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History
The innovative communities that make up the Camphill Movement have, for almost 70 years, been creating new ways of supporting people with leaning disabilities and other special needs so that their full potential can find expression.
The first community was founded at Camphill House, just outside Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1940, to educate mentally handicapped children. At that time, such children didn't usually receive an education, either staying at home or being placed in a hospital.
Camphill's founders, led by Dr Karl König and inspired by the Austrian thinker Rudolf Steiner's philosophy of anthroposophy, wanted to make a real difference in the lives of these people who were marginalised and excluded from society. They believed that those with mental handicaps had much to contribute if only their inner self could find expression.
Refugees from Nazi oppression in Austria, Dr König's group included doctors, medical students and creative young people who had come together in pre-war Vienna to explore anthroposophy. After fleeing Austria, the group came together in 1939 at Kirkton House, near Aberdeen, to begin putting their ideas for a new kind of life into practice. The first two children with disabilities joined them that May.
The group chose to do their work, not as a job or career but as a way of life, with social rather than personal values taking priority. Through curative education they aimed to stimulate each child's developing individuality, giving them the freedom to grow to their full potential. Such a task could not be achieved in the classroom alone. By living in a community with the children 24-hours-a-day, what today is called an 'holistic approach' could be followed, educating the children in all aspects of life. This new approach appealed to many parents and, a year later, Camphill came into being when a move was made to larger premises at Camphill House.
The community soon established a good reputation and local authorities began seeking places for children. By 1945, the Camphill schools occupied four large properties with around 250 acres of land and by 1949 180 children were being cared for and there was a long waiting list.
By the 1950s Camphill was ready to create communities away from its base in Aberdeen. Parents in England wanted opportunities for their children with disabilities and Camphill schools opened near Bristol and in Hampshire in 1951. A lecture tour of Ireland by Dr König in 1953 brought an invitation from parents resulting in the establishment of a community at Glencraig, near Belfast.
Soon a community for adults was requested so that those who had benefited from the schools could continue to develop through the Camphill philosophy of mutual care. So in 1955 a working community was established at Botton, North Yorkshire, which would grow to become the largest Camphill community.
Camphill's innovative approach began to be adopted overseas and communities were established in South Africa, Germany, Holland and the USA. In the 1960s, Switzerland and Norway joined the Camphill family, and urban, as well as rural communities became established, with Camphill Houses Stourbridge becoming the first in Britain to provide support for adults with learning disabilities in an integrated urban setting. Through the ‘70s and ‘80s Camphill came to Finland, the Irish Republic, Wales, Botswana, Austria, France, Brazil, Sweden and Canada. During the 1990s, liberalisation in Eastern Europe allowed Camphill communities to begin work in Poland, Estonia and Russia. The first community in Asia was founded in India in 1999.
The new millennium brought Camphill to Latvia and a continuing spirit of innovation has seen existing Camphill communities pioneering new initiatives to meet the changing needs of people with disabilities in modern society.
Today, Camphill consists of a world-wide network of more than 100 communities in over 20 countries where people of all abilities - including some 3,000 children and adults with learning disabilities, mental health problems and other special needs - live, learn and work together in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Camphill succeeds because it integrates those with disabilities into caring communities that recognise all people as equals with each capable of making valued contributions to community life. When that is true in all society, the work of Camphill's founders and their successors will be done.