00081 Design a learning community
No one knows the age of the human race, but we are confident that the human race is old enough to know better. — Found floating around the Internet.
To date, most permaculture education takes place live and in person at a permaculture design class or workshop. That is a great way to teach permaculture. But in-person education via a class financed by tuition isn’t the only way to learn. The development of the internet makes it possible to present new methods of teaching permaculture, in ways that reduce the impact of the activity of teaching permaculture on the planet. Flying around the world to teach or study permaculture design is pretty hard on the planet and its living ecologies.
This is a permaculture hack. You could call it an “app” except that it doesn’t work with your phone. It works instead with your brain. The word “app” is short for application and it refers to software that does something on a computer or phone or other portable electronic device. Software, as we all know, is a set of instructions that enable computers to do what we tell them to do.
Permaculture teaches the importance of learning from nature. It applies natural biological principles to human situations and makes decisions about good, better, and best options given the context, circumstances, and situations involved.
iPermie is a set of instructions (software) for a biological computer (the human brain) that will enable you to develop a permaculture design for your life. That’s an observation from the viewpoint of a particular urban ecology.
Permaculture is not a solitary discipline. It is best if studied and practiced in the context of a community. If you take an in-person permaculture design course, you become part of a learning community by virtue of your participation in the course.
iPermie, however, does not come with a live and in-person community. I do offer participation in an online listserv discussion, open to all who buy iPermie. That large discussion isn't a substitute for a live and in-person community with which to learn permaculture and do design work, although a smaller cyber discussion among a limited number of people could work as an effective learning community.
Permaculture education is more interesting, fun, and understandable when approached as part of a group.
Your first permaculture design challenge, in document 00071, was to design a method to use these materials to learn permaculture.
Your second design challenge is to find or create a group with whom you can study permaculture.
Where would you find such people?
Do you know people who have downloaded iPermie?
Do you have people you can recommend iPermie to and invite to join you in a learning community?
Is there an existing group of friends that you can persuade to form a small group to study permaculture?
Everyone will bring something to the group and you will learn much from each other. You may not all agree on everything that comes up for discussion. That’s fine. Permaculture has no pope that enforces ideological conformity. You will learn that permaculture design abhors monocultures. In all discussions, learn to disagree agreeably.
The actual design work that will describe how your group will work should be done as the first exercise of the group working together. You need —
- A place, time, and schedule for the meetings,
- Meeting facilitation, which could be rotated among the group members.
- A design for the actual meeting itself.
Components of a permaculture learning meeting include:
- an easy icebreaker exercise,
- a vision exercise where we imagine how things will be in a more permacultural future.
- a discussion about one of the readings,
- permaculture “show and tell”
- as the group develops and individuals begin to do design work, you can share and critique designs, and
- Refreshments! Table fellowship helps a group bond together and develops morale.
Some people will be tempted to skip this step, and certainly, each person must consider how best to approach learning permaculture for herself or himself. If you simply are not inclined to approach this as a group experience, then don’t do a group experience. Although everyone’s mileage may differ, the experience of the permaculture community thus far suggests that working with a group is a great way to enhance your permaculture learning experience.
Why not give starting a permaculture study group a try? If it doesn’t work out, fine, try something else. If you don’t give the group process a good try, you may miss out on what could be an important experience for your learning process.