency, humility, humour and empathy. You’d think it would be hard to argue against these, but, as Uffe Elbaek discovered when he entered the Danish Parliament…the system doesn’t always want to be courageous, or transparent, or generous, or to embody humility, humour and empathy.
We All Came By Boat’ – exploring Ireland & Britain’s ancient myths and the world’s future mythologies with Clare Murphy
Cupla Focal! (Irish Gaelic for ‘A Couple of Words’) – so here are a couple of words and then a few more: what happens when the Fires in our Hearts become tsunamis of feeling that take us beyond the narrow imaginal cul de sacs our culture has created, and throw our doors wide open to the wonder of the past and the absolutely unknowable, glorious, constantly surprising possibilities of the future we haven’t built yet?
Love, Anger and Betrayal: Stories from the front line of Climate Action with Jonathan Porritt and Daniel Knorr
“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” Antonio Guterres, UN General Secretary
Honouring the Web of Life – Thoughts from the Edge #5 with Manda Scott
How does it feel to honour everything: the things we take for granted, the things we judge as being bad or wrong, the things that disturb us, as well as the things whose loss we grieve so deeply? Manda explores the idea that shifting to a place of honouring can transform our entire worldview and help us to find meaning and purpose in a world on fire.
STAY IN TOUCH
For a regular supply of ideas about humanity's next evolutionary step, insights into the thinking behind some of the podcasts, early updates on the guests we'll be having on the show - AND a free Water visualisation that will guide you through a deep immersion in water connection...sign up here.
(NB: This is a free newsletter - it's not joining up to the Membership! That's a nice, subtle pink button on the 'Join Us' page...)