First year

Report on the first year of my Permaculture Diploma

Focus: The social and natural ecology of a suburban residential area

Diploma Aim

“To focus on the social and natural ecology of a suburban residential area, and the creation of “Permaculture HouseWholes” that link people to the land and together into communities, using whole systems thinking and collaborative action.”^*

After one year of work and study, I have come to understand that one need to put roots in a place in order to help others to connect with that land. Living in a place and a culture you know, and stay there for as long as possible, seem to be a condition without which it is impossible to become really aware of the social and natural ecology, and thus, to interact with a place in a creative way. I have been able, already, to share my specific skills in community currencies and food growing. And I have learnt a lot in the different areas defined in my diploma proposal. I will share my learnings through my blog, where I’ll publish articles on what I’ve done.

Since I started my work towards the diploma, I’ve become much more confident in my competences and skills, and I am looking forwards to be able to transfer what I’ve learned here to my next home in France. Maybe the most important thing I’ve discovered is that we need to be well rooted in our community to be able to support change on that level.

My process

I started by observing. I noted where my interests lie, what I enjoy doing with my time and have enjoyed for the past years, my preferred media for sharing information, what my current projects were and where they could bring me. In writing the proposal for my self directed program, I tried to integrate as much as possible of what I already had started, and some of the things I dream of doing. I took into account that I have always been a very outwards person, who love to be “on the stage” and present new things that I’m passionate about, animate workshops etc, and that I had done this successfully in the past, even though I didn’t do this since I came to Aotearoa.

I then went on to catch and store energy, in the form of resources, knowledge and seed, mainly, and networks of people. This was my main activity through the 2009 winter.

In spring, my focus was on working for a yield. I grew a lot of seedlings from heirloom seed (Koanga) with the idea of selling them to design clients. Unfortunately, I missed the timing with my client recruitment, so most of the plants got sold at the local markets or given away to community gardens. This was also a period when I work on a business plan for my permaculture enterprise, in view of making my activities income generating.

An important part of this self-directed diploma is self regulation, partly because of the enthusiasm one feels when starting. For my part, I had no proper mechanism for getting my own feedback regularly, and didn’t accept that I was not going to overcome my timidity and personal fears which held me back from doing the presentations I would have loved to do. I also had serious health problems, which drained a lot of my energy, and kept thinking I would soon be better again. The xmas break was a great moment of feedback, and I decided to move back to France to be able to do what I had set out to do with this diploma.

Permaculture HouseWholes

Overview

This “project” was made up of several separate but interconnected projects.

• Streetgardens, a model for share-gardening and skill-sharing in one street. It was initiated by Dawud Meeran, and I met him a number of times to refine the concept and work out how to implement the idea in my street. The idea was to grow food as locally as possible, and as each person has different skills and enjoys growing different vegetables, a street can and should be organized as to be much more self-sufficient.
• Designs for suburban households on a consultancy-basis. I did 5 separate permaculture household designs, whereof 3 in my immediate neighborhood. I used my work with these designs to develop a participatory design process which suits my way of being and working.
• Setting up a business to earn a right livelihood. I’ve done a business plan and prepared to set it up, which will help when I’m settled in France.
• Being an example at home. Producing seedlings and worms to share, growing a good part of our food, getting thrifty habits for water and energy use, and showing/teaching all of this to interested people through individual invitations.
• The Lower North Island Permaculture network, with the skill-sharing group.
• Going to workshops to gather new skills. Aware (behavior psychology for sustainable change), Dirt Doctor bio-intensive gardening and Terraquaculture have been the most important.

What I wanted to achieve – my motivation

• “To learn how I can best assist suburban households in their transition to ecologically sustainable living, through retrofitting and lifestyle changes, based on the principles and design methods of Permaculture.”
• “To motivate and assist households in making this transition, through actions, projects, workshops and discussions, which are empowering and stimulate creative change.”
• “To provide simple practical examples that help people take first steps and become motivated to take up the challenges of the transition to a healthy, just and sustainable way of living.” ^*

Advice

The main issues for me were the organization of my own work, and the contact with other people.

Organization

Technically, I’ve learnt a lot about organizing and integrating different parts of my work. The first months were quite confusing, until I came up with a wall display along two axis, clearly showing where I’m at with different projects. The linear calender style is not very applicable to these kinds of projects! The projects are shown along the horizontal axis, and the months along the vertical, on both sides. I made the sheets size A1 (8xA4) for 6 months, with large squares for each project every month.

The projects with a lot of interaction (i.e. Streetgardens and Home example, or Designs/Consultancy and Setting up a business) are just alongside each other. For each actual thing that needs to be done (prick out seedlings, meet with a bank advisor, talk to the neighbor, go to this workshop…), I put it in the “project/month square”. Using a red marker, I draw arrows across the lines between related activities in different projects to see what needs to be done before or following something else, and thus define priorities each day.

To have this big sheet in front of me, decorated with the principles and ethics of permaculture, really helped me keep on track and see the possibilities of integration between the projects. Because of the tremendous amount of time needed for each project, I’ve also realized that the less projects I have on at the same time, the more efficient I am overall. If part (or all) of my activities could be income generating, it would make them go forwards a lot quicker, because we tend to invest more energy in projects which result in a direct yield.

Participatory Design Process

Another issue is the contact with “clients” and other interested people. Quite a few times, my offer of permaculture design has been mistaken for hands-on help in the garden! Being very clear about what you offer and how that is going to be achieved is crucial to good relations. Of course, the language and culture is a barrier as well for me, but I think every permaculture designer need to take into account that very few people know what Permaculture means, and even in general, people have a very vague idea of what they want.

As a response to this, I have developed a Participatory Design Process which suits me and my way of being and working with people.

1. I start out without any presumptions on their knowledge of Permaculture or on them knowing what they want. So I bring basic documentation to a first “get-to-know-”meeting, and explain quite thoroughly what I offer to do. Then we can proceed if the person is still interested, and my offer correspond to what they want.
2. I give the client a list of the info I need (base map and/or aerial photo, boundaries, facilities), a wish-list to fill in, and a questionnaire on their and the property’s resources. While they have a look through the forms, I go for a wander around the property in observation mode, take some photos and get a feel for the place. Before I leave, I make sure everything is clear around the paperwork.
3. The next time I meet them, I’ve made the base-map, and we walk the land together this time. We do the Site Survey, drawing in existing structures on the first overlay. Then we look at the wish-list and resource survey to roughly draw ideas onto other overlays. The whole session is done together and I try to explain Permaculture ideas as much as possible, so that the client understand their land and/or household.
4. The third meeting is the Design Questionnaire, with sector analysis, zoning, networks/linking of features, desire-lines, elevational planning, energy flows and a good look at the whole system integrated with its surroundings. At this point, an interested client already has a good idea of what is going to happen, and can discover the usefulness of these tools. The advantage of doing this together (for me as a designer) is to have the extra neurons of the client, plus their often subconscious knowledge of their land suddenly surfacing. For the client, it is obviously like a 1-on-1 permaculture course.
5. After this session, I go through an Evaluation process and refine the information to find any excluded areas, unnoticed connections, and make sure we apply all principles. The design I present to the client have only taken marginally more time to create and is much more likely to please them and be implemented and maintained in the long term. When we’ve settled on a design and implementation plan, I check in with the client for a reevaluation after 1, 3 and 9 months.

I’ve also created a simplified version to use when the focus is Streetgardens, which is shorter and culminates in a workshop/working bee with invited neighbors. Both will be explained on my blog.

Presentations

Yet another issue has been my shyness when it comes to talking in front of a group in english. I was worried this was not just due to the language (and culture) but that I was no longer confident enough to be a speaker and presenter, as I used to be. I had the opportunity to give an Introduction to Permaculture 3-hours workshop in Sweden, in an environment, culture and language I know since childhood, and this relieved me tremendously!

Some advice to anyone who feel restrained by shyness and avoid sharing their skills and knowledge because of that:

• Be sure that you are in a place that suits you, where you usually feel good – being on your own territory gives confidence.
• Talk or show something that you know very well, to a completely novice audience – it is also the most efficient way of getting knowledge out there.
• Start small: having three people over in your backyard looking at your worm-farm is enough when you’re beginning to teach.
• If you have a small group, they will also learn from each-other and you don’t have to be the only teacher. This relieves pressure.
• Make sure there is no-one in the audience that you feel you need to make an impression on (teachers, eventual employers etc). When you feel better about teaching, they can come too – and they will understand if you explain why you don’t want them to come this time.
• Apply permaculture principles to the way you organize your teaching/learning experience.

Work done

As my neighbors saw my gardening and worm-farming, we connected more and more. So when one family was going to Belgium for a year, they suggested I care for their vege-garden as well. While gardening their plot, I discovered that the next-doors neighbor also had an untended vegepatch. So I went to see them and took over theirs as well, as they said they were far too busy to be able to do anything at all.

I grew all my own seedlings, and about twice as much as I needed after roughing, so I shared the ones I didn’t use, through WITS, Newtown People’s market, and Weston A Price markets. Some were donated to local Community Gardens.

All this gardening took quite some time, but only during spring and summer as the three gardens are shaded during winter. I’d say around 50 hours each month from september to february, for a surface of 80 square meters. This allowed us to be self-sufficient in vegetables over the period december – march, and introduced the neighbors to worm-farming and composting while creating human links. This was really the result of Streetgardens, and to do it fully I would have needed to stay there and put my roots down there to involve the whole street with time.

For each design I did, I spent between 20-100 hours between the visits, the thinking, the reading, the contemplation and the editing. The more organized I got, the quicker the job was done, of course.

Around 200 hours were spent on getting the organization right, creating templates and working out the participatory design process. This was part of what I did for the business-idea, into which another hundred hours easily went on research and planning. Working out a business plan and understanding the market takes a lot of time, and when you want to create a structure that is based on the permaculture ethics and incorporates as many of the principles as possible, it is indeed a daunting task! I’m very happy I’ve already done a good part of that work now. The book “Companies We Keep” by John Abrams was a good help and source of inspiration.

To deepen my understanding and “to learn how I can best assist suburban households in their transition to ecologically sustainable living”^*, I went to a number of workshops organized by others. Awake, who provides psychology-based services to support the development of sustainable behavior in individuals, groups and organizations, held a one-day workshop 19^th August 2009, and I would recommend it to anyone involved in change for sustainability.

I also went to a weeklong course on Terraquaculture as technical assistant with Haikai Tane. It gave an enriching and inspiring perspective on water in permaculture farm systems, though I think the same information can be gathered otherwise than through his course. The Dirt Doctor (Jim O’Gorman) workshops were very good, with good balance between hands-on and theory, accessible by anyone and applicable both in urban/suburban settings as well as on a farm scale.

What I’ve probably enjoyed the most in the past year has been to “provide simple practical examples that help people take first steps and become motivated to take up the challenges of the transition to a healthy, just and sustainable way of living”*. This has been the most exciting and satisfying part of the diploma work so far. Through my being and acting as I do, I know I have inspired many and made quite a few take their first conscious step towards Permaculture. Some of the most spectacular lifestyle changes have happened among acquaintances, like my partner’s colleagues or my friends’ friends who have seen our example at home.

A lesson I really want to share with you is that it doesn’t matter where you start, as long as you start. Connecting with someone on the level they’re interested in changing, i.e. healthy food, may help them reduce waste – or helping them save petrol money may improve health and connect with neighbors. But it’s an absolute waste of time to try and make someone change in a domain where they cannot see a direct positive personal outcome.

Complementary Currencies

Overview

What I wanted to achieve, as stated in my diploma proposal was “To understand and promote effective ways of making wealth circulate locally in this urban/suburban setting.”

Coming back from the national Complementary Currencies Conference in Whanganui (16-19 April 2009), I was really inspired and wanted to get involved with a local exchange system. I had joined the Wellington Talent Exchange when I moved to New Zealand in november 2008, but realized there had been no administration at all for at least a year, and that the system was dormant.

WTE is a local credit circle started in 2006 by Don Northcott and Russel Bishop, with members from an old, dismantled Green Dollar scheme. It allows users to trade without money by means of an online software, and is nothing more than a tool, which could be used or misused in a number of ways.

On the 20^th of April 2009, I took over the administration. Since then, I’ve worked on redesigning and reanimating it. After some brainstorming and voting among the users, it is now renamed Wellington Independent Trading System, WITS. Today, a group of three users administrate the system and it is very open and easy to get involved in the organization.

Apart from WITS, I’ve also been heavily involved with Living Economies, a national educational trust on economic solutions. All of the working grassroots solutions in New Zealand are represented in the trust, either through the board-members or through personal contacts of theirs. I’ve been working with them to organize workshops and conferences, manned Living Economies’ stalls at different events, and been a member of the board since September 2009.

Advice

The major issues when I took over the administration of WITS were:

• bad debt, caused by exchanges with other regions and old users who have ceased to trade
• lack of interest among old users, as the system had been dormant
• me working alone, without a supporting team
• and finally my lack of confidence with english on the phone, holding me back from calling old users to discuss with them

To simply focus on getting new users on board would probably have proved more efficient, though I wanted to let everyone know what was happening and I also expected some kind of response from the present users, thinking that “if they had registered, they must have been quite interested at some point”!

• My advice to anyone else who would like to reanimate an old credit circle:
• Investigate if the system has any “bad debt” – the overall balance of the system should be zero. If it isn’t, it might be a better idea to start a whole new credit circle.
• Compare the existing settings and rules for the system with those outlined in Greco’s “Money – Understanding and Creating alternatives to Legal Tender” chapter 18: “How to Design and Implement a Community Exchange System”.
• Survey the interest among the users to keep the scheme going – if there are old users who have stagnating accounts, you either need them to be motivated to start trading again, or decide it isn’t important and just focus on new traders.
• Get a team of both old and new users to work with. Just getting together regularly to share your work makes the task easier and motivates everyone involved.
• Create a platform of values in the team / steering group, to make sure you are all working in the same direction.
• Inform all users about what’s going on, by personal phone calls rather than emails. This gives them the opportunity to get involved and to feel they are seen and counted upon.

Work done

I have created the foundations for a sound exchange system in the Wellington region, ready to cater for 9999 people. There are now checks and balances necessary for the longevity and health of this system, which, I can only hope, will grow as we go into a new era of resource depletion and failing international trade. I think WITS will assist some of those in the Wellington area who fall through the traditional safety nets of the welfare state, no longer maintained, and help distribute surplus resources to where they are needed.

Over the past year, I’ve created a fair amount of documentation, thoroughly studied Thomas Greco’s two books“Money – Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender” and “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization” and been inspired by systems in other countries. I think I’ve gathered enough information and experience to be able to start a better system where I will live in France. I’ll keep you dated!

The total amount of time worked and studied over the past year with economic focus is around 1200 hours, or 150 working days. Of course, much was reading for an hour in bed at night, and watching documentaries, but a great part consisted in writing emails, creating documentation, and doing the logistics for the workshops and other events.

With Living Economies, we organized one event in Carterton in June 2009, where Margaret Jefferies and Anneleise Hall presented the Lyttleton Time Bank, Peter Luiten introduced business+consumer credit circles, and Bryan Innes and Joanna Persall explained the Genuine Wealth System. Another major event was the 3-day conference in Wellington in August 2009. I was acting as registrar, assisted in the organization of the event, and facilitated two of the group discussions.

For references on my work with Living Economies, contact them.

Conclusion

This “first year” spans from the first household designs I did in October 2008 to today, October 2010. My diploma proposal was sent in in June 2009, and I’ve counted the hours and evaluated the work I’ve done, and I consider it equal to about a year’s full time. As I have been working part time at Commonsense Organics (a local grocery store) I haven’t been fully available.

My focus has moved towards currencies and accounting systems as a means of circulating and creating local wealth. I think the economy is one of those “invisible structures” either enhancing or impeding Permaculture work, and maybe the most important one. Understanding the structure we’re in and creating new “permaculture economies” based in how living systems work, seem to me a crucial part of my future work. Both for the good it does in the community (as people care) and for the abundance it creates (for fair share), but also for the very basic reason that if I, and others, can live without loans, without taxes, without the need for legal tender, then we become free to spend all our time and energy to do real Earth Care.

Presentations and promotion of Permaculture

I have organized or presented at the following events :

Wellington Talent Exchange, July 13^th, 2009, CBD Wellington

Complementary Currencies at Newtown People’s Market July 25^th 2009, Newtown, Wellington

WITS at Alex’s wood workshop, July 25^th, 2009, Newtown, Wellington

“Exploring Local Currencies”, conference with Living Economies August 25^th – 28^th 2009, CBD Wellington

Supporting Helen Dew at the Transition Towns’ Conservation Week, September 8^th 2009, CBD Wellington

WITS at Newtown People’s Market September 26^th 2009, Newtown Wellington

Workshop on how to sow & pot up plants, November 17^th 2009, Whare Kopae / my place, Wellington

Presenting WITS to Newtown Food Coop, November 22^nd 2009, Newtown, Wellington

Workshop on composting, January 10^th 2010, Roseneath, Wellington

Launch and presentation of WITS at Newtown People’s Market, February 27^th 2010, Newtown, Wellington

Part of a delegation to talk to Kevin Hague, Member of Parliament, March 18^th 2010, Bowen House, Wellington

WITS invited by Brooklyn Transition Initiative, March 24^th 2010,Brooklyn, Wellington

Meeting with some WITS-users at Baobab café, April 3^rd 2010, Newtown, Wellington

“Introduction to Permaculture”, 3-hours workshop, July 28^th 2010, Krokstrand, Sweden

I have also been present and talked about Permaculture at :

Transition Towns presentation on Urban Water Harvesting, June 8^th, 2009 Mt Victoria, Wellington

Living Economies “Trading Tools for Tough Times”, June 16^th – 18^th 2009, Carterton.

Simon’s garden July 18^th 2009, Brooklyn Wellington

Within the local Wellington network/project Streetgardens, about 10 meetings, and the online Ooooby

AWAKE workshop, August 19^th 2009, Newtown Wellington

Weston A Price Foundation Market, October 17^th 2009, Kilbirnie Wellington

Intersect, “Papatuanuku / Earth Whisperers” November 10^th 2009, CBD Wellington

Newtown People’s Market, November 28^th 2009, Newtown, Wellington

Weston A Price Foundation Christmas Market, December 13^th 2009, Kilbirnie, Wellington

Newtown Christmas Market, December 20^th 2009 Newtown, Wellington

Manning Living Economies’ stall at “Pick-nick for the Planet” January 24^th 2010, CBD, Wellington

Helping Gary and Emilie Williams during Introduction to Permaculture, March 12^th – 14^th 2010

Stall at Kapiti Coast Sustainable Home and Garden Show, March 28^th 2010, Paraparaumu

Technical Assistant at Terraquaculture course, April 6^th – 13^th 2010, Inglewood

*All passages in italics are quotations from my Diploma Proposal.