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

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.

If you’ve never been to ‘The Planting’ Festival before and you live close enough to have three days away over the first weekend in May, you’ll get to experience and participate in a delightful diversity of environmental, social and creative workshops, talks, wanderings and activities along with ceremony and of course great music. It’s held at the Woodford Folk Festival site and grew out of the tree planting weekends that have supported the site be a shady and beautiful wildlife and people haven.

For the second year running Robin and her troupe of labyrinth makers, ceremony weavers, workshop facilitators and musicians will create a luscious space for patrons to experience the serenity of labyrinth walking and guided ceremonies, accompanied by divine music at The Sacred Union Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is now its own unique venue after six years at Woodford Folk festival and now, in a much smaller and simpler version for The Planting, offers a split bamboo and banana fibre making and weaving workshop to beautify the labyrinth to begin the activities in the space.

Robin is also presenting a workshop in The Grove Venue entitled ‘Growing Community’. Growing healthy community needs the same love and care as a veggie garden or a food forest. Like all of us humans, it requires a supportive group environment in which to thrive. What are the elements that grow community and assist our groups, teams, organisations, businesses and families to be at their best? We’ll garden the answers together and harvest the gifts of our collaboration.

Hope to see you there. It will be a lot of fun 🙂 Here’s the link to the website

It’s just been ‘Earth Day’ and to honour that Robin rekindled this quote she wrote back in 2015 after waking up full of passion and care for our Earth and a better world while working in the UK on a course.

“It is the time of the Great Remembering…

Remembering as humans that we are part of the Earth. Remembering our nature intelligence. Remembering we are part of a symbiotic and amazing ecosystem that bubbles and pulses with life. Yes, we have evolved beyond our hunter-gatherer roots, yet we can still purposefully gather all the tools, resources and companions to connect together for a healthy world. We are powerful, creative and co-creative beyond measure and we are a tiny speck in the web of life.

May each speck be a spark of illumination and remembering of our ancient roots and deeply intimate relationship with Earth and all beings… for a better world.” – Robin Clayfield

The wonderfully creative and clever Robina McCurdy from Aotearoa NZ will be visiting Australia in late May early June and we’re very fortunate that she’ll be up on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland so she and Robin can collaborate on a day workshop called ‘Growing Community’.

It will build on the material from Robin’s workshop at ‘The Planting’ and take participants deep into the realms of what it takes to foster healthy, vibrant, successful communities – intentional ones and also neighbourhoods, community groups, families, work cultures and any sub-cultural and cultural gathering and collectives that meet and gather over time.

Robina can also ‘do this type of workshop with her eyes closed’ and it’s been both hers and Robins life work to support and facilitate group and community well-being and success. They will both have their eyes fully open to be deeply present and achieve the best possible outcome for their group workshop.

It will be held on Sunday 2^nd June at The EcoCentre at Crystal Waters Permaculture Village.

In the evening there will also be a special night on offer which will include a Community Building game by Robin and a glorious slide show of many of Robinas great photos of the keys to Growing Community.

Here’s Robina’s Bio for your information and enjoyment.

Robina McCurdy is a professional community development facilitator, Permaculture educator, organic gardener, and pioneer-resident of 30 year-old Tui Community & Trust in rural Aotearoa/New Zealand (www.tuitrust.org.nz).  She is also the founder of The Institute of Earthcare Education Aotearoa. 

www.earthcare-education.org

For the past 30 years she has been engaged in community development of various forms. During this time, she has produced a range of environmental education resources and participatory processes for decision-making and collective action, culminating in the publication of her community facilitation manual, ‘Grounding Vision, Empowering Culture’. She also has chapters in: ‘Creating Harmony: Conflict Resolution in Community’, and ‘Living your Passion’.

Robina has facilitated community-building in 10 different countries since 1992, as well as regularly in her own country, Aotearoa-New Zealand.

Her community facilitation work encompasses ‘midwifing’ new initiatives, squatter settlement re-development, long-term conflict resolution, rebuilding community post natural disasters, the training of community leaders as ‘cultural change agents’, participatory planning of orphanages, mentoring of new ecovillages, social renewal of existing ecovillages, and strengthening the community culture within existing organizations. 

Russ Grayson’s filmed this great interview with Robin on Social Permaculture at the APC 14 in Canberra in 2018. APC = Australasian PermacultureConvergence.

Russ also took this great photo of Robin and Robina McCurdy at APC WA in 2016