Helen White
Yoga
As well as working for the Permaculture Association, Helen has been teaching Iyengar Yoga for over 13 years. Come along and have a stretch out before you start your day. Suitable for anyone and everyone!
Chris Walsh
Supply Chain Co-operation
Gain a clear understanding of the challenges and solutions to creating economically viable models of food supply. Find out about the Kindling Trust's approach to creating livelihoods and resilient local food economies, and challenge and inform Kindling's economic model.
Val Grainger
Introduction to designing for livestock in permaculture
We will be looking mostly at small livestock, poultry, sheep, pigs and goats.
We will be looking at zoning, stacking and functions, the place of livestock within sustainable systems, UK and EU legislation and welfare, care and management, including the feed debate over concentrates.
We will look at grazing systems, ecology and deliberate and accidental ecological damage, woodland and forest garden livestock systems etc
It will be suitable for those who want to eat meat and those who don't.
Sandy James
Narrative Evaluation
A tool for Learning And Network Demonstration (LAND) Centres and public projects.
Pippa Chapman
Designing Guilds and polycultures
By the end of this session you should be able to plan/design a polyculture with a maintenance/tweaking plan. Gain a list of successful combinations to share.
Alison Ensor
An overview of Foxfield House and Garden Project, a Learning And Network Demonstration Centre
Foxfield House has beautiful systems and a garden that produces food for Alison and her family, as well as supporting a diversity of wildlife.
www.permaculture-alison.co.uk
Elisabeth Thorogood
Making Crochet Hooks from green wood
Making crochet hooks beginning with just a twig. Suitable for children and adults.
Elisabeth is the youngest workshop leader at the convergence. She has won prizes for her woodwork at the Heckington Show, and delivered a workshop at the Eastern Gathering in July. The workshop will show us how to make a crochet hook from a sycamore twig, and if time, she will also give a demonstration of finger crochet whilst blindfolded!
Helen White will act as assistant.
Simon Watkins
'Permaquakerism' - Resonant neighbours in thought
This workshop will introduce areas of resonance between the practice of Permaculture and Quaker ideas. Originally a movement for religious and social change, Quakerism aligned itself with ideas of peaceful co-existence, simplicity, equality and community that have in more recent times found new expression in concern for our relationship with the natural world. The workshop will explore how the combined effect of these 'testimonies' on the quaker worldview potentially creates patterns of thought and action that may be familiar to permaculture designers; and conversely how permaculture might help Quakers gain fresh insights into community, growth and 'living simply'.
Participants may be inspired by new examples of thinking from a different but complementary worldview. We hope to have a fruitful and lively exchange of ideas.
Naomi Van Der Velden
GROW - food growing and soil research for permaculture practitioners
Help to design permaculture experiments and shape a Europe-wide citizen science project!
Would you like to join people near you and all across Europe collaborating to create and share knowledge on soil, the land, and what crops to plant, when and how, under a changing climate? Working together we aim to convene a community of thousands of growers, gardeners, smallholders and citizen scientists across Europe to harness the collective power of shared and open data and knowledge.
The GROW Observatory aims over the next three years to generate valuable information for science on the soil and land that surrounds us, and equip people with knowledge and skills on growing for food and sustainable land use. We hope to underpin smart and sustainable custodianship of land and soil, whilst meeting the demands of food production.
Ryan Sandford-Blackburn
Producing and distributing video content
From quick and simple videos on a smartphone, shared online, to working with a crew to produce promotional video (and stages in between). Learn how to bring your project, products and campaign to life. Videos are a valuable resource in communicating our messages to a wider audience. How can we best use the tools and technology available to us to produce high quality videos to meet our aims? This will be a sharing of practical tips and discussion of ideas, please bring your experiences to share!
Participants will know what resources are required to produce and distribute video. They will have heard ideas and start to see how they can implement. Ryan is the Strategic Communications Coordinator at the Permaculture Association as well as a freelance digital communications consultant. He has produced over 120 short videos and has a Ba (Hons) degree in Film & TV Production.
www.onlinecomms.co.uk
Geoff Lawton - Permaculture Research Institute
Setting up demonstration sites as education centres & training permaculture project managers
We're delighted that Geoff and Nadia Lawton will be attending this year's Convergence to present a series of workshops from their work around the world. Geoff is a renowned permaculture teacher famous for his work, alongside Nadia, regreening the desert in the Middle East. Geoff set up the long established Permaculture Research Institute in Australia, has worked in over 50 countries and taught 15,000 students in person or via his popular online courses.
Harriet Walsh
Hackspaces - technology and self-reliance
Find out what a hackspace is and how to find one near you. We will look at a demo of a woad pigment extraction model made in a hackspace, using simple electronic hacking with arduino controller and temperature sensor, with a presentation of the design process and kit involved. Connect and share with other people interested in hacking/making and be inspired to hack your own project.
Permaculture Association Farm Working Group
Celia Ashman will lead an update on the next steps for the Farm Working Group. This is a space for anyone who identifies as a farmer or grower to gather together, share stories with the new Permaculture Association Farmers & Growers Network.
The idea to establish a specific network came from a group of members, who have been working behind the scenes on designing a new website, setting up a facebook group and twitter account. We want to connect with others who are working in the same field (no pun intended) so if you're passionate about commercial / high self-reliance food growing come and say hello!
Friends of Permaculture - building support for activists in the poorest areas of Britain
The Permaculture Association will be launching a Friends of Permaculture scheme later this year and seeks to raise significant funds to support the next generation of permaculture activists working in or with communities facing the multiple challenges of poverty.
We will briefly outline the scheme, and then invite reflections on how we could best support and engage permaculture activists working in the poorest areas of Britain. We want to build a movement for change. It will start small and slow, help us take our first steps.
Nadia Lawton
School gardens across the world
Nadia’s talk will be focusing on school gardens across the world, specifically school gardens in Jordan where she has worked in Palestinian refugee villages in the Dead Sea Valley, plus the school gardens of Amman and what it is like to implement and maintain a good school demonstration project in a difficult situation.
Nadia will talk not only about why permaculture school gardens are of value to children but also how they are of value to the school itself and how they have been accepted by the community.
Almost all of the curricula lessons within a school can be included in the processes of working the school garden. Also the initial design work and how that fits into the local climate, landscape and cultural variations.
PRI Jordan has won awards for what they have achieved with the environmental education and broad based education that can be included in school gardens.
permaculturenews.org/author/nadialawton
Steve Charter
Regenerative Leadership
This workshop offers a participative dialogue to explore the needs for a leadership programme for the Permaculture movement and associated communities of change-makers.
Graham Truscott
Engaging Suburbia? Whistlewood Common - a case study workshop
In 2013 ten acres of land came up for sale in Melbourne in South Derbyshire. Members of the local Transition group wondered if it would be possible to do something really exciting with it. What if we could create a community woodland where everything was edible or otherwise useful for our community? And in the same space help people understand how to live more sustainably, appreciate nature and the outdoors, and hold events that would bring our community closer to face future challenges.
www.whistlewoodcommon.org
Permaculture Ambassadors Gathering
Permaculture Ambassadors spread the word about permaculture in their communities and to a wider audience. Join us to hear about the exciting new phase of work on the Ambassadors network, give feedback, and meet other Ambassadors.
www.permaculture.org.uk/ambassador
