PDC: Wilf Richards, Durham City, 2011
Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design: 2021
I am involved in pemaculture as a practitioner, diploma tutor, teacher of PDCs and other courses, writer, researcher and strategic organiser. Since 2020 I have been based in Portugal, where I am co-steward of a 1.5ha rural smallholding near the city of Tomar.
I approach permaculture as an integrated life practice that influences all aspects of my personal and professional life, an open-ended process of learning how to live well upon the Earth, as a unique expression of the endless creativity of the cosmos in community with other beings, all equally unique and precious. This takes the form of a lived spirituality of being in, with and as part of nature, brought into everyday life through the twinned practices of shamanism and permaculture, which I seek to apply in all of my work.
I am also a recognised researcher in the academic field of Human Ecology, author of several books and dozens of articles and book chapters on how human communities self-organise for sustainability, equity and resilience, including indigenous societies, ecovillages, solidarity economy and community initiatives. My academic work takes an action research orientation, embedded within grassroots movements and networks for social, economic and political change and employing permaculture design as a key research methodology.