The Association promotes the Design Course as a vital stage in the development of understanding of permaculture ethics, principles, design processes and implementation techniques. Completion of the Full Permaculture Design course provides recognition as a Permaculture Design graduate, and enables you to go on to study for the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design.
The course comes in a variety of formats and are offered as:
- two week residential courses
- evening classes
- a series of weekends
- or a combination of the above formats
The Association encourages course organisers to include membership of the Association as part of the course fees, and this enables students to receive a year of after course support.
A course completion certificate is issued to course graduates by the teacher on behalf on the Association at the end of the course. This certificate is recognised globally within the permaculture community.
The PDC also has an accredited route that shows that the course is recognised by the Permaculture Association and Certa. This involves carrying out additional work, preparing a porfolio and being formally assessed. If you take this option there is an additional fee and you will receive an extra certificate that recognises your extra work. You can see the assessment criteria here.
Not all courses offer this accreditation route and you will need to contact your course organiser to see if this route is available.
In some areas of Britain (Burnley & Nottingham as of 2016), the PDC is run in partnership with the Workers Educational Association, who are able to subsidise the course fees. This can make it financially accessible for attendees, particularly people on income-related benefits.
EXAMPLE PDC: Naturewise permaculture course, London
'Design for sustainable living now' said the promotional leaflet. Who could resist? Walking (or driving) through our London urban jungle we are posed with numberless ethical dilemmas about our way of life that tweak our consciences daily. Most of this tweaking goes on unconsciously because we have screened out a vast array of unsustainable practices that are part and parcel of living in modern Western society - from the tonnes of waste, the polluted environment, the inefficient use of resources from water and electricity to our own talents and capabilities.
The design course run by Naturewise at the nursery school on Crouch Hill (and what a better place to teach us fledglings?) subjected many of these things to a thorough and constructive critical examination. Constructive is the word, for Permaculture is about turning problems into solutions that benefit the environment, find application in our own lives and spiral out to the wider community. Its constructive approach gave us a renewed sense of creative power over our own lives that so many of us felt we had lost. For those searching to retrieve it, the Permaculture course provided a serious avenue of investigation. Of the best things about it? No guilt-trips!
Over seven full weekends that ran from April to June we looked at permaculture philosophy and its principles of design, forest gardens, green economics, bioregionalism, transport and energy efficiency, zone and sector analysis, water, LETS, edge effects and much more. That was the theory side of it. The practicals were spent in the forest gardens that Naturewise had created locally, where we learned about such varied subjects as the uses of the plants grown and how to chop down a tree.
Each of the tutors had taken principles of permaculture into their own lives and this came through in the teaching - both the theoretical and the practical sessions were inspirational and packed full of useful and fascinating information. The effects of this and the bonds that developed between the participants as the course progressed, made it more than the sum of its parts.
Over the seven weekends a palpable change occurred in our thinking and our approach to problems. Linear thinking became lateral as we were bombarded with practical examples of solutions to apparently insoluble problems, such as how you create soil on naked rock. A strong sense of community emerged as individuals shared issues and dreams that were closest to their hearts, from developing new communities on sustainable principles to dealing with interpersonal conflict in constructive ways. The subject of how to create sustainable lifestyles is a vast one, and most of us found the course offered an extended opportunity to contemplate things that had been too daunting to tackle alone. From the first weekend connections were formed and ideas began to germinate which culminated in the design projects presented by many of the participants at the end of the course, some of which were ambitious and required funding over several years, and others were simpler but no less significant and all demonstrated how deeply the principles and concepts had been assimilated. It was heartening and exciting to witness so many positive developments.
Written by Rokiah Yaman and Eileen Cadman
Comments on the course
"Brilliant! Has provided me with a fantastic foundation on which to build."
"A viable vision of changing the system on inner, local and global level. From little seeds... A brilliant coming together of people, ideas and practice, put together with love."
"One of the most important learning experiences of my life."Very, very nurturing."