How We Work

The CLEAR VILLAGE Charitable Trust is an international non-profit based in London. We create community development tools, design change processes and ignite resilience in overseen places. The organisation consists of a core leadership team, research and administrative staff, and a global network of experts spanning 20 countries ready to share, learn and work humbly alongside communities.

CLEAR VILLAGE helps places and communities see their own potential and unify their resources towards a collaboratively defined goal. The process involves listening to needs, identifying possibilities and designing preferable outcomes in ways that can be implemented by key stakeholders.

This vision emerged from three first hand experiences of founder Thomas Ermacora:

• People where not involved in the makeover of their communities for fear that they would complicate the path. More and more resistance to urban planning or rural development projects come from disempowered locals and end users feeling ignored

• Architects are often given damaging mandates when shaping places futures because they are insufficiently integrating an understanding of the place and want to leave a mark more than solve problems;

• Overall rigid planning laws are major hurdles to common sense solutions

Get introduced to CLEAR VILLAGE by one of our trustees, Alice Holmberg

Alice kicks off CREATIVITY + CONVERSATION event from CLEAR VILLAGE on Vimeo.

Progression, participation, people-centering

In the age of light speed social media, biomimicry and genomic psychology, can we not find a better system to genuinely empower people? CLEAR VILLAGE believes in the power of co-creative experiences as binder and soul fire for a collaborative vision. The change process can create leverage for all, when facilitated by strategic design tools, sharp economic mindset and technological outlook.

As an organisation, CLEAR VILLAGE is a blend of structured grassroots thinking and participatory planning. The expert network adds the wisdom of global change makers, which serves as on demand advice in tailored design charettes. Through these programmes and through our Observatory, CLEAR VILLAGE serves a global community of interlinked villages, neighbourhoods and small cities, capturing datasets from each phase of development to form case documentaries and best practices to inform other village scale communities seeking like ideas and solutions.