Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning Dynamic Courses, Books, Resources and Tours for Healthy Groups, People and Culture with Robin Clayfield

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 the group and also, our world, if the group has a People Care and/or Earth Care focus.

Many of us have great skills and wisdom to share.

The ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ 6 day training equips people with the skills, confidence, tools and processes to support all kinds of groups and educational situations in a creative, interactive and empowering way.

The annual Crystal Waters course is from 15th to 20th March and you’re invited to consider attending if you are involved or would like to be more involved in education, training, group work and facilitation.

If any of your family, friends or colleagues might be interested, you passing this info on would be much appreciated. Here’s the poster and thank you so much for your support.

Here also is the FaceBook Event Invite. https://www.facebook.com/events/418732875481579/

Starhawk from USA

Charlie McGee and Formidable Vegetable

3 Exciting Events

Robin Clayfield, on behalf of Northey Street City Farm (and herself) has invited the much loved and respected author, activist, ritualist and Permaculture teacher Starhawk from the US to be our very special guest at the APC (Australasian Permaculture Convergence) and to also co-facilitate a 3 day and 3 night Social Permaculture in Action Immersion with Robin at Crystal Waters Permaculture Village.

Dates for the APC – 20th to 23rd April 2020
Here’s the link to the website

Dates for the Social Permaculture are 7th to 10th May
Poster and Link still to  come  🙂 Contact Robin by email

Robin’s annual ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic  Learning’ Creative Teachers, Facilitators and Group Leadership Course at Crystal Waters Permaculture Village is fast approaching.

Dates – 15th to 20th March 2020
Here’s a link to Robin’s website

Immediately afterwards the absolutely fabulous, fantastic and frolicking Permaculture band ‘Formidable Vegetable’ will play at Crystal Waters for a night of fun and dancing. This will be their first ever appearance at Crystal Waters. They’ll also be at APC 🙂

Dates – 21st March 2020 Check out their website here

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

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.

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.

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.

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.