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

Almost all of us work, create, meet, play, volunteer or live in groups of some kind. They might be environmental groups, political branches, and local interest or lobby groups. They may be sporting teams, work places, families or housing buddies. Learning, teaching or facilitation teams, exercise classes and school grades are all groups with their own special features. Think about a group that you spend most time with or that you’re very passionate about or intimately connected to in some way.

Then do this simple activity of brainstorming all the things you put into the group on one side of a page and all that you receive from being part of the group on the other side, a little like the photographic example.

You could also do this activity for the group as a whole. What are all the energies, resources, skills, needs, money, time, legalities, support etc that go into the group and what outputs does the group have – products, services, social values, learnings, waste, empowerments, employments etc.

This may bring some additional perspective to your involvement with the group and even provide valuable insight to enable change, growth or more positivity or problem solving.

This is an example of some of the kinds of activities in Robin’s upcoming ‘Dynamic Teaching and Facilitation’ book. Enjoy! Each e-news will endeavour to provide an activity that is aimed at supporting more successful and dynamic group work.

An exciting one off opportunity to deepen teaching skills related to Permaculture while in WA for the APC (Australasian Permaculture Convergence). 10^th to 14^th October

Presenters will be Rowe Morrow and Robin Clayfield. A few guests, including Ross Mars and David Holmgren, will give you their teaching tips.

This five-day course covers the whole range of learning and teaching styles and strategies to enable you to have confidence about teaching and facilitating many of the permaculture-related courses that are on offer. The course will include outlines for Intro, PDC’s, Advanced courses and Accredited Permaculture Training. Sessions will be run on lesson plans, facilitation techniques, teaching resources (tool kit), course organisation and public speaking, and much more.

Click here to go to the Registration page.

Following successful ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ courses in UK last August and Melbourne in February, Robin will offer her only other Dynamic Groups course for the year at Crystal Waters in SE Qld from 21^st to 26^th August. With taking time out to write and a big trip to WA in October for the APC13 (Australasian Permaculture Convergence), Robin’s decided to wait till her UK and Europe adventure in mid 2017 to run any more of these creative teachers facilitation courses. The Europe tour is taking shape with courses already confirmed in Mallorca (Spain), Italy and Slovenia and quite possibly Switzerland, Germany, UK, Portugal and maybe France and Israel. Wow! It’s looking like a big year next year for Dynamic Groups work.

Click here to see the poster for ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ Course 21st to 26th August

Being part of the five person facilitation team for the Social Permaculture course in the UK was a major highlight of Robin’s whole year. Months of planning and Skype meetings across five countries saw the group find their flow and direction together and create the bones of the program. The Sustainability Centre in Hampshire was the perfect Permaculture venue and many people camped and enjoyed the surrounding woods. Here’s a few definitions of Social Permaculture by some of the facilitators.

Starhawk

• “Preparing people to step into positions of power and leadership
• “Social Permaculture is creating new sets of principles and guidelines for groups”
• The art of social permaculture and facilitating groups is to be aware on as many levels as possible of what is happening under the surface
• The goal of social permaculture is to bring tools and skills to communities impacted by the most destruction or do not have access”

Robin Clayfield

• “Social Permaculture supports people care and healthy group culture and uses our Permaculture principles and applies them to social design and social situations”

Looby Macnamara

• “Social permaculture is about design, principles and ethics
• Relating things specifically to this
• How we can use a design framework that is specifically catered to people based designs”

Robina McCurdy

• “Social Permaculture is the application of Permaculture Principles to the design of

sustainable social systems, for the creation a healthy, well-functioning society where all can thrive”

Click here to see the booklet produced from course materials and photos. Acknowledgements follow.

It’s Title is – Exploring Social Permaculture

Delvin’s Words – “Social Permaculture is a new wave of activism and inspiration pouring forth from permeable edges of the Permaculture Movement. Those surfing the wave of this evolution can cast an eye towards a hopeful future where all beings and things are cared for. It’s up to each of us to make a personal commitment and dedication to play our own part in co-creating the harmonic and healthy future, helping take Social Permaculture beyond the edge and into ‘the everything’.”

Collaborative Design – Dana S Wilson, Delvin Solkinson, Kym Chi, Annaliese Hordern

http://www.gaiacraft.com

Source Code –

Looby Macnamara http://loobymacnamara.com

Robin Clayfield https://snow-albatross-888556.hostingersite.com

Starhawk http://www.starhawk.org

Robina McCurdy http://www.earthcare-education.org

Peter Cow http://www.livingincircles.com

Photos – Dana Wilson http://www.gaiacraft.com

Text – Delvin Solkinson http://www.gaiacraft.com

Thanks to All Course Participants

Created on Location – The Sustainability Centre http://www.Sustainability-Centre.org

Click here to watch the musical slide show made by Dana Wilson, Delvin Solkinson and the Gaiacraft team

Since returning to Australia Robin facilitated a one day workshop on Social Permaculture in Melbourne and will offer a weekend Social Permaculture workshop with Robina McCurdy on 10^th and 11^th September when she’s over from NZ. Stay tuned to Robin’s website and FaceBook wall for details or express interest by emailing Robin. Click here.

Robin attended the Australasian Facilitators Network (AFN) Conference in Ballana, Nth NSW in early November last year. This annual gathering of peers, along with the approaching ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ course in mid-November in SE Qld, were used as the launching pad for Robin’s long dreamed of ‘Creative Process Wild Card’ set. Beautiful graphic design by Robin’s partner Rob Clark and thorough editing and brilliant InDesign tuition by Eve Witney made the project possible and supported Robin to achieve a high standard result.

The Cards evolved out of a long used ‘Dynamic Groups’ course activity that’s designed to challenge participants to try out new and creative processes to teach or present on a topic. This evolved from an original process that Skye and Robin began using 25 years ago to great effect. For example, if you are a little tired of teaching your pet topic the same way each time or you notice people seem bored or tired when you offer it, imagine you shuffle the cards and ask, “What processes will I use to teach … (Soils or Healthy Eating or Mud Brick Building or Project Management or …) next weekend?” or “Which processes shall I use to facilitate tomorrow night’s meeting for the two major agenda items?” Pick a card, or two. Maybe you’ll get Puppetry or Large Scale Chalk Drawing or Quiz Shows. Perhaps you’ll draw Music/Dance/Movement or Recipes, Water Play or L.O.V.E. You trust that you’ll rise to the challenge, take a deep breath and after a good planning stint your presentation becomes motivating, engaging and fun for your participants and their ability to take in and remember the information is greatly enhanced. Plus you discover many new ways to present, teach and facilitate.

The set contains 60 cards in total. 50 Creative processes and 10 more conventional ones that Robin feels she can’t live without or that have a creative edge or don’t take much to make them so. They are printed on high quality card, printed locally and come boxed in a 100% recycled cardboard box that is coloured using soy based inks. Click this link if you’d like some

Thanks to the awesome graphic design skills and willingness of Robin’s partner Rob Clark ‘The Manual for Teaching Permaculture Creatively’ now has a brand new colour cover. Very fitting seeing as the iconic 320 page text, written by Skye and Robin in the early 90s and published by their business Earthcare Education in 1995, is turning 21 this year. Yeah! Many hundreds of people have purchased the Manual and it’s enjoyed in over 65 countries.

In recent times it’s become available as a PDF through a DropBox Folder system. It was originally designed as a solid ring binder so it could be a huge ‘Tool Box’ to be added to over and over by its new owners as they witnessed, created or adapted processes that they wanted to remember and find easily. This hard copy is preferable to most people though click this link if you’d like to purchase the PDF version and enjoy!