Wednesday, 28 December 2016

Design 4 Action Permaculture course Spring 2017


London’s Permaculture Design Course – Design 4 ACTION (Active Community Transformation In Our Neighbourhoods) is a different kind of permaculture course – positive design for your life, your community and your world by empowering the genius inside all of us! D4A is about regenerative learning, enabling individuals, organisations and communities to come together over six weekends to create empowering solutions to the real world challenges we are all facing in these times of change. Adapted from the Permaculture Association (Britain)’s PDC core curriculum, this is a person-centred, fun, lively and inclusive course, exploring and utilising concepts such as Systems Thinking, Holistic Design, Community Empowerment, ‘Whole Person’ Health, Skill Sharing, Critical Thinking, Appreciative Inquiry, Right Livelihoods and much more.
The format is participatory and dynamic using diverse visual, audio and kinesthetic learning methods such as individual and group work, games, problem solving, discussion, observation, field trips, practical activities, lectures and slideshows. This course will be hosted at Furtherfield Commons in Finsbury Park, a new and exciting partnership project at the cutting edges of dynamic cultural change: “We believe that through creative and critical engagement with practices in art and technology people are inspired and enabled to become active co-creators of their cultures and societies.”

Design 4 Action courses can now be booked directly through Spiralseed. More info here.

Wednesday, 25 May 2016



Graduates of the 2016 Spring into ACTION! Permaculture Design Course which ended last weekend with some fantastic design presentations and some impromptu scything.

Our next course will be the Design 4 ACTION! Permaculture Design Course one weekend a month October 2016 - March 2017 at Furtherfield Commons, Finsbury Park, London.

29 - 30 Oct 2016
19 - 20 Nov 2016
10 - 11 Dec 2016
14 - 15 Jan 2017
11 - 12 Feb 2017
11 - 12 March 2017
 
Book here

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

Spring Into Action 2016 – Permaculture design in London – LAST PLACES AVAILABLE!

Last weekend 15 new design thinkers were unleashed on the world! End of course presentations of Designs for Active Community Transformation In Our Neighbourhoods from the students of our last London-based PDC have included the redevelopment of a community food growing space in Camden; a dog, person and wildlife friendly small garden in Bethnal Green; a sensory garden for an elderly grandfather; a proposal for turning the anti-social practice of peeing in public places into a pro-social way of generating power and fertility for the borough of Hackney; a forest garden in the south of France; a food growing, skill sharing and time bank project supporting refugees at Furtherfield Commons in Finsbury Park; kinesthetic sculptures as wind generators; a proposal to turn Clissold Park in Stoke Newington into a healing garden based on Ayurvedic medicine and sacred geometry principles and many more!

It's been an amazing experience and a real joy to work with such a positive group of creative people. Our next course begins very soon at Furtherfield Commons in Finsbury Park, an exciting new partnership exploring some highly creative edges, and is getting near to selling out, so if you want to be a part of generating more solutions based thinking for sustainable and regenerative futures, sign up now to ensure your place!!!

"I feel less like a consumer, more like a designer equipped with tools and skills to create bespoke solutions" - Hagop Matossian, Passive Natural green building consultant.


The Spring into Action! Full Permaculture Design Course will take place in Spring 2016
fortnightly over six weekends:

12 - 13 March
26 - 27 March
9 - 10 April
23 - 24 April
7 - 8 May
21 - 22 May





Monday, 11 January 2016

Going further




We are excited to announce that the 2016 Spring into Action! Permaculture Design Course will be hosted at furtherfield commons in Finsbury Park. We feel a lot of commonality with the furtherfield vision:

'We believe that through creative and critical engagement with practices in art and technology people are inspired and enabled to become active co-creators of their cultures and societies.'

A vision that sits well alongside our action-orientated approach to permaculture design.






The Spring into Action! Full Permaculture Design Course will take place in Spring 2016
fortnightly over six weekends:

12 - 13 March
26 - 27 March
9 - 10 April
23 - 24 April
7 - 8 May
21 - 22 May


Last weekend on our current Design 4 Action! course Marc Garrett introduced us to some of the work constellated with furtherfield - intersections where art, technology and social change meet. We also asked 'Can Britain feed itself?'; thought about, with and like fungi with a session on mycorrhiza; considered edges, hedges and windbreaks; and did some scenario thinking - four-dimensional design with a look towards the future(s).

Book your place on our Spring course here






Sunday, 6 December 2015

Winter to Spring



As we approach the shortest day, the darkness tends to draw us inside. With the turn of the year a few weeks away it can also be a reflective time, thinking about what we'll do next in our lives.

In permaculture education, one of the models we use is the 'action-reflection' cycle - this recognises that learning about anything is improved when we do stuff, think about what happened, identify things we could have done differently, design a new approach and then act on it - as we go around the cycle again we improve each time - getting closer to our goals and perhaps changing them!


The next opportunity to engage with our action-orientated approach comes in the longer days ahead with our Spring into Action! Permaculture Design Course in east London. Book here

This course will be 6 weekends fortnightly on the following dates:

12 - 13 March
26 - 27 March
9 - 10 April
23 - 24 April
7 - 8 May
21 - 22 May

If you want to see what our courses look like, check out these photos from our current Design 4 Action course, we're half-way through already!:


Thursday, 3 September 2015

Spring into Action 2016

We're currently getting excited about the Design 4 ACTION permaculture design course (PDC) which starts in 3 weeks time (as of today a couple of places remain so get in quick if you want to start a course this year!)

But we're also planning ahead for our next PDC: Spring into Action 2016 which commences in March 2016.

This course will be 6 weekends fortnightly on the following dates:

12 - 13 March
26 - 27 March
9 - 10 April
23 - 24 April
7 - 8 May
21 - 22 May

Find booking forms for both courses here

Friday, 17 July 2015

What are our courses like?

Participant feedback on the 2015 Spring into Action! Permaculture Design Course.