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An Introduction to Permaculture Design 11th-13th April 2007

Led by Chris Dixon

Permaculture Design is often misunderstood as something to do with organic gardening. It is not. Permaculture Design is a general-purpose strategy to help move us from where we are now to the sustainable environments and communities of the future.

The philosophy behind it rests upon the idea that natural ecosystems, like forests for example, have been around for far longer than we have and can be used as models for designing our own sustainable systems.

• Permaculture Design is based on a set of ethics about the environment, community and the individual that we can use as a framework for making decisions.
• It uses a set of simple principles, based on natural systems, as guides for our actions.
• It comes with a collection of design tools to allow us to work as individuals and groups to create solutions to the challenges that we face today.

 

Rather than getting lost in all the bits and pieces of sustainable development, Permaculture Design encourages a whole systems or holistic approach to designing our sustainable futures. It allows us to pull all the bits and pieces together into a sensible and practical design, whether we're designing a project, a gig, a garden, a community, an organisation or our own lifestyles. It is an empowering discipline that gives individuals and groups the tools and confidence to make positive changes to their ways of life.

Course outline:

Wednesday 11th April

• Arrivals from 4:00pm onwards
• Introductions
• Food
• Course structure
• Sideshows

Thursday 12th April

• Permaculture Ethics
• Principles of Permaculture Design
• Practicals
• More food
• Videos

Friday 13th April

• Design tools
• Practicals
• Yet more food
• Feedback
• Close at 5:00pm

The course, accommodation and food are all funded by the WYFSD so there are no costs to attend. The WYFSD can also subsidise public transport costs.

Permaculture Design courses are based on the principles of action learning or learning by doing so be prepared to take part in practical activities. This tends to mean having fun.

The course will be based at Tir Penrhos Isaf near Dolgellau. Tir Penrhos Isaf was one of the first Permaculture systems in Britain, established in 1986 and redesigned in 1991. It contains many mature examples of Permaculture Design techniques. You can find out more about Tir Penrhos Isaf on this website, mostly here.

The course will be led by Chris Dixon who has been studying, practicing and teaching Permaculture Design since 1989 and was awarded the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design in 1994.

For more details or to register your interest in attending, please contact Chris at the email address below.

(Please note that the email address above is an image so you can't just click on it. This is to try to avoid spammers who use bots to automatically search for and collect email addresses within web pages- they can't see the image as an address)

Penrhos Home Page Site Map Services and Charges