Recent years have seen the number of residents in our community grow - now our site has grown, too. We have taken the opportunity to purchase 1 ha (2.5 acres) of horticultural land right next to our existing garden.

Is our region Fläming ready to become a Transition Region? This was the question posed last Monday which opened an inspiring meeting held at the Wiesenburg Station co-operative centre. Seven ZEGG residents attended.

A power supply that leaves behind nuclear waste with millenia of dangerous radiation is not compatible with our values! That's why we are taking part in the "Gorleben 365" action at the construction site for the long-term nuclear waste repository there.

The EU-funded sustainable development initiative "Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007-2013" includes a sub-project on the topic of eco-villages – "Ecovillages for sustainable rural development" – which was launched by the Lithuanian agriculture ministry. ZEGG is an associate project partner and our representative, Ina Meyer-Stoll, serves as a consultant.

Don't let the photo give you the wrong impression – the ZEGG-Club Fest last weekend wasn't a "boot camp" designed to get the participants back into shape! It was taken on the opening evening and shows an "ice-breaker" exercise to provide a little movement and a chance to make contact with some of the other guests: in groups of five, ten and then twenty we had to build "human statues". Afterwards we relaxed to music and listened to each other's latest news.

For two years, the Hungarian filmmaker Frigyes Fogel invested his own time and money to create a film about the "cultural creatives" movement. His motivation came from his observations that although cultural creatives account for several per cent of the population, they often feel they are alone.

This film is intended to put an end to that phenomenon. It features interviews with scientists who studied the movement, Nobel Prize winners and many of the projects themselves, including ZEGG. The film can be watched via the internet with subtitles in various languages.

On Feb 16, a group of 22 South Koreans visited ZEGG, primarily to find out about our new heating system. The delegation were staying in Berlin and a coach brought them to Bad Belzig for their tour of ZEGG, where in spite of the icy conditions they spent almost two hours walking around the site, accompanied by Ina Meyer-Stoll. The excursion had been organised by a Korean teacher working at a university in Berlin, who chose ZEGG because of its suitability as an example of sustainable development.