GROW YOUR OWN (COMMUNITY, THAT IS!)

lovely dog walk - sometimes it would just be two of us, other times many more would come - and it built up from there. What became apparent was that they wanted to connect more with nature and with like-minded people and feel a stronger sense of community.

“Kazia and I felt strongly that we wanted to live in a brighter, kinder society which was more unified than the one we were living in. This can be done by reassessing every aspect of our lives from pre-birth to post-death. We wanted everyone to see that they are truly the masters of their own destiny”. Tina says the group also attracted those from the “healing community” - practitioners in reiki and other wellbeing treatments - who shared their vision to help others.

It was after her father died - during the fraught time when hospital access for relatives was restricted due to Covid - that Tina felt the time was right to make a big change.

“I’d always known I didn’t want to just live with our family unit. I felt that living in a multi-generational community would be

It started off, as all things do, with a great vision. It was during the height of the pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns when Tina Powick and her friend Kazia Gianni started to look at an alternative way of living.

“We felt the world was quite divided”, says the mum-of-four, who ran a children’s nursery with husband Dan in Rendlesham. “People were becoming more and more isolated, and Kazia and I wanted to see a return of the sort of community you’d have found pre-1980s. So we set up a Facebook page, called Joinavision, and started offering walks and meet ups.

“We started meeting people - a lot of them in their fifties and sixties - in Woodbridge and further afield who we’d never met before and, like us, they were questioning why we have a very sick society, mentally and physically. I don’t think all the devices and screens help. So we’d post up that we were going on a much better for everyone in our familywe wanted to join forces with others wanting the same. We put our house in Ufford on the market and looked all over the country and joined up with more like-minded people”.

Around this time, the couple sold their family business too. Tina and Dan then took the plunge and bought a pub - The Cross Keys at Henley - as their vision to create a nurturing and sustainable community really took shape.

“Joinavision was never meant to be just a Facebook page”, she says of their online community which now hosts 15-20 groups around the world with a collective following of 11,000 people. “And it’s not about telling people how to live their lives”, she says. “We wanted to encourage people to empower themselves”.

Having renovated and revitalised The Cross Keys Pub, which is manned by an army of friendly volunteers, it is today the vibrant community hub Tina, Dan and Kazia had always dreamed of. It serves wholesome food mostly sourced from local bio-dynamic veg producers and, if they can’t source it, they buy organic. They are part of the People’s Food and Farming Alliance which assists local communities in growing and producing food products to “counter any incoming food shortages, ensuring future crop production.”

Tina says, “We are now a group of 14 people - three volunteers, one noninvestor/renter, with six children between us and four investors with two properties”. It’s hard work to keep everyone fed - and the pub stocked - but she says they all greatly enjoy their newfound freedom and have never looked back.

“We’ve already discovered how much surplus we have from the seeds we’re growing and plan to have a stall at our hub selling surplus seedlings”, she says. “This will hopefully generate a bit of money to cover the costs of the seeds we buy annually”.

The Cross Keys also offers healthy drinks (alcoholic and soft) so you won’t find any Coca-Cola or “mainstream” beers hereinstead, they offer locally-sourced and small batch drinks where they can.

They have all sorts of events happening, from art sessions, Pilates and yoga to live music, and there’s even a campsite. And a ladies choir use the space too.

“Nearby residents have started coming in and using it as their local again which we’re so delighted about”, says Tina. “They’d missed their community pub and now they have it back and are very supportive. The Cross Keys used to be a bit of a bikers’ pub so we have also welcomed the bikers back and will be this month (August) hosting an event for them”. l For details of events at The Cross Keys pub, find them on Facebook. Go to, thecrosskeyshenley.co.uk

Tina says they have come a long way since those dark days of Covid.

“I think this is the most exciting time to be alive”, she smiles. “We’ve had a really hard few years but now I feel like we’ve got an opportunity to regain that sense of community that so many places seem to have lost”.