Making Permaculture Stronger

Sometimes I find myself inside a dialogue that deeply meets me where I am and lifts me up to a place with more clarity, more vitality, and more possibility. This episode with Pamela Mang was one of these. Pamela is long-term friend and colleague of past guests Carol Sanford, Joel Glanzberg, Ben Haggard, and Bill Reed. She has been working in the space of regenerative design, resourcing and development for many decades. Co-founder of Regenesis Group, she is co-author (with Ben) of the 2016 book Regenerative Design and Development. She is also part of the faculty that runs The Regenerative Practitioner (TRP) programme. In this dialogue Pamela helps me grok the tetrad of regenerative development that Regenesis works from in relation to my own work on Living Design Process. From this paper which in turn sourced it from Regenesis group. https://youtu.be/UJdnMghawTY Upcoming TRPs in NZ and AU Enrolments for the next Australian programme for TRP are open July 15th – August 19, 2022 and the programme commences on September 7th, 2022. Contact me if you’d like to be connected to Drika, Alana or Lara who are the AU co-hosts. Enrolments for the next New Zealand programme are open July 15th – August 13th and the programme commences on September 2nd, 2022. I am considering enrolling myself so I may see you on the course. Contact me if you’d like to be connected to Lucy-Mary who is the NZ liaison. Quotable Quotes Now for a few things Pamela said that I was moved to write down here: Design should be a vitalising process. It creates new vitality, new energies that can source different orders of health, different orders of understanding and so on Pamela Mang Pamela Mang The secret about these frameworks is that they don’t replace intuition. They hone it Pamela Mang Living Design Process Find out more about the Living Design Process Pamela was resourcing me to look at through the tetrad framework here – the next online course of Living Design Process kicks off August 6th 2022 (why not complete before your TRP and make this a year of next-level learning!). Support the Making Permaculture Stronger Book Project This episode also marks the launch of a crowdfunding campaign to fund the creation of the Making Permaculture Stronger book – here’s the video and here’s a link to the campaign page. Support us and feel the good vibes that follow :-). https://youtu.be/1O8KY_Rb-2U

Enjoy part of two of this rich dialogue about bringing Living Design Process to professional permaculture design consultancy. Will make more sense if you listen to Part One first. An aerial photo of the Mayberry project which is mentioned in this episode and is a good example of a design process that uses earthworks and trees to create beautiful organic spaces in between…

Many thanks to Alec Higgins for prompting this exploration. In the first of two instalments, we develop premises for transitioning into professional permaculture design work. Enjoy and to learn more about working with Living Design Process please visit www.LivingDesignProcess.org – the next course starts in August and you can learn more about it here. A photo of the early development of the project I explored with John Caruthers here. From drone footage by Peter Watts

It was an honour to connect in this episode with Daniel Christian Wahl to explore what it means to align with life’s regenerative impulse. Here’s Daniel’s book Designing Regenerative Cultures, his Medium Blog and here’s his wonderful youtube series Voices of the Regeneration. Early on Daniel mentions Christopher Alexander’s Challenge to Permaculture. A few times he mentions Henri Bortoft’s book The Wholeness of Nature. Daniel Christian Wahl Enjoy, thanks to Daniel for visiting Making Permaculture Stronger, and thanks to our mutual friend Clinton Callahan for connecting us.

In this lively second conversation (find the first here) Clinton Callahan and I dive right in to swap notes on the dynamics of living creation processes. We cover creating from fear, chaos, and the groundless void as well as feelings, the unknown, the phoenix process, surfing the wave you are are, and much else. https://youtu.be/qKNGwiqGxTo You can find out more about Clinton at his website here and during our chat he mentioned fearclub.org, rageclub.org and possibilityteam.org

On March 17, 2022, at 85 years of age, Christopher Alexander passed away peacefully in his home in West Sussex, England. This post celebrates his life, and for me, personally, the sheer magnitude his work has had on the course of my life, including Making Permaculture Stronger as a project. If any of you have been touched by this project, then you have been indirectly impacted by Alexander’s life-long quest toward life, beauty and wholeness. Find out about who Alexander was here and here and here and here. Learn about Alexander’s direct influence on my (Dan Palmer’s) work, and on this very project here and here. A Poem Thank you to Ann Medlock, a past client (and hence collaborator) of Alexander’s, for permission to share these photos and this poem here: Alexander sculpts a building out of air and wisdom waving his hands squinting his eyes to see what only he and God can see in this clearing on the bluff. Listening to something we cannot hear, he brings into being a house so solid, silent and calm, so embracing, consoling and inevitable, that it draws in and restores every open soul that finds its way here. And many do. Pilgrims who have heard, who’ve seen a photograph, who sense that here there is something mysterious, rare, perhaps even inspired. On a clear blue afternoon we sit at a long table in the sun, the house embracing this garden and all of us who bask here amid the calendulas and ferns. Feasting on tabouli and cold birds, we talk of poetry and paintings, of terraces in Tuscany and homemade wine, of our work, our passions, our quests. We are friends, gathered here by the grace that emanates from this holy place. At Christmas, the clan assembles. The tree, dressed in familiar ornaments, touches the coffered ceiling and sends the scent of balsam to mingle with fire, roast and cakes. Thick walls hold out the cold, the wind, and every danger of the world we know. Comets cut across the high windows as we are drawn in and held fast, together, blessed by the house that Alexander made, while listening to God. Three Examples of Directly Alexander-Inspired Design Processes https://vimeo.com/456075580/0e4846f331 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2k35m_Q9xg&ab_channel=MakingPermacultureStronger https://youtu.be/l8lffVxj7DI Some Quotes Here I share a selection of some of my favourite quotes from Alexander’s many books. The Timeless Way of Building (1979) You are alive when you are wholehearted, true to yourself, true to your own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations you are in. […] To be happy, and to be alive, in this sense, are almost the same. Of course, if you are alive, you are not always happy in the sense of feeling pleasant; experiences of joy are balanced by experiences of sorrow. But the experiences are all deeply felt; and above all, you are whole; and conscious of being real. To be alive, in this sense, is not a matter of suppressing some forces or tendencies, at the expense of others; it is a state of being in which all forces which arise in you can find expression; you live in balance among the forces which arise in you; you are unique as the pattern of forces which arises is unique; you are at peace, since there are no disturbances created by underground forces which have no outlet, at one with yourself and your surroundings. This state cannot be reached merely by inner work. There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that you need do only inner work, in order to be alive like this; that you are entirely responsible for your problems; and that to cure yourself, you need only change yourself. This teaching has some value, since it is so easy to imagine that your problems are caused by “others.” But it is a one-sided and mistaken view which also maintains the arrogance of the belief that the individual is self-sufficient, and not dependent in any essential way on their surroundings. The fact is, you are so far formed by your surroundings, that your state of harmony depends entirely on your harmony with your surroundings. Some kinds of physical and social circumstances help you come to life. Others make it very difficult. (pp. 105-106, edited by me from third into second person voice) Building designed by Alexander within Eishen Campus in Japan This next quote changed my whole approach to design: This [approach to design] is a differentiating process. It views design as a sequence of acts of complexification; structure is injected into the whole by operating on the whole and crinkling it, not by adding little parts to one another. In the process of differentiation, the whole gives birth to its parts: the parts appear as folds in a cloth of three dimensional space which is gradually crinkled. The form of the whole, and the parts, come into being simultaneously. The image of the differentiating process is the growth of an embryo. It starts as a single cell. The cell grows into a ball of cells. Then, through a seri

In this episode Brianne Vaillancourt and I explore the the edge between Possibility Management and Permaculture. In particular we explore the potential to harness conscious feelings in our design work. Having started this conversation back in episode fifteen with Clinton Callahan, I feel joy to be going there again. Joy because the clarity of the distinctions I have learned in Possibility Management contexts are contributing so much to my work in design, holding space, and my life generally. Brianne Vaillancourt & Dan Palmer Learn more about Brianne (and sign up to her newsletter!) through her personal website. Learn more about Clinton at his personal website. Learn more about Anne-Chloé Destremau, who Brianne mentions, here. Learn more about Possibility Management, Rage Club, Fear Club and Mage Training which are all mentioned. Something that wasn’t mentioned, but I was thinking of during the episode, is this site using the term Whole Permaculture to explore the Permaculture-Possibility Management bridge. If you are interested in learning more about Possibility Management in an actual training experience, I recommend this online Expand the Box training run by my friend, colleague and guide Vera Franco. Huge thanks to Ellen’ Schwindt for the musical intermission – below is a video of the larger composition I sample. Let me know if these things work for you and I’ll get them in more often! https://player.vimeo.com/video/529143485

In this episode in was my pleasure to get to know permaculture consultant Eliosa Lewis from New Climate Culture. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about Eloisa’s journey and work and look forward to having her back. Here is a link to Kevin Bayuk of Project Drawdown that Eloisa speaks so highly of. Here is the crypto token She talks about: https://icube.finance I look forward to your comments (including questions for future conversations with Eloisa) and at the start I mention online events on Holistic Decision Making and Living Design Process you can find out more about here.

In this episode it is my great pleasure to welcome Carol Sanford back to explore her brand new book Indirect Work. To support and celebrate the book’s launch, Carol has offered a giveaway offer exclusively for listeners of Making Permaculture Stronger. If you listen to and then share this episode on your website or any of your social media channels (such as sharing from the Making Permaculture Stronger facebook page), and then let me know about it, you go into the draw to access: A free copy of Indirect Work posted to your door A free ticket to a 90-minute Q&A on Indirect Work with Carol 10am PT, May 2, 2022 ($200 value) The link to download a pdf Self-Assessment for Regenerative Integrity. $100 value There are also a bunch of different offers for buying different numbers of books here on Carol’s site. Now, a little taste of what this book is all about. Carol explains that: indirect work is building the capacity in people to consistently think at higher levels in order to create innovations for advancing specific contexts and streams of activity. This capacity allows us to become instruments for the regeneration and evolution of the living systems within which we are nested—to become effective change agents. Carol Sanford Here are a few of my favourite passages in the book. For example, every time we try to solve a problem, dividing it into its components to understand it better, seeking to figure out its causes in order to address them, we fall under the spell of classical mechanics. Every time we translate something into a replicable (and therefore scalable) procedure or recipe, we’ve stepped into a machine universe. This is so pervasive in Western and now global culture that it becomes invisible to us. It can be very difficult to get our minds to shake off this continually reinforced pattern in order to question our fundamental shared beliefs about how the universe works. Earlier I said that this book was addressed to well-intentioned people who seek to make the world a better place through the instruments that are available to them, such as business, social activism, or creation of policies and institutions. I also said that most of these efforts are likely to be compromised or fail because they still operate from an old paradigm, within which the world is assembled from discrete pieces, each playing its part in a cosmic machine. Our machine-based metaphors are so pervasive that we hardly notice them: input, output, feedback, leverage, rewiring, reprogramming, metrics, ideal state, and on and on. A living or regenerative paradigm has a very different character and uses correspondingly different metaphors. It starts with an image of the living, dynamic, and unfolding universe, in which each entity is endowed with the spark of life and an innate capacity for growth and evolution with regard to how it expresses itself. Working from this paradigm, one doesn’t attempt to push the world and its inhabitants to an ideal state—that would be coercive and life denying. Rather, one encourages and enables living beings to discover and express their innate potential as contributors to living communities. For those of us who truly want to transform the world, it is the regenerative paradigm that will enable us to do so. This confronts us with an important question. Are the underlying beliefs, assumptions, patterns, and language that characterize my culture derived from a machine or a living systems paradigm? And if I want to cultivate a living systems culture, what must I do I to help with the shift? (note – Carol answers this question in our conversation!) Consciousness is the necessary antidote to our overwhelming tendency to engage in automatic habits of thought and behavior. In its absence, these habits extend to the most general reaches of our collective understanding of the universe, itself, conceived of by Western Europeans in the time of the Renaissance as a giant clockwork. This peculiarity of regional imagination has now become the dominant paradigm of reality worldwide. As such, it has created a self-reinforcing loop in which the mechanistic universe is reflected in the conceptualization of our bodies and minds as biological machines and our institutions as social machines. Thus, we invent mechanistic metaphors and processes for educating and healing ourselves. In other words, we resort to conditioning, a default approach that is precisely the opposite of living free, self-determined human lives. And, in a mechanical feedback process, this conditioning reinforces the already prevalent tendency toward automatism. But the process of accretion of information and action, no matter how comprehensive, will never on its own generate the shift in perspective that allows us to engage with a living whole. If anything, the tendency to aggregate and integrate only serves to reinforce the problems associated with fragmentation. This is because it derives its raw materials from the underlying practi

In this episode I re-release an interview Millie Haughey recently did with me for her own podcast which is called Unplugged, Tapped In. We explore the idea that most of us are trapped in the all-pervasive cage of mechanical worldview without even realising it and what becomes possible when the cage is seen and the door out is located. This will be a theme of some upcoming writing and solo episodes also. In the intro I mention Millie’s interview with my dear friend and long-term Making Permaculture Stronger collaborator James Andrews. I also mention this episode in which I interviewed the founder of Possibility Management Clinton Callahan (or see as youtube here). During the chat I mention Carol Sanford a fair bit too.

In this episode I get to inquire into permaculture design process with Penny Livingston-Stark. Penny has been teaching internationally and working professionally in the land management, regenerative design, and permaculture development field for 25 years and has extensive experience in all phases of ecologically sound design and construction as well as the use of natural non-toxic building materials. She specializes in site planning and the design of resource-rich landscapes integrating, rainwater collection, edible and medicinal planting, spring development, pond and water systems, habitat development and watershed restoration for homes, co-housing communities, businesses, and diverse yield perennial farms. She as taught Herbal Medicine Making, Natural Building and Permaculture around the US as well as Bali, Indonesia, Peru, Germany, Mexico, France, Turkey, Portugal, Australia, Belize, Brazil, England and Costa Rica. Check out Penny’s website here and the ecoversity course she mentions here. Check out the offerings I mention on Holistic Decision Making here and Living Design Process here. Oh and please tell me what you think of the new soundtrack too with mega-gratitude to Pip Heath for creating it!

In this episode I share a lovely dialogue with Bill Houghton, a long-term follower and supporter of Making Permaculture Stronger who recently reached out to connect. I love his opener: “I’m just intrigued as hell to know where you’re going man!” Enjoy, and know I am so appreciating the richness of your comments and messages as we navigate this journey together. Bill Houghton

Hey all. I have been so energised from the spirit and content of comments on my last post/episode. Not to mention the private messages coming through. Then Jason reached out and helped me take it up a notch in this delightful dialogue. A dialogue sparked by how the last post/episode fed into some of his latest adventures and insights. Enjoy, do let me know what this stirs up or brings alive inside of you (in the comments or a message through the contact form). Then catch you all in part two of the talking points series – can’t wait! Also, I have a few questions for you to ponder. Deep down, which image best represents the lens you look through and hence the world you see? How sure are you about this? This: or this: ps. One little note of clarity is that I’ve personally been referring to mechanical and living worldviews (of which there are others, I just happen to be focusing on these two right now). Then I have been using the word paradigm to refer to the four levels of paradigm Carol Sanford has previously shared with us. I wanted to acknowledge that in this dialogue we use the words paradigms and worldviews more loosely where when mechanistic paradigm is spoken of this is exactly the same as the mechanistic worldview I’ve been talking about in recent and upcoming posts.

Making Permaculture Stronger’s core focus is regenerating permaculture design process together. By this, I mean the deep and hard work of a) honing in on permaculture’s essential core, and b) sourcing and developing design process understandings from, and in alignment with, that place. A necessary aspect of this work is developing new material (ideas, metaphors, diagrams, examples, practices etc). An equally necessary aspect is making space for this new material by finding and letting go of material that does not align or belong. I believe this work is like an acupuncture point essential to the development of permaculture’s radical, needed and enormous potential. I also believe that this work, which is ours, as permaculturalists, to do, has barely begun. This series of three blog posts and corresponding podcast episodes is a heart-felt invitation into this kind of work. Where I want to be clear for you, and in within myself, that I am not writing this stuff as any kind of expert or person-with-the-answers. While I have a couple of tentative conclusions and perspectives, I mainly have a wealth of questions and a passionate commitment to create and hold spaces inside of which this kind of work can happen. So, let the experiment begin. This series was prompted by the appearance of an exciting new book into the literature of permaculture design. Its title is Building your Permaculture Property, its authors permaculture teachers and designers Rob Avis, Michelle Avis, and Takota Coen (who is also a commercial farmer). The book lays out a clear and comprehensive approach to permaculture design process. A process the authors have developed over decades of combined practical experience, both personal and professional. I celebrate the existence of this book and all the hard-won learning that has gone into it. Furthermore, I believe this book is a profound contribution to exactly the kind of work I have just been describing.1 It is also true that when I initially flipped through it, I felt some big feelings. Feelings that are informing and energising my effort to write these posts. Feelings that part of my current experiment involves me sharing openly here. I felt JOY in the sheer existence of this heart-felt, earnest attempt to advance the clarity and rigour of permaculture design. This work is so needed and such a gaping hole in permaculture that these three wonderful humans have done their very best to help fill. I am still feeling really happy about this as I am at the obvious extent of collaboration between the authors whose different strengths flow into and make the book so much better than any one of them could have made it. I felt ANGER to note a disconnect between the presentation of design process in the book and the design process developments and dialogues I have been involved in though Making Permaculture Stronger. From my perspective seemingly fertile opportunities for cross-pollination have not happened, where, to come to the point, the book includes much material that I have poured a lot of my life-force into arguing does not belong in, or do justice to, permaculture’s design process potential.2 While this anger has since mostly receded, it is still there also. I felt SAD to reflect on the resulting prognosis for permaculture’s evolution, if there are not established systems for pooling and collaboratively crash-testing and co-developing our mutual advances. If every design process book lays out its own take largely in isolation from a larger field of collaborative development. I felt AFRAID, considering my impression of the disconnect, how I might channel these feelings toward engaging with the authors about their work in a positive, constructive way. Afraid of how gaps I perceive between our perspectives might be bridged without bridges being burned! I feel this fear still. Finally, I felt a different kind of ANGER in seeing what seemed to me to be a profusion of superficial endorsements of the book (including my own!) that did not show any depth of engagement with its ideas. This sort of superficial blanket praise appears to be the norm in permaculture and I’m concerned what that means for permaculture’s capacity to be in the game of evolution. If it is all “your ideas are great and my ideas are great and we’re all on the same page, hoorah for permaculture” when, let’s face it, at least some of our ideas aren’t that great and, if you actually open the book, we are not all on the exact same page!! Well this is a first for Making Permaculture Stronger, publicly sharing my feelings ahead of my thoughts. Indeed, in the last few months I have had to do a lot of work on myself to get to the point where I am capable of bringing the energy I want to bring to this whole engagement. I feel like I am there, and I can now do this, so long as I keep a close eye on myself as I go along. Let us see how we go. Maybe you can keep a close eye on me als

In this episode we explore part of what it means, or might mean, to bring indigenous perspectives to permaculture design with Laura Adams from Seven Winds LLC in Maryland, USA. This episode started with an email from Laura sharing some thoughts on the last episode: Greetings Dan,I have been listening to your podcast with great interest over the last several months whilst taking part in Geoff Lawton’s online PDC. (Although I have been exploring permaculture for many years) I am also a supporter of and very excited about the Reading Landscape Film, congratulations on making the goal. I was prompted to send this note when I heard the most recent podcast you released regarding a conversation with your core group about systems thinking and more. In that podcast you encouraged your listeners to hit pause and answer the question(s) themselves prior to continuing to passively listen which led me to engage with the conversation more actively and I thought there may be a value in sharing a perspective. I agree with you that when you prod systems thinking, it quickly dissolves back to parts, and I believe this is because it evolved from parts thinking (or mechanistic thinking) in the first place. However generative or regenerative thinking is totally different (until the word gets co-opted). I come at permaculture from the perspective of a cultural and spiritual root which is Kongo-Taino out of the Caribbean. When we look at something (be it a person, place, river, mountain, event), the first thing we acknowledge is that it is “Un Misterios” (effectively a spirit) and we know that we cannot possibly understand it fully and if we pull it into its parts, the essence of it (the spirit) will disappear on us. The mode of approach is one of listening and sensing and letting it tell us about itself, knowing that this process could be indefinite. Over time that place (or person, animal, what have you) slowly reveals different aspects or understandings of itself to us, if we continue to pay attention (or “follow the trail”). For sake of illustration, let’s say we are talking about a particular land, it could be a “property” a landowner has purchased. Your typical permaculture designer is going to go in and analyze it for water, access, structures and the various desires the landowner expresses interest in. This is a big improvement on blindly going in a throwing structures and access wherever. However, the land itself has its own spirit, as does everyone who lives on it. I really do not see that permaculture as taught even tries to understand this. The reason is simple, it cannot be measured, easily seen, or “proven”. This is where Indigenous or Re-indigenized culture clashes with Permaculture. I understand that people want to shy away from terms that cannot fully be defined such as “spirit” (or even essence). However geometry is built upon three undefined terms- a point, line and plane. I do understand why permaculture teachers do not want to get into these waters, (there would be a big backlash and accusations of pseudoscience). Yet, permaculture wants to cosy up with Indigenous cultures (and it should do this to reach its potential). However, if you do want to cosy up with Indigenous cultures, then you have to be ready to see life as infinite worlds within worlds, each one essentially Un Misterios. Keep up the good work! Laura Seven Winds LLC To which I replied: Laura thank you so much for your beautiful email where everything you share resonates with and inspires me deeply. Isn’t it such a muddle how we find ourselves trying to force the deep beautiful mysterious and sacred essence-spirit of a place into our puny little mechanical containers and how in doing so we cut ourselves off from perhaps the most deeply nourishing and soul-warming energies there are to access as a human being (namely relaxing back into the larger pattern of life).Un Misterios. Love it. Two questions. First, would you consider sharing your words as a comment on the shownotes – I want to welcome reflections such as these (which in part help me feel less alone and crazy) on the site, and hope they will in turn prompt related reflections from others. Second, would you be up for getting on a call about this stuff some time that we record toward the possibility of feeding into a future episode? Warmly, to stay in touch, and thank you again for reaching out and for supporting the Reading Landscape film! Dan Luckily for me Laura agreed to a chat and so we booked in and recorded what became this episode. Afterward Laura then followed up with this comment: Dan, It was lovely chatting with you earlier this week. Our conversation sparked some further pondering on the essence of design not just for utilitarian purposes but as a pathway to deeper connection to the heart of life. I respect that you have the courage to put yourself out there as a professional in this regard, as to an extent it is a lot easier to keep one’s profession and one’s pers

In a world first for this project, this episode shares one of last year’s sessions with the Making Permaculture Stronger Developmental Community. Huge thanks to Han Kortekaas, Ronella Gomez, Nicholas Franz, Zola Rose, Barry Gibson, Jon Buttery, Arthur Buitelaar, Dan Milne, Byron Birss & Joel Mortimer for co-creating this with me and for their gracious permission to share here. Here are some of us during a more recent session. Learn more about the Making Permaculture Stronger Developmental Community here. Below is the section on systems thinking in the book Practical Permaculture by Jessi Bloom & Dave Boehnlein (p. 18) that is mentioned during this episode. This section is viewable as a free preview at google books. Similarly, you can also check out page 20 of Toby Hemenway’s The Permaculture City here if you like. From Practical Permaculture by Jessi Bloom & Dave Boehnlein

In this episode my friend John Carruthers shares five insights or principles he’s distilled during five years of developing a 70-acre property in Central Victoria, Australia. It was an honour to act for a part of the journey as what John describes as a ‘robust river guide,’ and I am so thrilled to see John and his partner Rosie in full stewardship of their own process and the beautiful forms that are emerging from it. Here is the video we mention several times in the chat – thanks to John for permission to share it here. https://vimeo.com/576929584/2f23122b41 https://vimeo.com/576929584/2f23122b41 John also sent these further notes: a) the deep ripping across the southern half of the property begun this year is an “option value” decision because it’s an excellent BNS (Best Next Step) for almost any other activity thereafter, be it cover-crop pre-pasture, shelter belt tree planting, or agroforestry or silvopasture. It’s a valuable precursor step. b) The widely-spaced keylined beds in one paddock is where we’ve begun planting oaks, silky oaks, cedar and native pines as a long-term (inter-generational) agroforestry / silvopasture trial. We have planted several hundred this year and forecast planting three times that over a few years. The oaks are being planted from acorns we collected and germinated. This first planting is our BNS before switching focus to the house site early next year. Also the quote I cited “I count him braver who overcomes his desires, than who conquers his enemies – for the hardest victory is over self” is by Aristotle NOT Socrates – as I may have suggested 🙂 If anyone is interested in connecting with John or in the services of drone pilot and film maker Peter Watts send me a message and I can connect you. I also tracked down this video of my first visit to Limestone road, which we talk about in the chat too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESvvzbEOwjk and I found this one also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sprRI18xYw Finally I am excited to announce that today is the first day of our in-house six week crowd funding campaign for the Reading Landscape Documentary Film project. Come get amongst! https://vimeo.com/575191911

It was my pleasure to yarn with Sand Talk author Tyson Yunkaporta on permaculture and much else. Tyson’s perspective complements and contrasts with that of Leah Penniman in the last episode. Please do tell me what you got from the chat in the comments below! Tyson Yunkaporta Permaculture isn’t a form of gardening – it’s a method of inquiry about relationships – that’s all it is. And it’s awesome and in that way it’s similar to traditional ecological knowledge from all over the planet and it’s a constantly shifting evolving body of knowledge too, that’s never the same in the same place twice. Love it! Tyson Yunkaporta The above quote comes from this talk between Tyson and my friends at the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance: https://youtu.be/61XN9_uILpU?t=3543 Also a big shout out to my my three friends Woody, Meg and Patrick who make up Artist as Family who Tyson speaks about in the yarn. Coincidentally Woody is to appear in our upcoming documentary film about reading landscape. To learn more about that project visit the website www.ReadingLandscape.org and either subscribe to the newsletter or donate to get invited to a free project zoom call on July 15, 2021, with David Holmgren, filmmaker Dave Meagher, and myself.

It was a deep honour to have Leah Penniman from Soul Fire Farm join me for this conversation. Along with Leah’s beautiful sharing, I was grateful for the feelings the conversation evoked (many of which only emerged when I listened to our chat again afterwards). I feel like I gained some powerful waypoints in navigating the journey back home. A journey I’m sure I’m not alone in craving. I also appreciated hearing the heartache Leah has around certain patterns she perceives permaculture to be perpetuating. My focus in the conversation was about inviting and engaging with Leah’s perspective. A perspective which comes from her standing outside permaculture and looking in. I would love to hear your perspective in the comments below. What of Leah’s experience of permaculture resonates with your own? What, if anything, doesn’t? What impact, if any, does you listening to this episode have on your journey forward? Learn more about Soul Fire Farm here, and check out a rich trove of Leah sharings on youtube here. This one’s a goodie: https://youtu.be/zvQJP8QP-Ng And here’s one helpful summary vid in which Leah shares the Soul Fire Farm journey: https://youtu.be/LVZq3jITD2g Also here’s a link to the work of Toshi Reagon (see also Toshi’s Opera about Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower Opera) that Leah recommends during our chat. Which, by the way, I must mention happened way back on January 8th, 2021. What did this conversation evoke in you? Would you like to hear more conversations of this nature on the show? Should I share Tyson Yunkaporta’s perspectives on the same matters in the next episode? Please let me know in a comment below!

In this conversation, which follows on from the previous episode, explores Looby Macnamara’s design web. We dive into the topic of emergent design process, and in particular Looby’s design web approach to designing anything. I was pleasantly surprised to discover in my preparations for this chat that Looby is a co-traveller in the realm of design process innovation, earnestly striving via the design web to get free of traps such as: Viewing design process as a linear sequence of steps The logical fallacy of having “design” be one of the steps within the whole “design” process Having observation as a step as if at some point you stop observing Getting too prescriptive about the end state you are heading toward Separating planning from action in ways that cripple the possibility of the best outcomes and discoveries Getting paralysed by complexity Getting stuck in one’s head Mechanical (as opposed to biological and ecological) metaphors Learn more about Looby’s work including books and courses at her Cultural Emergence site here. Also if you’re keen to have Looby support you / us in applying the design web to something in our own lives, make a comment below and if there is enough interest and enthusiasm we’ll make it so! Here is the design web: Looby Macnamara’s Design Web Here is a juicy quote I pulled out from Looby’s latest book Cultural Emergence: The Design Web is a non-linear process with non-linear outcomes and possibilities. Emergent design reflects the flexibility and unexpectedness of Cultural Emergence. It allows for solutions to emerge that take the design in a new direction. It is organic, responsive, adaptive, fluid, flowing and dynamic. As the design emerges we continue to weave our way between the anchor points. An attitude of emergence enables us to flow and move with what is arising. It recognises that things are not always as they seem, there is more to discover and be revealed. The process is alchemical with surprises along the way. Designing regenerative cultures is an ongoing process of emergence, not a permanent destination. We are designing for and with living systems that are organic, dynamic and unpredictable. We are setting direction and intentions. It is an invitation for change, rather than being exact or prescriptive. Looby Macnamara in Cultural Emergence