Seedbeds Communications
Your neighbourhood
is not finished.
Inspiring and informing fullness of life, right where you live
The stump is not dead.
Walk down almost any street and you’ll find the same thing we have: real challenges, and real potential sitting quietly beside them.
We’ve spent over 35 years living in urban communities that have often felt left behind, in Australia, Thailand and the UK. We keep meeting people who sense more is possible where they live but don’t yet have a way in. That gap is what we exist to close. Lasting change needs more people moving from awareness into action.
We do that through writing, speaking and films that help ordinary people release the potential of their own neighbourhood. Everything below is developed to put something useful in your hands.
Start wherever you are.
New book · September 2026
At the Scent of Water
Read this if your neighbourhood is not finished, your church is not done, and you suspect the stump is not dead. Ash’s new book is for the tired, the hopeful and the quietly convinced: the local catalysts who still believe place matters.
Drawing on 35 years in urban communities from Melbourne to Bangkok to Birmingham, it walks you through a pathway he has tested where he has lived. Find the hidden catalysts already on your doorstep, form them through practices rather than programmes, and release them into flourishing together.
‘A catalytic book and learning pathway for the local flourishing of people, places and churches.’
Shane Claiborne, who writes the foreword
The water is closer than you think.
More books
Keep going with the rest of the shelf.
No Wastelands
Ash Barker
Ash draws on serving on the front line of urban poverty across three continents to help readers grow seedbeds of shalom where they live.
Brian McLaren writes that it teaches what he has learned from Ash: that making a difference is neither as simple nor as impossible as we tend to think.
Missionary, Not Just a Position
Anji Barker
Anji’s book reads like a diary of God at work through ordinary people who choose to live a little differently.
Shane Claiborne calls Anji someone he respects as few others, after two decades following her work.
These sit alongside Ash’s earlier titles, including Risky Compassion, Make Poverty Personal and Slum Life Rising.
Free Resources
Sign up and we’ll bring the work to you. The Where We Live newsletter and film series shares stories and ideas from people growing flourishing in their own places, and the Local Leaders Readiness Surveys help you take honest stock of where you stand. Both are free.
Speaking
Invite us in and we’ll bring decades of frontline experience to your event. We’ve spoken at conferences, universities and churches around the world, and we’re available for keynotes, lectures, retreats, seminars and sermons. We do this in return for a donation to Seedbeds, usually £250 per day.
Media
Reach us for interviews and stories. Our life and work have featured on TV, radio and news around the world, including BBC Songs of Praise.
Watch and follow
Meet the people doing this work.
Our YouTube channel carries the Meet the Change Makers films and the Newbigin Public Lectures series, and our blog and newsletter keep supporters close to the news and thinking. See what’s possible, then imagine it where you are.
Who we are
Two practitioners, one conviction.
Rev Dr Ash Barker
Founder, Seedbeds
Ash believes every neighbourhood can flourish now, with what’s already there. He has spent 35 years as a local practitioner in overlooked urban communities, from Melbourne to Bangkok to Birmingham, where he still lives and ministers. He founded Seedbeds to find, form and release local catalysts into flourishing worldwide, from cohorts across the UK to 200 enterprise leaders in Myanmar. An inspiring speaker, local United Reformed Church minister in Winson Green and author of ten books, including the forthcoming At the Scent of Water.
Every place has more than it thinks.
Rev Anji Barker
Pioneer Minister & Social Entrepreneur
Anji believes the margins are not the end of the story. She has spent over 35 years living in marginalised urban neighbourhoods, from Melbourne to Bangkok to Birmingham, where she lives and ministers. A social entrepreneur, pioneering minister and inspiring speaker, she leads pioneering for the West Midlands URC Synod, walks alongside Seedbeds leaders in Myanmar, and wrote Missionary, Not Just a Position.
The margins have more than anyone thinks.
Married on 2 December 1989, Ash and Anji have shared every neighbourhood, every move and every venture since. They have two remarkable adult children and one grandchild. They are partners in life and in the work.