• 'Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning' Creative teachers, Facilitators and Group Leaders Courses

    6 day trainings, shorter workshops and consultancy

  • Robin's Full Re-edited, Reformatted 3rd Edition Book

    Now over 5000 copies sold

  • Robin's New Dynamic Groups Book Due for Release Mid 2016

    Robin's partner Rob Clark has just produced a stunning flier about it

  • Brand New 'Permaculture Principles Card Game'

    PLUS 'Creative Process Wild Cards'

  • Introducing ELFy The Magician to the World

    DaDarrr! Mascot, champion and colourful jigsaw puzzle symbol for Dynamic Groups

  • 'The Love Feast' Dynamic Relationships Retreat and Methodology

    Shorter workshops and private couples sessions available

Recent Posts

Introducing the EcoVillage Voice and the EcoVillage Film Festival

A new online magazine, Eco Village Voice, presents special events and the first is the Eco Village Film Festival in Maleny, QLD. This film festival celebrates the rise of sustainable communities aka “ecovillages” who are using appropriate technology to combat the effects of climate change, and are focus more on care for the planet than consumerism and are promoting a healthy lifestyle for the future of humanity. Separate website – https://www.ecovillagefilmfestival.com

Eco Village Voice is essentially an online magazine – global quarterly, local monthly. Our monthly ecovillage supplements, with Crystal Waters Ecovillage being the first, is a way for ecovillage residents to network and publicise their activities. It also integrates an independent social media platform for anyone interested in ecovillages and permaculture, or regeneration and sustainability, and more! See: https://www.ecovillagevoice.com

Exciting News – Starhawk to be the Special Guest at APC and Visit Crystal Waters for a Social Permaculure Workshop

International author, workshop facilitator and Permaculture teacher Starhawk from US will visit Australia to be the special guest for the Australiasian Permaculture Convergence in Brisbane in April 2020, hosted by Northey Street City Farm.

Amongst her busy schedule she’ll join Robin Clayfeild at Crystal Waters Permaculture Village to offer a 3 1/2 day Social Permaculture in Action Workshop. Everyone will be welcome, even if they aren’t attending the Convergence. Dates are 7th to 10th May 2020.

Starhawk has a special gift in offering practical and elder wisdom in a straightforward and impassioned way with her decades of experience in social action, cultural change and Permaculture always guiding the journey.

Social Permaculture in UK with Starhawk, Looby Macnamara, Robina McCurdy, Peter Cow and Robin Clayfield
The Amazing Facilitation Team at the Social Permaculture Course in UK a few years ago with Robin on the left and Starhawk on the right. Photo by Dana Wilson

Social Permaculture Principles in Action

By Erin Young

Social Permaculture is a nature-informed regenerative design framework for social systems; with particular focus on people care. Social Permaculture is regenerative social design.

​Here is a sample of the permaculture principles and how you might see them at play in social design:

Design from patterns to details

Circle structure used for meetings and classrooms. Circle rounds in a meeting use slow and small solutions to hear each person in the group, getting into the details of their input in an effective way. Circles support transparency, being the most efficient pattern for all members to see each other while connected to a common unity through the central space.

Use and value diversity

The eight forms of capital spread ‘wealth’ to eight key areas of resource availability (capital), rather than loading it with financial assets (as is most common). The eight forms of capital include natural, material, experiential, social, cultural, intellectual, spiritual, and financial. Assessing a system’s level wealth through this spectrum of capital allows a broader perspective and accounts for far more enriching qualities.

Observe and interact

Cycles are within and around us constantly, providing a rhythm by which behaviours, outcomes, and interactions can be observed, and for which more appropriate systems can be designed.  Mapping the year out in a wheel form (like a pie chart with 12 slices representing each month), allows us to map what’s happening for each month for various aspects of our lives. If rings are also included to this pie chart (like in a tree trunk), various elements of a system can be mapped, month-by-month.  One ring might track of the highlight activity of the month. Another ring might track the main monthly goal. And other ring might track our emotional selves. Doing this year after year, allows an understanding of the patterns emerging in our lives; information we can use to design more specifically how we tend to self and community care.

Erin Young
– Designing our Future

Social Permaculture applies from the individual level to the broader community level. It’s scope includes personal growth, community, finance, business, health, art & culture, education, events, media and justice.

These types of tools, and more, will be explored in the upcoming Social Permaculture Weekend, co-hosted by Robin Clayfield and Erin Young – 18 & 19 May 2019 at Crystal Waters Ecovillage in South East Queensland.  We’d love for you to join us!

Email Robin at robin@earthcare.com.au to book now.


Juggling Many Balls, Many Projects & Many Aspects of Groups and Businesses

In our February online Q&A session, we explored the question: How do we juggle many balls, projects, & aspects of groups and businesses?

The first part of the question explored was: How many balls do you juggle, and how well do you juggle them?

Depending on how active each project is, the amount of structure needed varies.  When there’s more project activity, there tends to me more structure.  There also tends to be less time for self-care and personal relationships – these are typically quick to be reduced in attention.  Also, being on screens was noted as part of the juggle – needing balance between time, energy and eye-health. 

Trips out-of-town were noted as a tricky aspect for juggling all the pieces of life; where balls tend to get dropped easily e.g. responding to emails after times away with no internet.

We then explored planning tools that groups utilise to maintain balance in amongst all the activity.  Here is a summary of what we use – you might discover something new to adapt to your life.

Mind-mapping – To get a clear picture of all the pieces to be considered/juggled and what they each need.

Have a Monday morning business check-in on paper – creates a strong starting point for the week.

Use a diary to track appointments, to-do lists, due dates etc.

Use the Important/Urgent quadrant to prioritise next steps.

  • Divide a piece of paper into quadrants: Important /Urgent, Important/Not Urgent, Not Important/Urgent, Not Important/Not Urgent.
  • List everything that needs to be done on this chart in the most fitting quadrant.
  • Prioritise working through all the important/urgent things first.
  • Question the not important/not urgent tasks and enquire if they can be given to someone else.

Use a filter of ‘things that bring me joy’ – One person made a decision at young age to work on things that bring joy and that make a difference in the world.  They apply this to all their projects.

Saying ‘No’ is a type of technology.

Holistic Decision-Making by Dan Palmer – For each area of our life, we can create ‘quality of life’ statements e.g. I am happy and healthy and can use my body to do lots of active things, I have quality time with my children every day. These are then used to guide decision-making and priorities.

Positive affirmations e.g. I have time and space for me, family and community – Good for times of overwhelm.

Challenge self each day to do one thing for home, one thing for business and one thing for garden, as well as for self, family and community. Have a check-in at the end of the day to see what has/hasn’t happened which helps one be more conscious of how they’re spending their time.

Monthly mind-mapping of projects is used by one of the group.  They map-out by mind-map all of their active projects for the coming month, where the sub-branches are the tasks for each project.  Using check-boxes for the tasks, this becomes a month-long to-do list, allowing an overview and holding all the projects together with focus.

Asking for help and support – acknowledge when one is needing more time for a task and being humble to request for that.

Eating well, drinking water, breathing consciously, getting good sleep.

We finished the session by acknowledging that the juggling of projects is quite a skill.  It requires peripheral vision and sensing of what’s coming next.  And sometimes roles/hats need to be changed nimbly, requiring us to take a breath. 

These are very similar skills as required when facilitating groups, so there is a lot of transferable learning between the two.  And ultimately, physical juggling is a good practice to help wire the brain for juggling projects!

May you nimbly and gracefully juggle all the projects, people and purpose you carry in your life!

With thanks to Erin Young for writing up our input.

Canada Invitation – A Dream Come True

There’s lots of excitement beginning to build in Canada as news is just being announced of Robin’s visit to Canada, to offer a six day ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ creative facilitators, teachers and group leaders course near Edmonton in late June. While she’s there Kym Chi from BC, who’s trained with and supported Robin before, will organise an evening presentation on ‘Social Permaculture’ and a full weekend ‘Social Design and Community Collaboration’ workshop on the Sunshine Coast of Canada in early July. Kym Chi will do some of the facilitation with Robin.

The excitement is also building back at home as Robin’s partner Rob is going with her on the adventure and will support the workshops and give more ease and grace to the travel. They’ll also get to see and experience some of the magnificent mountains and lakes of Canada, a dream come true.

Permaculture Women Pioneers

Documented by Robyn Francis for a conference presentation. She’s also here.