Tag Archives: Creative Facilitation

An exciting one off opportunity to deepen teaching skills related to Permaculture while in WA for the APC (Australasian Permaculture Convergence). 10th to 14th 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 21st to 26th 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 …

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 …

Robin recently completed a massive five week teaching and facilitation journey in Victoria, timed around an invitation to present at ‘Rainbow Serpent Festival’ and also enabling her to present at ‘Sustainable Living Festival’ and display her relevant books and resources there while helping out in the Edible Garden Area. ‘Rainbow Serpent Festival’ was a fantastic and wildly different event which mostly catered to young people out to dance and party hard. The more recently introduced ‘Lifestyle Village’ area opens the festival to a wider more conscious audience which is where Robin was invited in to be part of. It’s replete with a visionary art gallery, two ephemeral temple spaces, a small and a quite large presentation and workshop venue as well as a Permaculture garden area, Indigenous village, free healing and massage zone and children’s area. Robin presented two workshops on Permaculture design and Social Permaculture and was the only …

Things are moving slowly with Robin’s writing of the five book series, though the two card games that are part of the project have been successfully launched – the ‘Permaculture Principles Card Game in September last year and the Creative Process Wild Cards in November. All the wild cards fed straight into the chapter that’s being worked on at the moment in Book 1, the ‘Tool Box’ chapter. As well as the 60 Creative Processes in the card set, the chapter will highlight many other processes, some that act as ‘Glue Processes’, serving the function of supporting the group to work well together, meet and greet and make the most of the material and the time spent together. Ice-Breakers, Name Games, Grouping Processes, Revision Processes and Check-In’s are a few examples.  Also included will be many conventional processes that, even though not creative or participatory, still are valid as ways to …