Hedvig’s permaculture diploma

Wow, instead of having permaculture days, it feels like I am having permaculture months.  I have finally managed to get into some action learning guilds. An Action Learning Guild, is a group of people that come together to talk about their permaculture projects, in particular using the four action learning questions: what is going well, what is challenging, what is the vision and the next steps.  It is set up so an individual will talk without interruption and another member will take notes, with typically a third doing the time keeping.It has taken months and months and months.  Now, I have come to realise the extent to which everyone with their diploma so far is seriously motivated to get this thing done.  No one is out there guide you, not really.  It all has to come from you.  So I tried to get it happening with diploma peeps in London and just wasn’t really feeling it last year, especially as I was planning on moving to Brighton.Since the move, I have got in touch with lots of people and met lots more from helping out with intros, and finally in February did I manage to have not one but two ALGs outside of the induction days.  I had another one in March, and two more scheduled in April.In the end, I’ve gone for a scatter-gun approach, where I’m now hooked up with two different ALGs, with the aim that I will have quite frequent meetings with people, and even if one falls through I still have the other.   The first group of people who live outside of Brighton has been really successful so far.  The other two have been doing their diploma for a long time, but had sort of got lost, and having the ALGs provided some structure and support that they needed.  The other group is with people living in Brighton, and who are cracking on with their different projects.It is great to meet up and have the opportunity to talk about the diploma and where we are all at with it.  With the first group, we’ve decided to add a bit to the four questions format, so at the end of the questions we can then give feedback to one person, and have more of an in-depth conversation about the project.  This was really useful as we could support each other and that adds to the sense of community that is developing.I have used each ALG to present one of my projects to keep me on track.  And have had really good feedback about the projects.  So that is really encouraging.  My next ALGs are in early April, so will update then.

Today, being Tuesday, is permaculture diploma day.  I am trying to wrap up my first project (my action learning pathway for the diploma) before my action learning guild meeting on Thursday.  So here is the final version of the pathway.  As we no longer have to send it to the office to disseminate it, I figured this might be as good as any.

Action Learning Pathway

So for the last few months of silence I am have certainly been busy and continuing with my permaculture work.  I have apprenticed courses in Brighton and London, I have been doing more and more teaching on intros.  I was took on the people care role of the Training of Trainers in October that took place in London.

We have successfully completed our first year with Get Growing, and this years gardens are all complete and the funding reports are all in.  I am now trying to take stock of what happened and all the changes that have occurred since.  Plus beginning to survey the situ here in Brighton.

I have spent less time consistently working on my projects, and realised that coming back to them, that I needed to wrap up some of them so I could begin some of the new ones.  One of the issues with that is the you can continue to keep going round and round the action learning cycle.  And when actually does a project come to an end?

I went to a permaculture induction day yesterday.  I went to the last one that was run in March, and it is a good point to reflect on how much I have achieved since then.  I also chatted to Gillian who said she was working presenting her diploma at the convergence next year.  Sounds like a workable and yet challenging target for me.

So I am trying to wrap up some of my projects. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working on different projects. They have certainly evolved and I have learnt a lot through doing it, been making lots of my own stuff and considered things in a different way.  And I keep going round the action learning cycle many more times, lots of learning.

Permaculture has many definitions, the most succinct one that I have come across recently was from the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast, where it is defined as a ‘design system for sustainable living’ it ‘looks at the way nature does things’.  For example, in nature there is no output that isn’t used as an input for something else.  It is a system that is based heavily on ethics and principles which informs that meaning of ’sustainable living.’

The diploma is self-taught and draws on action learning theories and methods.  To complete you need to do ten designs that don’t all have to be land-based or implemented.  You have support from your Action Learning Tutor and Action Learning Guild, plus various Design Tutors.  You need to complete the Full Design Course (FDC) before starting on the diploma, which I did in December 2007.  It takes a minimum of 2 years to complete.

I enrolled for the permaculture diploma in October 2008, just before going WWOOFing in Italy.  I wanted to use the time away to research and design some pieces for my portfolio.  I struggled for a bit to get started with my diploma, co-ordinating a time with my tutor to chat when I was WWOOFing in Italy turned out to be tricky. I did a lot of observing (one of the principle tools) and learnt a lot, and thought a lot about different projects I could do.  I also went to the Slow Food Salone del Gusto in Turin, which was very inspiring, and guided my thinking.

While away I realised that I really don’t want to stay in London, and for a number of different reasons I think that Brighton is the place to be.  When I came back in January I looked into changing my tutor to someone down in Brighton, which happened in February.  The Brighton Permaculture Trust organised an induction for the people doing the diploma in March, which was great.  It was informative, really useful and I felt inspired having a much clearer idea of what the diploma involved.

For the past month I have been developing my Action Learning Pathway.  I read up about action learning theories, assessed the ideas I had had for designs while I was in Italy, and formulated a pathway.  I found David Holmgren’s Permaculture Flower a useful tool.  I have now written up a quite detailed Learning Pathway, and have arranged to meet up with my Action Learning Tutor at the beginning of May (if you would like to see it, do get in touch).  So looking forward to that meeting and what comes out of it.