Permaculture

A big Overseas adventure is in the wind with Robin heading to the UK for IPC12, the International Permaculture Conference and Convergence, in September. Robin’s been accepted to present at the big public conference in London with her topic ‘Designing our Global Education Systems using Permaculture Principles’. Here’s the blurb – Imagine a world where children grow up respecting and learning from nature, growing food and tending animals, meeting and co-creating in a natural and easy way together, having fun, loving learning and feeling good about themselves all through their journey to adulthood and beyond. Imagine adults meeting in circle, in community, in government and boardrooms, actively listening to each other, co-creating a positive world and making decisions together in a way that everyone contributes and feels empowered.  Decision making, planning, designing and visioning happen easily and for the best good of the group or organisation. Problems transform into useful …

New PDC Course October 18 – 30 For the second year running now Crystal Waters Community Co-op has organised a PDC (Permaculture Design Course) with Max Lindegger as the key Teacher. Robin’s been a guest presenter each time.  The sessions she presented in April addressed ‘Making an income as a Permaculture Practitioner, ‘Group work and Group Dynamics’ to prepare the group to work together in small groups for their property design activity and Prepping for the Design phase. This last topic saw Robin lead an exercise involving her ‘Patterns in Nature’ Card game where everyone got to design something inspired by nature’s patterns. She also introduced scale rulers, flexi curves, circle templates and hand drawn templates made to scale  as tools the groups could use. To stay in touch about PDC’s at Crystal Watersvisit http://crystalwaters.org.au/permaculture-design-course/

What a surprise! The opening evening saw Robin and 13 others acknowledged and honoured as Elders of the Permaculture Community. It was explained that you had to be over 55, contributed substantially over many years to Permaculture and be present at the Convergence. Robin accepted the plaque with tears in her eyes and a joyous heart.  Robin was one of four key note presenters at the Australasian Permaculture Convergence in March. She presented directly after David Holmgren on the first day and led the 200 attendees in an interactive greeting, icebreaking, networking and theme building session entitled ‘Social design and the culturing of Permaculture.’ It was obviously enjoyed and appreciated by all with everyone feeding back their theme groups suggestions with enthusiasm and team support. A lot was achieved in the one hour session and the energy of it carried out into the rest of the convergence. Robin’s workshop the …

ROBIN CLAYFIELD Permaculture Solutions to Climate Change IPC11 Cuba This Guest Presentation by ROBIN CLAYFIELD at the International Permaculture Conference in Cuba gives an unconventional Talk about Permaculture Solutions to Climate Change – IPC11 Cuba. Comments on Youtube include: Kurt Holbrook “ Clearly, the very most neglected subject in Permaculture, Social Development, this speaker is brilliant, but the audio is over dubbed with Spanish translation making this release difficult to follow. I’m looking for Robin Clayfield’s attention and vitalization of the second Permaculture Principle, Care of the People, elsewhere. Thumbs up for Robin, thumbs down for the audio. I really appreciate harvesting ideas from Permacuture elders and including the rest of the groups, we get nothing like it in democratic forums.” TrilightShowroom+  sorry about the audio but this recordings where done spontaneously by a group of participants who got to know each other and forming in the first hour of …

Robin Clayfield’s classic book ‘You Can Have Your Permaculture and Eat It Too’ has finally been reprinted. It’s had a thorough re-edit, been completely re-formatted and had a partial content upgrade bringing all the information up to date. The Index is now twice the size, there’s 6 new illustrations and the amazing Rob Clark has re-designed the cover which looks really classy with a matt finish. The book was first published 17 years ago and contains 13 years of Robin’s life. She spent over a year drawing much of the info out of her head into the manuscript. The print run all sold out and for 12 years now has only been available as a photocopied version. See a 20 page taster of the book in the shop now or buy the book from the web site shop by clicking this link. It’s also available from this website as an …

Magic Happens in ‘Dynamic Groups’ and Learning Happens Easily. Why is that so? It’s been an exciting and rewarding journey for Robin Clayfield since she first began Teaching Permaculture Creatively in 1990. She and Skye (now from Brazil) had taught a 2 week Permaculture Design Course the year before, using lecturing, small group work, demonstrations, hands-on garden and design exercises and other standard educational practises. That’s how they’d been taught through school, Uni and in their Permaculture course as students. The course went very well, people were inspired and learnt lots, though they reported a sense of ‘information overload’. It also didn’t feel right to Skye and Robin that they were teaching Soils to Soil scientists and Building Design to Architects. Many interesting discussions followed and the next course saw ‘Needs Based Learning’  implemented and ‘Creative Facilitation’ of relevant, diverse and empowering activities, many developed especially for the people in …