Tag Archives: Education and Training

Practise, Practise, Practise is a key learning from a refresher in Kate Raffin’s NVC workshop that was offered recently at Crystal Waters.Robin and team highly recommend NVC to the world for peaceful communications, a compassionate world and shared empathy spaces to nurture our hearts and souls. What is NVC? Here’s a definition from Robin’s soon to be published ‘Dynamic Teaching and Facilitation’ Book. Nonviolent Communication: A life practice and set of principles and skills that enable compassionate communication, empathy, authenticity and connection. It helps people have ‘power with’ rather than ‘power over’ and to express their feelings, needs and deep truth with others, with themselves and in groups and organisations. See Kate’s Website here

Hello Wonderful Community and Heart Centred Practitioners. Many of you know the core work Robin offers in the world. As well as Permaculture, her key focus and offering is the ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ courses, workshops, writings and educational resources. She feels very strongly that to support our world, our communities and positive change in education, the environment, social and political challenges etc we need people who are well skilled and trained in facilitation and group work. Groups form the basis of much positive action and community building. Education creates the backbone of new foundations and for learning a positive, peaceful and powerful way forward for our children, youth and also adults needing more tools, ideas and purpose. If our groups are well facilitated and work easily together, they are more effective at meeting their purpose and everything works out better for everyone, including all the people who benefit from …

Hello Wonderful Community and Heart Centred Practitioners. Many of you know the core work Robin offers in the world. As well as Permaculture, her key focus and offering is the ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ courses, workshops, writings and educational resources. She feels very strongly that to support our world, our communities and positive change in education, the environment, social and political challenges etc we need people who are well skilled and trained in facilitation and group work. Groups form the basis of much positive action and community building. Education creates the backbone of new foundations and for learning a positive, peaceful and powerful way forward for our children, youth and also adults needing more tools, ideas and purpose. If our groups are well facilitated and work easily together, they are more effective at meeting their purpose and everything works out better for everyone, including all the people who benefit from …

A new documentary celebrating the past, present and future of Crystal Waters is just being released. It is possibly the most extensive exploration of an ecovillage in a documentary yet produced… I’d love to hear of other examples. In 2018, Crystal Waters, a world-first permaculture settlement and wildlife sanctuary, is now 30 years old – located near Maleny, South East Queensland. Given a UN Habitat Award in 1996, Crystal Waters is known worldwide for its permaculture related educational courses. Community members run monthly markets, bakery and cafes, bamboo and timber plantations, a fire brigade, cinema, even a cemetery. A visitor park offers cabins, caravan sites and tent sites. Over 100 dwellings and community buildings showcase diverse building methods – rammed earth, mud brick, straw bale and pole construction. The flow of the program entwines history and present views in a colourful and engaging manner. It may not answer all your …

Did you know you can design harmonious and effective groups who thrive towards their aims and purpose as a collective? Yep, it’s called Social Permaculture. And this is what Permaculture pioneer Robin Clayfield and social change-agent Erin Young are brewing for the SOCIAL PERMACULTURE WEEKEND on 18 & 19 May at Crystal Waters Permaculture EcoVillage, near Maleny in South East Queensland. This unique weekend is a rare opportunity to be guided in developing your social design fluency by applying the nature-based principles of permaculture. Using interactive and dynamic experiences, Robin and Erin will share with you insights to regenerative people systems and approaches contributing to happy and healthy humans on the levels of the individual, organisational, and societal. Various angles of effective social design will be covered, including group ecology, community governance and decision-making, group effectiveness, social space retrofits and confidence in acting for change. This course is for those …

‘Groundwork’ has been developed out of the Art of Hosting framework (aka Art of Participatory Leadership), and specifically focusses on collaboration. These trainings are being offered in both Brisbane and Canberra in February. These trainings would be fantastic support to Permaculture trainers and organisers, for Permaculture Co-Lab, and any permie projects as well as NVC practitioners and anyone working with community groups and facilitation. Early bird closes today Fri 11 January. There are some scholarships, and discounts for 3 or more people coming as a group or from an organisation. Fees are negotiable for people who really want to come and learn to apply these trainings, but who cant afford to pay. Visit the website here.