We are pleased to offer a range of opportunities at Rubha Phoil – from short visits to becoming a permanent member of our community.
1: Skills we are looking for
2: House for rent
3: Building plot for sale
A few useful tips
4: The Application Process
5: Joining us long term or permanent
6: Joining us as Paid Staff
7: Joining us as a student
8: Coming for short visits
9: Day visits, on-line meetings, video calls
For people looking for a short or long term work exchange:
1: We are looking for 3-4 people with these skills or a combination of these skills:
– A handy person. Someone who is good at fixing things and building things. There is know how support available, but this person would need to have experience working with tools and project managing. High demand for a welder atm!
– A social media and PR person. Someone with experience in sharing information, creating content and crowdfunding.
– An office person. Someone with experience in doing paperwork, emails, excel sheets, phone calls, funding applications.
– A project manager. Someone with experience in managing a small business including customer facing interactions.
– A website person. Someone with experience in wordpress and woocommerce.
– A kitchen person. Someone with experience in stock managing and taking a lead in vegan cooking. We normally take turns to cook, but this person would manage the system, inspire and help people to select a divers and healthy menu. Vegan cooking skills are essential.
– Two gardeners, food growers. Training is available, but some experience is essential. Opportunity for someone wanting to setup a CSA/market garden. We are offering the right person/s access to long term agreements and the opportunity to establish a CSA/market gardening business. The enterprise would sit alongside our existing enterprises and would need to work together in furthering the community goals of self sufficiency and education. For the right person existing orchards, herb gardens, polytunnels, aquaponics system and forest garden could be incorporated into the enterprise.
2: We have a House for rent!
Now there is an opportunity for a family to join our community and rent a house at Rubha Phoil in Armadale, Isle of Skye! This house is just a seven minute walk from the shop, post office and beach. With an open floor-plan, and newly installed floors, shower, and sunroof, this home is best suited for a couple or young family.
As members of the Rubha Phoil community, we are looking for people with skills that fit into our team.
There is also potential for interested tenants to create a viable, sustainable, and nature-friendly business at Rubha Phoil.
Rent can be paid through a combination of £s and hours working within the community.
Check out the link below if this sounds like you or someone you know!
Click here to learn more
3: We have a building plot for sale. 
Offers over £50,000 are invited.
House plot for sale with planning permission in principle.
The building plot for sale is 1.5 acres. The plot is valued to be worth more than £140,000. If you do not have enough money, but have other assets such as useful skills, other options are available, let us know your dreams and make us an offer we can’t refuse.
We’re hoping to find people who would like to focus on growing food for our community and are willing to make financial arrangements that makes that possible for both of us.
Click here to learn more.
A few useful tips:
– We want our home to be a safe space for everyone. Including for children and for people who are healing or are more vulnerable in other aspects. This means that we have a rigorous selection process. We ask for understanding and patience in answering our many questions.
– We get a lot of applications. More and more people are looking for what we have to offer. We can’t welcome everyone for a trial visit. Please understand our need and our desire to do a pre-selection. We’d like to give you a truly warm welcome when you come for your visit. This selection process helps us to increase the chances for a pleasant experience for the benefit of all of us.
– Our community is not an average tourist destination. It is a home as well as a learning centre and a warm welcoming community. Please ask yourself if you are coming to us for the right reasons.
– Accommodation can be paid for through a combination of £s and or work-exchange on a personal agreement basis. A £-less exchange is possible, though is usually reserved for longer visits.
It is good to know this summary of ‘rules or conduct agreement of the community‘, before you decide to apply to visit or fill in the form.
If you want to know what an average day looks like on Rubha Phoil, this link leads to a blog post written by Tyler when he was one of our team members.
Or feel free to watch this short video.
4: The Application process:
Step 1: Fill in form below.
Step 2: A zoom or phone call
Step 3: Join Virtual Village
Step 4: Read our policies and step into a written and signed agreement with us
Please introduce yourself, feel free to be creative and share your dreams
We’ll reply soon with some more questions no doubt.
Let’s start a conversation.
If you want to apply to start the process, please fill in this google form
(if the form doesn’t work for you, you can click here: https://forms.gle/ihBC7ofKZC9XqogCA)
When submitting, google will ask you the robot questions….
don’t forget to do them to submit. You should get a confirmation message if all goes well.
(this form is not needed for short/day visits)
We offer a few options to join us:
5: As a full time -short, long term or permanent- member of the team and the community
Our preference is to welcome people as full members of our community and team. After all being a community is our long term aim. The community is our home and a community grows best slowly. Therefore full members need to stay for at least a month or preferably longer. On average, the integration process into the team takes a month as it is a rich learning journey and is a big investment from our part. Also for you to fully benefit from that experience it is better to stay longer and experience it deeper.
We come to an agreement for a fair exchange. Which can be a mix between £’s and work.
It is our dream to find people that want to put roots down into our Rock. We dream of a community with permanent new members.
It is good to know that this process of acceptance may take a while. This is because we want to make sure we are a good match.
People are able to invest in and build their own homes on the Rock.
Long term or permanent members are able to invest and create a business. Ownership and the value of that business remains in the hands of the creators. This business may be able to be sold. We hope that you agree to some additional protection agreements for the mutual benefit of both yourselves and the community into perpetuity. One of our core values is transparency and we endeavour to implement from the start of our relationship.
Pre-requisites:
Following the application process as explained in 4.
Plus:
We would like to know that you already have some connection to nature. If you want to, you can Join our program on the Virtual Village here.
6: As paid Staff
At the moment we don’t have any jobs on offer, but we might do soon. Join the Virtual Village to be first in line. Register on the email list on the home page to be first to hear about them.
7: As a Student (Starting again Autumn 2023)
We welcome individuals, families, small groups to come and have a rich learning experience. This can vary from a few hour workshops to a season long Permanent Culture Village Builders course.
Make sure you’re on our email list to find out what we organise. If you have any desires or dreams or questions about your own needs or desires to learn, get in touch.
Pre-requisites:
Following the application process as explained in 4.
Plus:
We would like to know that you already have some connection to nature. If you want to, you can Join our program on the Virtual Village here.
8. Shorter than one month visits
We would like to welcome you on a fair exchange basis:
We want to give you what you come for, but we also need to get our work done and pay our bills.
To achieve that, we are trying to live -like we are hard wired to live- as written in our DNA. We estimate that our ancestors, before colonisation destroyed our native culture, would work 4-5 hours each day (28-35 a week) and fill the rest with play, art, exploring, singing, timelessness, etc. We have found our own modern way to live like that and are really enjoying it. We organise our own lives like that and would expect everyone to join in with this routine.
We have created our own circular economy to realise a fair exchange. Currently, the cost of board and lodging in this unique community is RR50 per day per person. You can earn your RR’s by exchanging your labour or skills or services, or you can exchange £’s for RR’s (£1=1RR). Before your stay, we make a fair exchange agreement that clarified how many £’s you exchange and how many you can earn. Feel free to contact us with a proposal.
We can offer a few choices of beds to sleep in. More info on the Virtual Village.
Pre-requisites:
Following the application process as explained in 4.
Plus:
We would like to know that you already have some connection to nature. If you want to, you can Join our program on the Virtual Village here.
9: Day/short visits/phone or zoom conversations
For really short visits, we use the principle, that we permanent culture people call: bring a spade. We have enough spades, but it gives an indication of what we propose: We ask from people that we create a fair exchange. We simply are unable to give our time away for free. In practise that means that you’ll need to buy the time from us in RR’s on our Virtual Village where we created our own circular economy. You can buy your time at 20RR per hour. You can earn your RR’s by exchanging your labour or other skills or you can exchange them for £’s. Usually we agree a personal mix match of a fair exchange agreement that suits both of our needs best. Feel free to contact us with a proposal.
You can book on the Virtual Village.
For a short visit it is not needed to fill in an application form.
You can contact us here or ask questions on the form.
We are happy to listen to suggestions for another way of a fair exchange or mutually beneficial relationships too.
With gratitude,
Rubha Phoil