Invitation to this journey

This course has been designed within an understanding that too often permaculture spaces, workshops and events, despite some efforts, continue to perpetuate toxic dynamics of power, valuing some histories over others, looking at some challenges over many others, limiting a more systemic and complex design approach, and failing to address the base of toxic social patterns that are linked to the climate crises that we are facing today. 

This course has been funded by Permaculture CoLab. 

The CoLab funded a diverse, collective of people – all working in or around permaculture in different parts of the world – and who hadn’t worked together as a team before – to create an offering for others in the Permaculture movement and for wider movements working on environmental justice and sustainability.  You will meet us in the next section. 

We created this course as an offer of a journey – an opportunity for co-learning, paced by the participants’ needs and settings. In this course, the participants get to choose if they want to dive into a self-led journey at their own pace or to form a peer learning group and self-facilitate or to request a facilitator (see list of facilitators that you can approach in the next section; timing and compensation can be discussed directly with them). Both options are available to make this content as accessible as possible through and beyond the permaculture network. 

In this journey, the participants are invited to connect their personal journeys to historical perspectives, by embracing their own complexity within the many layers of the social-ecosystems they belong to. Through this design, participants are challenged to face and take more responsibility for their own learning and unlearning processes within and beyond this course.

Within the space of this course, we encourage participants to embrace vulnerability and to cultivate authenticity and we include ourselves, the co-designers, as co-learners as well, acknowledging that learning and unlearning are continuous processes for all of us.

That’s why as part of the journey – we are also sharing what came up for us – within us and between us as we were designing, inviting participants to be part of this conversation, dialogue and co-creation as they join the course. 

Within the course, we designed many spaces for the participants to take the time to look at power dynamics from many perspectives, making ‘invisibilized’ structures and social dynamics more visible. As co-designers it was important to create many spaces for participants to make the connections between the visible layers and silenced layers more apparent, and their connections more relatable through an embodied experience and not via an overly ‘intellectualized’ approach.

It is important to have in mind that this journey won’t be linear, nor comfortable, despite the linearity of the platform this course is embedded in. 

So, if you decide to join us on this journey, make sure to save time and carve some space in your routine, so you can go beyond the surface. But remember – it is up to you, each participant, to decide how deep to go with the exercises presented.

How to Get the Most Out of this course

Some encouragement for the journey

Be supportive. Encourage and support your fellow learners. No one here is looking for your criticism or cynicism. (We can get those things on the rest of the Internet).

Share generously. Your stories and experiences may help you gain insight into your experience, and may help others better understand themselves and their experiences. 

Be constructive. We’re here to move beyond limited thinking that divides us, and into learning spaces which will bring us together. Find ways to help each other think more deeply, see other perspectives and stay open and curious even through discomfort.

Don’t spam, promote, or troll.  This course helps help you learn. It’s not a place to spam, promote, or bully anyone else.

You’re a Part of Something Bigger

By joining this course, you’re also a member of a Permaculture Learning space: Feel free to widen your learning and connect with our overarching community. You’ll be able to keep up with conversations happening on this course, as well as on the wider Permaculture Community Hub (think about it as our own Social network newsfeed with Course and other activity all in one place).

Let’s get started.