Welcome to the ACT webpages.
ACT stands for Activating Community Transformation
These ACT webpages have been created to support people involved in designing, running or working at permaculture and regenerative learning and demonstration projects, such as LAND Centres, as well as people involved in related projects, enterprises and teaching activity.
Please note: these are temporary pages that will be significantly improved when we shift to our new website by the end of August 2023 with many more resources, tools, videos and case studies provided at that time. For now, this is just a taste of what will be available, in a much more attractive and digestible form!
Movement building through learning and demonstration.
A learning and demonstration centre is a place where the public can see and experience sustainable lifestyles and practical solutions to the environmental crisis.
Demonstrations centres are needed to support:
- massive behaviour change to achieve a sustainable future
- development and sharing of innovation and good practice in sustainable living
- place-based learning and experiencing
- transformative local projects right across Europe.
As the old adage says, ‘you have to see it to be it’, which makes demonstration centres crucial to support behaviour change.
The organisations and people highlighted in these pages and found on the map are all examples of projects and organisations that are currently living a change-making life in one form or another. They are dedicated to sharing their stories, supporting others to be the change they want to be by opening up their spaces as demonstration centres, and building a network that increases their impact.
Setting up and running such centres can be a challenging, exhausting and isolating experience. Moreover, the quality of demonstration and learning can vary greatly. The Activating Community Transformation project (iACT) partners believe that by sharing good practice and innovation between centres their quality and number will inevitably improve. With that in mind the iACT partners have created a pathway for you to follow to support you in exploring the creation of new projects, or in reshaping existing ones into learning and demonstration centres. The information is divided into seven categories supported by videos, guides, case studies and tool kits: Project design, Livelihoods, Management, Learning, Demonstration, Community Engagement and Community Action.
If your project already exists then add it to the map by filling in a profile page.
If you are at the beginning of your journey then we recommend starting with project design, as this isn’t just about designing a place but identifying your core values and transferring and embedding them into the work that you do.
Travel across Britain with Misha Tzarchinska as she explores the Permaculture Learning and Demonstration Network (LAND) for iACT
Growing cows on a Welsh Mountain side, growing fruit trees in inner London, growing community in Leeds...
Resources
What is iACT and how is it funded?
The Activating Community Transformation project is an EU-funded Erasmus+ collaborative partnership project running from 2020-2023. Its aims are:
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To help grow an international network of learning and demonstration centres
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To share good practice in the fields of sustainability, regeneration and resilience between those centres
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To help those centres to activate community transformation by offering a range of related demonstration and learning programmes and resources that help spread that good practice.
This has been done by gathering, analysing and collating good practice, by defining a competence framework for those involved in managing such centres, by providing inspiring case studies of successful projects, and by collating a set of valuable tools online.
The iACT project has the following partners:
The partners are considering ways to continue their work, and potentially seek additional funding to take this forward.
