Apologies for the lack of postings recently.I have been busy with courses, the permaculture diploma and Burley Food Links. I have also been diverted by filling in forms for the government, dealing with the snow and ice, and migration to Ubuntu. (Unfortunetely, the hapless Windows will have to stay on the network for soem time to come, some software suppliers are still wedded to Micro$oft).

Any potential blogging time has been spent building the WestPenninePermaculture site.

I hope you have a good year, wherever you are.

Angus

The spring session of the Enriching Human Cultures study group is now confirmed for the 21st March (bang on the equinox - a metaphor for stillness at the point of change, if ever there was one).

We will meet in Darwen again. This is an unstructured group so all those with an interest are welcome. But do let me know if you want to come, places are limited.

The topical theme is "change". If you have the time (see previous and future sessions!), bring a summary of a book, a film, or an event that you want to share with us.

Things to research:

• the nature of a "fire" year in an 81-year "tree" cycle
• the year of the buffalo: a moderating factor?  (will hard work, fortitude and a love of Nature pull us through?)
• does the 81 x 81 year cycle "flip" direction soon?
• the Mayan calendar: is this the end (my friend), or merly a new beginning?

Angus

Seven weekends in the Central Pennines, beginning 31 January 2009

 

Here is some information about a permaculture design course that I have been asked to deliver in 2009. This is not my usual “low cost” style, it is sponsored by the Workers Educational Association (or WEA as it now prefers to be called). In exchange for their support, they are asking you to do some coursework, but this is a small extra price to pay for something that is still cost-effective.

 

The course covers basic theory of natural systems. We will use a variety of sessions, including talks, slideshows, discussion, videos, group work and practicals We will organise some additional site visits.

We will look at the really important things in life: such as food production, energy use, buildings, work and finance. We will learn how nature provides for life in a productive way, looking at the major support systems on the planet, such as soil, water and climate. How we can live sustainably within these resources? Permaculture design is about designing using inspiration from natural ecosystems which are far more efficient than man-made systems. We will also be considering the systems that we put together to support ourselves, such as finance, transport and organisations.

This course will introduce you to the practice of Permaculture Design relevant to a domestic home situation as well as community scale and larger scale projects. It is therefore also relevant to people involved or interested in Transition Towns. By the end of the course, you will be able to begin to move forward in your activities by using design, rather than just drifting along with the crowd.

The course introduces you to the principles and techniques of ecological design. It will also give you an insight into learning from Nature, which is the greatest teacher on the planet. The course runs over seven weekends, these are the themes for each weekend.

- Introduction to permaculture design and learning from Nature

- Soil, conservation and soil-building

- Water, its importance and potential uses

- Trees and their energy transactions

- People and settlements

- Group design work and practical

- Complete practical work and presentations of results

The programme covers basic theory of natural systems, and we will use a variety of sessions during the course, including talks, slideshows, discussion, videos, group work and practicals In addition to this weekend work, we will organise some site visits to permaculture projects in the locality.

The course is delivered in partnership with the WEA (Workers' Educational Association) and you will be expected to do some additional course work between weekends and work on a design project of your choice as part of a group. We will give you plenty of help and guidance with this and you will end up with a Level 2 accreditation in Permaculture Design from the Open College Network. You will also get a certificate from the Permaculture Association Britain that you have completed the foundation course in permaculture design. This allows you to go on towards the diploma in permaculture design, should you wish to do so.

The dates and times of the course are: 10am - 5pm on the following weekends in 2009:

31st Jan - 1st Feb

28th Feb - 1st March

28th & 29th March

25th & 26th April

23rd & 24th May

27th & 28th June

11th & 12th July

(also will include a couple of additional evening sessions 3hrs each or an additional day tbc)

Venue: Wadworth Community Centre in Oldtown.

Course Fees:

The fee for the course (now including accreditation through the Open College Network) is £288.

Concessions are £42 (including accreditation and registration) however we are also asking for an additional voluntary contribution from concession fee payers of £20. This is to cover additional costs of the course that can't be funded by the WEA. This would make the total for full concessions £62. To qualify for this full concessionary fee you need to be in receipt of any of the following income related benefits.

- Job seekers allowance

- Working Tax credit (with a household income of less than £15,000)

- Housing benefit

- Council Tax benefit (but not just the single person's reduction)

- Income Support

- Pension guarantee credit

Partial concessions (£22 off the full fee) are available for people in receipt of the following:

- Disability Living Allowance

- Incapacity Benefit

- Invalid Care allowance

- Severe disablement allowance

- Attendance allowance.

Payment:

Please send initial deposits now in order to book your place. Full fee payers (and partial concs.) initial deposit: £100  Concessionary fee payers initial deposit: £20

Please make cheques for the deposit payable to Angus Soutar, but send to Joanna Dornan, 31 Lovell Park Hill, Leeds, LS7 1DF.

Full payment of the rest of the course fees is required later in January. We need to be sure we have commitment from enough people in order to run the course. (However if this is an issue please let Joanna know,  we may be able to negotiate part of a final installment to be paid in Feb, let me know if this would be helpful)

Tutors

The course will be delivered by a team of tutors, all of whom are permaculture practitioners.

Angus Soutar is the lead tutor. He has been teaching permaculture design for 15 years to diverse groups in a variety of locations. Angus is currently working on projects in local food, recycling and other small-scale enterprises. He has previously had experience in the energy industry with engineering design and project management. He is also working on finance and currency systems.

Angus is the co-ordinating tutor for the permaculture diploma in the north.

Joanna Dornan - apprentice tutor:   Joanna completed a permaculture design course in 2007 in Leeds, she has since been involved with a permaculture designed community allotment  and orchard project in Leeds. She has apprenticed as a trainee tutor on the Leeds Permaculture Design Course earlier this year. She is interested in creative methods of learning and groupwork as well as particular interest in permaculture food production.

Other input will be from Kath Baker - experienced local permaculturist,

Maz - local permaculturist and bio-dynamic gardener and other visiting

tutors from the Yorkshire Permaculture Network, including Andy Goldring/Suzi High from the Permaculture Association of Britain.

Recommended book list (its not essential to read anything beforehand, but if you do, try one of these):

- An Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison, Tagari Publications, Tasmainia

- The Permaculture Way : Practical Ways to Create a Self-Sustaining World. By Graham Bell. Permanent Publications, UK . 2004 (2nd ed.). 239pp.

- The Permaculture Garden . Graham Bell. Thorsons, London . 1994. 170pp.

- Urban Permaculture. David Watkins. Permanent Publications, U.K. 1993. 152pp.

- Permaculture in a Nutshell. Patrick Whitefield. Permanent Publications, U.K. 1993. 75pp.

- Permaculture: A Beginner's Guide. Graham Burnett. Land and Liberty  Westcliff On Sea, Essex , England . 2001. 60pp.

- Earth User's Guide to Permaculture. Rosemary Morrow and Rob Allsop Kangaroo Press, NSW Australia . 2006 (2nd ed.). 164pp.

- Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. David Holmgren, Holmgren Design Services, Australia , 2003, 320pp.

(Books available from the Permaculture Association and Permanent Publications)

Recommended websites

www.permaculture.org.uk

www.tagari.com

www.holmgren.com.au

www.permaculture.org.au

www.permaculture.co.uk

Even though the St Swithan thing seems to have been accurate again this year, the rain (and snow) have not prevented me from busy-ness. Some interesting news to report, but it will have to wait.

Now is not the time to be getting e-mails from Mark and Deebs in Western Australia, boasting about how nice it is there.

I hope some people have taken my advice posted here last year about reducing debt. If you have half an hour spare, ask Google etc to find the "Money as Debt" presentation for your edification. Maybe it's time to revisit the Letsgo project?

I have been reminded of John Ruskin - "what appears to be wealth is merely the guilded index of financial ruin". And I am pondering the fact that Nasim Nicholas Taleb has said the the current crisis was not caused by one of the "black swans" that he writes about so vigorously. I agree with him. But maybe there are black swans lurking in the energy supply system......................  Remember Aukland? If you are old enough, reflect on the "3 day week" in the 70's. I still went to work in the winter when the power was off. Could you do that today?



Angus

The next design course study group meeting is at Altham Mill on Sunday 20th July, 10.00 am. The theme of the day is trees and forests. All who are interested are welcome to attend.

St Swithin's day wasn't too bad here, but it's generally a lousy week for weather, so bring your rugs and raingear!

Angus

The next Design Course study group meeting will be at Altham Mill on Saturday 17th May. We will be looking at "Water in the landscape", amongst other interesting topics.

All except abosolute beginners are welcome to attend - remember to bring lunch to share. E-mail if you need more information.

Things are moving again at the Mill and I can't wait to catch up.

Angus

Permaculture design course study group

Note that the next study group session is on Saturday 19th April and is now to be in Hebden Bridge at Sky's place. Graduates of the 72 hour Permaculture Design Course are also welcome to attend.

E-mail me for details.

Angus

We have just had the first Design Course study group of the year. I have had news from Mark and Deebs who are now in Australia. Myself, I managed to get as far as to see the Nottingham Organic Gardeners and look at some excellent allotment sites in  the city.

Here are a few tentative dates (and some confirmed dates) for the new season, e-mail me to express interest or get confirmation.

March 15th/16th - PA(B) Permaculture teachers' meeting - Kidderminster

March 29th - Enriching Human Cultures event - Darwen. (This is not confirmed yet). Enquiries are welcome from anyone who is interested.

April 19th or 20th - next Permaculture Design Course study group meeting - Simmy Nook (Lancashire). Visiting permaculture teachers and graduates are welcome. Also, any students previously from other study groups are welcome to join in.  (E-mail me for more). I will post details of the module to be covered in April. Our system allows modular progress towards the end of course certificate!

June 18th to 23rd - 9th European Permaculture Convergence - Hostetin (on the Czech / Slovak border) - there will be a focus on education and local economic development, tours of projects in the area and a chance to stay or camp at a state of the art eco-centre. (Or even stay in a soviet-style dorm if you fancy a bit of retro?) The convergence is for Permaculture Design course graduates.
More at Czech Permaculture website and Veronica
or e-mail me.

Angus

Enriching Human Cultures

 

This was our tenth event – doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself? We were most pleased with the arrival of Big Al from Norris Green. Some of us have worked with Albert since the innovative LETSgo project in Manchester in 1994. Albert immediately invoked his namesake, (Albie Einstein), and urged us to “move into the field of infinite possibility”. We did this with some alacrity, not to mention agility, re-envigorating ourselves from time to time according to Torben Hansen's golden rule – regular breaks accompanied by “corfee”.

 

Leaving the coffee aside, it is such a simple experiment. We have made several trials now and it becomes observable that if we make the space for something to happen, then something does indeed happen – something that would not have happened if we had not allowed it to do so. Then all sorts of consequences occur. In a very small way, we have influenced our future. If we are prepared to be surprised and delighted, then we experience surprising and delightful things. It all seems obvious, even trite, but as Fred Alan Wolf says “ponder that for a while”

On the day, Fraser led us towards a development of our datum, the pre-suppositions that underpin our events

• Enriching Human Cultures are possible (is possible)
• Change, at all levels of scale, is not only possible, but inevitable
• We are all significant – everybody has something to offer
• Disagreement is natural, and healthy – we can learn something from every point of view.
• Past, present and future are all connected – we can learn from the successes and mistakes of the past
• Science makes a valuable contribution to our explorations of culture – but “scientific proof” is a contradiction in terms.

We moved on to explore ideas of science and “truth”. You can have “proof” in mathematics, but maths is a closed system, whereas Nature is an open one. The universe (and we must include ourselves in that) is much stranger and more mysterious than we know.

 

It seems quite useful to move beyond the binary ideas of “true” and “false”; “right” and “wrong”. Rather than “is it true?”, we prefer to ask “How well does it work?” And “Is it right?” becomes “How useful is it?” And “yes/no” defers to De Bono's stunning in-determinant, “po”. It all reminds me of a story.......... (but perhaps another time).

 

What I presented this time: I've been working on a back-of-a-big-envelope outline of human evolution and the development of our technologies. I talked about this with a particular emphasis on the period since the latest Ice Age. In this short period we have experienced two major technological shifts that have had a great impact, not just on our societies, but on the planetary systems upon which all life depends.

 

I argue that the first of these, the introduction of agriculture, has had the most destructive effect. The second, the Industrial Revolution, has its dark side, too, but perhaps more on the destruction of our own health and that of our communities As the spiral of innovation tightens, we seem to be entering helter-skelter into a third epoch, the Information Age. This last is potentially more sustaining, particularly when seen as a part of the evolution of our own consciousness. Three major shifts in 6000 years is a lot to cope with, even for us clever humans. Can we learn from previous “revolutions” and manage this current transition better?

 

 

Albert pointed our that many traditional “lo-tech” skills, that have been developed and practised by countless generations, appear to have a “mystical” quality – until you find out how to do them. One of the most worrying aspects of de-skilling is that young people become alienated, there are no “rites of passage” that do not involve the acquisition of power, often in the form of a knife or a gun. As is shown by the recent tragedy of the boy who was killed , “caught in the crossfire”, in the Norris Green-Croxteth “turf wars”.

 

 

Krysia based her session on the work of molecular biologist Dr Candace Pert, taking a holistic view of the nervous system and the immune system, particularly around the biochemical basis of emotion.

 

Dr Pert has contributed to the “What the bleep do we know?” film that explorers the impact of quantum physics that allows us to examine the mysteries that the universe continually presents to us.

http://www.whatthebleep.com/synopsis

http://www.whatthebleep.com/trailer/

or catch some on YouTube

 

 

I certainly learned a lot as a result of our sessions. I am confident that we are opening up more possibilities for co-creating the future. This future goes beyond probable futures and even possible futures to a preferable future of freedom, responsibility and inter-dependence.

 

Angus

This is as good an introduction to Permaculture as any:

Two recent audio internet interviews with Bill are available at the Agricultural Innovations website:

http://agroinnovations.com/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,173/cat,11/

Angus