Tag Archives: Creative Facilitation

Robin’s leading edge 6 day training at Crystal Waters in SE Q’ld has become an annual event while she does her best to retreat to write her next series of books about the ‘Dynamic Groups’ Methodology.  This next course will be the last she personally organises till late 2016 though she has been invited to Melbourne for a ‘Dynamic Groups’ course in February and WA in September for one preceding the Australasian Permaculture Convergence. It takes a lot of time and energy to organise and host a course so Robin’s said she’ll only present the if she’s invited and the host does the organisation and promotion. This year’s November course will see Erin Young join Robin as her assistant. Erin has done Robin’s Dynamic Groups Course previously and supports her work in many ways as well as collaborating on group decision making processes and particularly with Sociocracy.  The course is …

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/

Participants from Robin’s ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ courses go back into the world, back to their groups and into their workplaces and communities with a huge toolbox of processes to try out, adapt and share with their groups plus the confidence and ability to create whatever they need for any group or learning situation. Several past participants from the courses attended Robin’s session at the Permaculture Convergence in Tasmania recently and took on Robin’s challenge to jump in the deep end and lead the group of 35 people with a favourite processes they’d gleaned, modified or adapted from the Dynamic Groups course. Tamara Griffiths, Permaculture teacher from Victoria was one of them. She used a card game. Pete the Permie had some fun with puppetry and Dick Copeman from Northey Street City Farm had us cross crawling as an energiser. Here’s what Tamara wrote about the process she used. “I’ve …

More than a year has passed since Robin began in earnest writing the first in a series of books documenting over 20 years of training teachers, group leaders and facilitators. Book I, outlining the methodology and giving examples, activities and some processes to use, is almost half written. It has attracted a dedicated team of proofreaders, assistants and an editor over the months, namely Ange Jackson, Erin Young, Tracy Adams and Eve Witney. Robin’s partner Rob Clark is working on the artwork for the cover and for two card games that will be ready for launching before the book is completed. Prof Stuart Hill is reading the book with a view to writing the forward. It’s still early days, though Robin aims to have it in print in the first half of 2016. Here’s a sample activity from the ‘Empowerment’ chapter in Book 1 under the section of ‘Working from …

Woodford Folk Festival, held in December for 6 days each year, is the biggest and most acclaimed festival of it’s kind in Australia. For the last two years Robin and her troupe of installation artists, ceremony weavers and musicians have made her design of ‘The Sacred Union Labyrinth’ as a 10 x 10 meter meditative walk that patrons can experience any time during the festival. A magical pathway leads through a bamboo construction heart entranceway and via a series of pennants that give instructions about how to walk the labyrinth. Four times during the festival she and Mark Healy, who was the spark behind Robin designing the labyrinth, with support from Christine Clegg, Rob Clark and Stephane Cazard, lead sacred community ceremonies accompanied by a merry band of four musicians to the delight of everyone involved. The whole installation was embellished with Rob Clark’s amazing sign art and this last …