Mudgirls Natural Building Collective

Mudgirls are a consensus-run collective of women natural builders located on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands of south-west BC, Canada. We build natural structures for ourselves and each other, as well as helping others learn and build their own.

Mudgirls Natural Building Collective specialize in building with cob, as well as other natural material such as strawbale, driftwood, willow, cordwood and recycled/salvaged materials like car tires, glass bottles, and urbanite.

As a collective, the MudGirls organize our own workshops in which we share skills and facilitate the learning of natural building with our participants. They provide education and community outreach to help spread the natural building and sustainable living movement. The Mudgirls seek to inspire people to think about ancient or new and creative ways to change how we live on this earth. Our aim is to stop harming and start healing the earth and ourselves.

Mission Statement

Our Mission is to Empower ourselves and others through sharing skills and knowledge that promote healing and living in harmony with the Earth.

Our Guiding Principles

• We work with unprocessed natural and recycled materials to create beautiful and healthy structures that are earth friendly.

• We are a women’s collective and seek to empower ourselves with employment and the skills to build homes.

• We are a collective that is human friendly: recreating our concepts of work to prioritize respect and care for our hearts, our bodies and our children while we work together. We create a work environment that nurtures us.

• All our events are child and mother friendly with quality childcare always provided.

• We seek to do our business in a non-capitalist spirit. We keep the cost of natural building affordable by keeping our wages low, offering our workshop for barter, building for people with low-income as much as we can.

• We are structured non-hierarchically. Each member is equally valued and has equal say in decision making.

• We use the teachings of Non-Violent Communication to create a peaceful, mutually respectful and revolutionary harmonious group process.

• We work together to make this up as we go, nurturing a creative, inventive and courageous spirit in us all!