Making Permaculture Stronger

Hey all. I am excited to be here trying out yet anther new experiment in making this project as accessible and practical and interesting as possible. You see I’ve recently started becoming friends with a group of graduates of Schumacher college. Mainly Anna Lena from France and Ahmed from Bahrain. Anna Lena and Ahmed initially reached out, having come across some of my stuff on Living Design Process online. They sensed resonance with their own inquiry into what they are calling dialogue with place. After attending one of their online gatherings, the resonance was confirmed, and we all felt potential in continuing to explore the obvious synergies. So we had this lovely emergent conversation just the other day where the idea emerged of checking in weekly and sharing for ten minutes or so what’s alive in us relating to our our practical projects. Where I realised I could release my bit where I share about my design process adventures here. Potentially as a weekly sort of update. This fits in with the strong will I’ve been feeling toward starting to share more of this Living Design Process approach I’ve alluded to but haven’t yet really dived into directly. https://youtu.be/XrP0i8JF2qA I’m not sure whether to use the audio episode format, the video format, or both, so I’ll share both here and ask some of you what you reckon will work best moving forward. Also here is a that link to Lierlou and the Village – the name of the wonderful project Anna-Lena is part of. Thanks so much to Anna Lena for the chat and to Ahmed also for the way in which this all emerged.

This episode is the second half of the conversation started in Episode 37. In which permaculture designer Simon Marshall and I explore ways he can evolve his practice in desired directions (and I have some useful realisations about how I’ll evolve my approach to this kind of conversation in future).

This episode marks new ground for this podcast. I share the start of what will become a several-episode conversation working with permaculture designer Simon Marshall. Simon reached out and asked if I’d help him explore ways we can evolve his practice in desired directions. In this episode we set the scene and in the next episode we’ll dive right into the business at hand. I hope you enjoy this new direction for the podcast and huge thanks to Simon for being up for giving this a try. In this episode we set the scene and we’ll get down to work proper in the next episode. You can visit Simon’s existing website here and here are some design illustrations he shares in the chat (and that I reference there by image number). Image One Err, let’s call this a continuation of Image One Image Two Image Three

I’m so happy to know Bill Reed (from Regenesis Group) and to have him back on the show for the second time I’ve had someone on for the third time. If you listened to either of the prior chats you already know you’re in for a treat. Thanks again Bill and I’m already looking forward to interview number four.

Jason Gerhardt teaching Such a pleasure to reconnect and get back in resonance with Jason after quite a while in this free-flowing conversation. We talk the current pandemic, ways of responding individually and collectively, and continue our themes around design process and story of people/place. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did and thanks so much for the comment from permaculturalist Wesley Rowe that listening to this is “like peering in on conversations I have with friends” :-).

In this episode I reflect on how the four levels of paradigm Carol Sanford shared in episode 33 apply both to my experience of navigating the coronavirus crisis and to permaculture as a whole. Hope you get something out of this and here’s to our collaborative evolution toward regenerating life together. A few links: Carol Sanford’s site Buy the Regenerative Life The video of Chris Martenson from Peak Prosperity that I refer to in the chat The Making Permaculture Stronger patreon page

Carol Sanford mid-sentence during this episode… Such a deep honour to have Carol Sanford return to the show after the wild ride that was episode nineteen. In this episode Carol takes us deep into one of her living systems frameworks – that of the four paradigms she calls value return, arrest disorder, do good, and regenerate life. This framework has challenging implications for permaculture, and as I explain I am excited with the clarity I believe this framework can bring to our individual and collective efforts to navigate the current global coronavirus pandemic. I will be using the platform of this podcast to look at the current situation through a process lens for the foreseeable future. All other bets are off for now. Check out Carol’s website here, her new book The Regenerative Life here, her seed communities here, and the Deep Pacific Change Agent Community (that I am part of) here. The white paper she mentioned can be read in a series starting here, and she has a Regenerative Paradigm website too. Stay well and until soon. I will endeavour to keep these podcasts coming from my family’s mini permaculture refuge (that has all been created within the last three weeks). I’m also happy to publish the video of this chat with Carol but I’ll let one or two of you say you’d like that before I make the effort :-). What came in the post today – hooray! Snippet from page 162 – hoot hoot!

Here we are. Hovering on the cusp of Phase Two of this project. Toward the end of 2019, we set the scene by way of chopping down a certain tree. We then disappeared for a while.31 We took a breath. We pondered. We came back. It is time to start navigating the path ahead, starting right here, right now. Before we take an actual step, however, let us metamorphose into birds and catch an updraft to consider relevant patterns from up high. In other words, we’ll zoom out to get a sense of some of the things we’d like to make true of our subsequent steps forward. Toward this end, I ask you to bear with me as I explore a fresh framework for thinking about different ways of relating to permaculture as design. This arose after a previous framework led me to the question of “what is a community of practice, anyway?” Looking up that phrase led me first to the distinction between a community of practice and a community of interest and second to the related notion of a community of inquiry. Together, these three then came together in my mind to generate a further framework.32 Communities of Interest, Practice and Inquiry There is a group of folk in the world that are interested in permaculture design. Within this group there are folk who are not only interested in but who practice permaculture design. Within this practicing group there are in turn folk who consciously inquire into permaculture design. Who do research and experiments and make the results available to other inquirers as well as those practicing without inquiring or interested without practicing. I’m not fussed about the exact lines of differentiation between these three nested layers. The lines can remain somewhat fuzzy so long as you agree that it is possible to draw the lines.33 The point is that it is possible to be interested in permaculture design without practicing it, and it is possible to practice permaculture design without (consciously and explicitly) inquiring into the way of designing that you have learned to use and are using. None of these are good or bad, better or worse. They are options. Now. Let us move from the idea of groups or sets to groups that have internal connectivity, whether online, offline, or both. Here, we move from groups to communities. As I’m guessing any permaculturalist knows, communities are where it’s at. From here on as I develop this diagram I am always talking about communities, not just sets of individuals. I personally am part of a large community of folk interested in permaculture design, a smallish community of colleagues who go beyond interest to practice permaculture design, and a tiny community of colleagues who go beyond practice to consciously inquire into permaculture design.34 Overall Ratios, Flows, Blockages and Orbits We can now consider the overall flows, ratios, blockages and orbits between and within the three kinds of communities. Along the way I’ll start laying out what this means for Phase Two of this project. Flows and Ratios The above diagrams are not to scale, and numbers of people within each of these three nested community types obviously fluctuate. As far as flows go, the way folk become permaculture design practitioners is via interest. The way folk become researchers or inquirers, surely, is as a result of questions that arise within their practice. Where, ideally at least, the findings then move back out through the other communities, and in some cases even out into the beyond-permaculture community and culture.35 Indeed permaculture itself was birthed from a two-person community of intense interest then practice and inquiry that lasted a couple of years and catalysed huge waves of interest and in some cases practice in others. The following diagram captures this sense of overall flows in a very simplified, limited way. The black arrows represent people transitioning into communities at each of the three levels, and the grey lines the inquirer’s findings then shared in an outward direction. Presumably more findings are shared with (and are relevant to) practitioners, some subset of these are then shared with those in communities of interest, and some further subset of these may end up being shared with the wider world (indeed some of them may end up catalysing folk to get interested in the first place). In the inward direction, as indicated by the differing arrow sizes, more people get interested than end up practising and a similar reduction occurs as we move from practice to inquiry. Now there are presumably some desirable ratios between the respective numbers of folk in the three levels that when departed from too much reduce the health of permaculture as a whole. Clearly at any moment there are many more people, perhaps two or three orders of magnitude more, interested in permaculture design than practicing it. Something like the same reduction probably occurs in the move from practicing to inquiring (as in inquiring and practising and interested). My sense is that if there is not some certain minimum amount of inquiry happening that is folding back to enrich the communities of practice (and indirectly interest) that those communities are more likely to lose their way.36 And where if the amount of actual practice relative to interest is too low it becomes a situation like a pig-owners club I once read about that quietly disbanded when they discovered that not one member actually owned a pig! Making Permaculture Stronger is not explicitly focused on increasing the numbers of people interested in permaculture design. I am glad that many people and projects are, and indeed the things I do focus on are utterly dependent on their important work. Part of this work is being in position such that when external circumstances (climate shocks, disease shocks, economic shocks, energy shocks, etc) compel more and more members of the general public to look beyond denial, despair, anger and protesting against, escapism, isolationism, survivalism etc. There permaculture awaits, offering a profoundly different way forward. A way focused on designing ourselves back into our local ecosystems and our local ecosystems back into us in a way that boosts community resilience and the health of the whole. Here, it is essential that introductory information, courses and books about permaculture are readily accessible. Indeed, if there were not already many growing communities of interest in permaculture design, this project couldn’t exist. With reference to this new framework, I can now start honing in on what Making Permaculture Stronger is about as it moves forward. Where I’m clear a core focus is participating in and supporting the existence and health of communities of permaculture design practice and inquiry in service of permaculture’s overall health and evolution. Reflecting on this, I am particularly interested in helping to increase the practice side of the interest:practice ratio as high as it wants to go. Once practice is up in a healthy place then the same approach can be taken to upping the number of folk engaged in communities of inquiry. Which brings us directly to certain systemic dynamics that are blocking key flows that I see as highly desirable. Namely what is happening where the question marks are in this diagram: Blockages and Orbits Interest to Practice It is a lot easier to become interested in permaculture design than it is to start practicing it. Let me back that claim up. People regularly tell me they are interested in permaculture design but struggling to find a path from interest into practice. “Tell them to go do a PDC,” you say. Thing is, they all already have at least one PDC, sometimes several. Completing a PDC does not get you across the line. A PDC generally takes you from interested to more interested. The domain of practice still eludes you. As Jason Gerhardt put it, you get shot out of a PDC into a void as large as the whole world. As Ben Haggard put it, you leave this energy-building conversion experience to confront the sheer disjunct between the energy and approach you just experienced and the reality of your everyday life and social circles. I attempt to catch these facts in the framework diagram by making the line between the outside world and communities of interest faint and dashed (i.e., highly permeable) and the line between interest and practice solid. Now I’ll explain the various aspects of the situation that I’ve represented in the diagram. Maybe for fun you can try and decipher yourself first? So the thick black line is folk initially entering communities of interest in permaculture design. After cruising along and perhaps deepening their interest a little, some of them continue being interested, some of them leave to pursue the next thing that has come along (in some cases to later return), some of them do a PDC. The PDC arrow shows a deepening of interest and a bringing up against the cusp of the transition into practice. However as I shared above many people while keen to start practicing get deflected back into the orbit of interest. Some make a second or third attempt by doing a second or third PDC over time. Where of course some get through, as shown. But not that many, as best I can tell. Often those that break through are either already designers of some kind, or are hard-headed and determined enough to just keep charging at the boundary till it yields. Anyways, supporting interested folk to start practicing permaculture design within a community of practice is henceforth a core focus of Making Permaculture Stronger. In the below diagram I show this by helping make at least a section of the boundary between the two more permeable and friendly to navigate. I have no question that this will increase the numbers of folk making it through. I also want to be clear I hold no assumption that everyone will want in. It is totally legitimate to do a PDC then not continue to practice permaculture design. I’m talking about serving the folk that come out of a PDC wanting or called to start practicing, without any expectation of anyone else. I also want to acknowledge the great and many permaculture inquirers out there who are already doing exactly this fine work of helping folk across the line – kudos to you, please reach out and share your learnings with me, and let’s continue to up our game together! My currently active interventions in this space are: hosting a six-weekly gathering of project supporters where we’re developing our permaculture design skills together writing a book sharing the first Phase of this project in an accessible way focused on actual design practice writing another book clearly showing how what I’m calling Living Design Process works on the ground Practice to Inquiry Another category of folk who are semi-regularly in touch have already been practicing permaculture design at a professional level for several or even five or ten years. They have made it through the membrane between interest and practice in their own unique way. However they now find themselves bumping up against certain systemic issues we’ve heard so many of my podcast guests (and myself) mention: Clients not able to receive / understand designs Designs getting second guessed Designs never being implemented Designed systems failing to co-evolve once implemented General sense of disillusionment with the whole design approach they’ve been taught and are trying to make work Sense that a different, better, more inclusive and successful way forward is possible, yet are unsure about how to make some of these new flavours work within their existing business or value-exchange model One way I think about this is that it is all very well and good to make it across the line and to really truly start practising permaculture design. What we generally don’t realise until many years later is that there is this massive rut we almost inevitably fall into. It is a rut that leads to the complaints above. It is the rut of practicing permaculture design using the default design process paradigm of our wider culture. The rut is made from ideas including: design is fundamentally a mechanical process of assembling elements into whole systems permaculture design is a process of inserting objects into empty space design is primary a noun as in a professional-looking picture that is drawn by a qualified expert then handed over to the ‘clients’ the way to create something is first to finish a rationally considered detailed design only then to implement it permaculture design practice is about becoming a designer who does designs for others what ‘clients’ say they want is what they want other have already figured out permaculture design process so we can just run with what they said along with many other ideas we need not crack open right now… Which as I write this gets me reflecting. I feel that some folk have to escape the rut and deepen their practice and make it into a community of inquiry to generate fresh understandings from outside of the rut that then become ladders or frames folk still in the rut can use to get out or clamber clean over it. Where everyone involved supports each-other to stay the heck away from the rut and when they (almost inevitably) start falling back in… Makes me think that part of Making Permaculture Stronger’s interest is calling attention to the rut, growing living bridges right over it, and in the process making the line between communities of practice and inquiry more permeable also: My current experiments in this space of supporting existing designers (including myself) to transform, deepen and grow their practice in community are: Continuing to record interviews with experienced designers and hear about their rut-escaping/hopping adventures Starting a series of podcast episodes where I work one-on-one to support existing designers to transform, deepen and grow their practice. Flick me a message if this sounds like a bit of you and you want to get in line. Part of my emerging intention here is to help create, consolidate and strengthen global and local communities of practicing permaculture designers who are consciously deepening their practice and building unprecedented levels of shared permaculture design process literacy. I mean what the heck – you’re only young once, right? Other Foci Emerging from this Exercise In addition to supporting interested parties to get practicing and practicing parties to deepen their practice, here are two more places I’ll be focusing attention as integral parts of Phase Two: Consciously supporting the development of communities of inquiry My main way of doing this is this blog and podcast and all the conversations happening inside and around them. This feels like it is growing and I’m excited for that. I feel like the main thing is co-creating more spaces and places to support each other’s inquiries and sharings. An annual or bi-annual distributed online gathering? Who knows! One clear inclination I have here is to partner with or at least contribute more to existing forums such as the excellent Permaculture Design Magazine. Within community of inquiry, co-developing process understandings aligned with Permaculture’s originating impulse Now I’ve gone and chopped the tree down, alongside the above things I’ll be focusing on, I want to support myself and others to develop and share process experiments and understandings that grow from and resonate with permaculture’s core. With what Ben Haggard referred to as permaculture’s original creative impulse. Part of this is starting to share more and more about what I’m calling Living Design Process, which is one humble attempt at just that. I am also motivated to continue exploring more of the riches the regenerative living systems thinking approach of Carol Sanford and the Regenesis crew have to offer permaculture. In particular to increasingly use Living Systems Frameworks to non-judgmentally lift our game as permaculture designers. Wrapping Up Okay, that gives you a head up on what is happening from here, toward Making Permaculture Stronger’s current purpose: Making Permaculture Stronger inspires creative exploration and dialogue around permaculture design, in a way that develops our ability to think and act creatively as a community, to enable permaculture practitioners to effect the large scale systemic change we need. Thank you, bless you, and catch you amidst the fun times ahead! Endnotes

That’s right, the February 2020 issue of Permaculture Design Magazine features an article by my good self on the topic of generative transformation (and the below chart). Adapted from a series of past posts here on Making Permaculture Stronger, editor Rhonda Baird invited a contribution and this topic felt like a natural fit with the episode’s focus on emergent design. I can’t wait to get my hands on the whole issue and if you feel the same way go order a copy here or subscribe and support their great service to the permaculture community. As a prelude to this project picking itself back up again after an unexpectedly long summer hibernation (on the surface at least!), I share both a PDF of the article as it appeared in the mag and I’ve recorded a podcast episode where I read the article out for your listening pleasure. I also include Rhonda Baird’s excellent opening comments from the issue’s editorial: Emergent design was one of the leading takeaways for me from our issue exploring Design Process (Permaculture Design #108). Most teachers, according to my understanding, approach the design process as a static, linear one which requires the designer to see and know all things from original principles—implementing them with flawless perfection. The resulting imprint of our imagination onto reality might make Plato proud, but it probably doesn’t happen very often in reality. Recognizing and valuing the fluid, responsive, and messy reality of design and implementation is crucially important. Perhaps it is so important because it requires us to be humble and question our assumptions. But recognizing this messy reality also helps students and clients proceed by accepting there will be valuable mo- ments for feedback and by making adjustments along the way. Adaptability and imaginative response are wonderful foundations for survival and sustainability. More to the point, emergent design allows us to find the growing edge of complex systems and respond ap- propriately. We talk about the concept of “the edge is where the action is.” Permaculturists know the capacity to identify and engage that edge in our rapidly changing world is essential to our success in pushing systems in a positive, life-affirming direction. The more experience we have in design and implementation, the more intuitive our processes become so that design takes less time and realizes more success. How can we work together to ensure others recognize the value of this work? Rhonda Baird – opening words of editorial for issue #115 of the Permaculture Design Magazine Enjoy and catch you very soon with much sharing about the emerging intentions this project will be generatively transforming itself toward in the coming months :-).

In our first ever conversation, Ben Haggard of Regenesis Group shares his history with and perspective on permaculture. This episode catalysed waves of reflection that are blowing my mind. Yes, I was struck with the profound clarity and depth of what Ben shared. Then the sheer resonance of the relevance to exactly where Making Permaculture Stronger is at – well that pretty much knocked me off my seat. You could say I’m still climbing back up off the floor :-). I don’t know about you, dear listener/reader, but I have the real sense that this conversation is itself a nodal intervention in Making Permaculture Stronger’s ongoing evolution. It is like I can feel the energy shifting and growing and generatively transforming throughout my entire being and hence the being of this project. New levels of Will are awakening. I mean I use the terms potential and development (who doesn’t) and before this chat I would have said I had a fairly clear, coherent grasp on what they are. Not any more. I was almost dazzled by the clarity Ben gives these terms in a way that resonates deep in my bones. Then, when he spoke about the idea of permaculture’s originating impulse, well, game over. Let me pen a few reflections on each. Potential After decades of experience and reflection in collaboration with a tight-knit community of practice, Ben has reached a fascinating perspective on what potential is. As I understand him, he sees the potential (or the possible contribution) of something as existing in the tension between that thing’s deep, enduring, inherent character and the ever-changing reality of the context in which it is nested and in particular what this context calls for in this particular “historical and evolutionary moment.” To identify the potential of a farm, a garden, a person, a family, a business, an organisation, a blog project, we need to ask: what is the unique character of this being? then what is currently called for in the immediate, local, and greater wholes it is nested within?, and what could happen here that would harmonise these two things? Which brings us to… Development Clearly, potential often remains latent. For Ben, development is then the practice of actually revealing and manifesting the potential inherent in something, which involves removing anything in the way and becoming more and more relevant and valuable to context. Originating Impulse When Ben first mentioned this phrase late in our chat, I knew immediately it was going to inform my very next steps with Making Permaculture Stronger. So take this as a sneak preview where I’d invite you to start sitting in the space of this all-important question: what was permaculture’s originating impulse? Please don’t rush – take your time with this – there will be space to chime in with what arises for you very soon. One thing here I’d invite if you come across any sound bites or text that speaks of this originating impulse to you, especially if from the early days of permaculture, please send it through to me and I may well include it in the upcoming post. Other Notable Threads what Ben said about permaculture’s usual initiation/conversion experiences and how these can make it very difficult to bring the ideas into one’s existing ways of working I think was well worth further exploration. I mention it here as a reminder to come back to this in future as appropriate. Any thoughts? This idea of the word place as a rare world in English in that it includes people, landscape etc etc… the idea that if you can be with a person or other living entity as it is, you are taking it as whole (as opposed to our default pattern of fragmenting things by paying attention to their various attributes) Links to Stuff Ben is involved in Visit Regenesis Group here. Learn about the Regenerative Practitioner Training here. Learn about the book Ben wrote with Pamela Mang here (Regenerative Development & Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability) Here is the chat with Bill Reed where we dive deep into function, being and will Ben on Place https://vimeo.com/202498056