What does it mean to live your life as a professional in the world of permaculture? There are many ways of course, and in this episode I am delighted to welcome Andy Goldring to the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast to share his story.
Since 1999, Andy has been the CEO and Coordinator of Permaculture Association (UK) . He has dedicated his working life to coordinating permaculture programs and events and helping to make permaculture far more widely accessible in the UK, and connecting globally.
Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.
Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.
Permaculture is about designing for one-planet living and creating a new culture, a new story, of a positive future. Andy shares about many of the programs he’s involved with that are actively working toward this.
Hearing how Andy has made permaculture his profession is so inspiring. It is becoming increasingly obvious that this work – reimagining, redesigning, resilience, restoration, regeneration, reconnection – is so essential. The world certainly needs more people diving into permaculture education and leadership whole heartedly, making it their livelihood as well as their way of life.
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Read the full transcript here.
Morag Gamble:
Welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble.. Permaculture Educator, and Global Ambassador, Filmmaker, Eco villager, Food Forester, Mother, Practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking. The way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever. And even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on? So our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation. In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you..
Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face. I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We’d love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly, and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which I meet and speak with you today, the Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.
My guest today is Andy Goldring, coordinator and CEO of the Permaculture Association of the UK. He’s always worked in permaculture and has been central in activating local and global networks. Permaculture is his profession, his vocation and passion, and applies it in all kinds of ways. Andy is also spending a lot of time these days on climate action and transition with a particular focus in his hometown of Leeds. It’s my great pleasure to share this conversation with you today. Well, welcome to this show, Andy, it’s really lovely that you could join me here. For those who are listening, Andy Goldring is the CEO and coordinator of the Permaculture Association in the UK and have been doing that for gosh, over 20 years now.
Andy Goldring:
That’s some time, yeah.
Morag Gamble:
Yes, congratulations, that’s an enormous commitment. And in that time you’ve taken Permaculture Association from strength to strength. I mean, before we talk about all sorts of things that you do in that workout, I wanted to first ask, like, how did you get to permaculture? And like, why permaculture? Cause you’ve immersed your whole life in permaculture?
Andy Goldring:
I have. Well, I guess for kind of short story is, I think it goes back to probably something like 1984, in the Bhopal incident when all those people were basically killed by their responsible corporate behavior, and you know, with devastating consequences still to this day, I think that was probably the first time that I just had this kind of political awareness of world. I was 14 years old, I thought, hmm, that’s bad, that’s really bad. And it kind of led to other things like acid rain. I started finding out about friends of the Earth and greenpeace and climate change wasn’t such a big deal then, but you know, you can just get this growing sense of things not working. And I just kind of didn’t want to be part of that world, of that corporate world that was making things worse. So I guess my first, but my teenage years were really defined by my no, what I didn’t want to do. And in a way I kind of dropped out. I ended up starting to make myself unemployable. So I did a sculpture degree, fine arts at Leeds Polytechnic, which was absolutely fantastic. I loved it, learned lots of skills. And I finished my course and I think by the end of the course, I thought I’m probably not going to be a successful artist just because I’m not really, I wasn’t into the kind of whole selling yourself side of it. I like the art, I like the sculpture, but I didn’t like selling myself a bit. So I decided to give myself some time to find the thing I really did want to do. And a friend of mine said, oh, would you like to hitch down to London? See the director’s cut of Blade Runner? Oh sure, yeah. I picked up my jacket, we got onto the M1, hitched down to London, saw the film, came out and I was just going to phone my girlfriend, Julie, at the time, who’s now my lovely wife. And there’s someone in the phone box, because we had phone boxes back then. And I’m like, I’m sure, I don’t know if that person is, but they turned around and said, I know you, I know you from somewhere. And he said, oh yeah, okay. I said, come on, let’s go, let’s go and have a cup of coffee. It was about 10 at night or something. And he’d, I said, you’d be really tired. Where have you been? He said, oh, I’ve just been, just come back on a 30-hour coach journey. I’ve been to an International Permaculture Convergence, I said, oh, what’s permaculture? And what’s the convergence? So he kind of told me about it. And this is really interesting. This is really interesting. We had a great conversation and then I don’t know, I probably slept in a train station or something and came back the next day or whatever it was. And I went, before I came home, I went to Waterstones book sellers and just said, what have you got about permaculture? I said, well, how do you spell it? No, nothing. But they had something on the database, we had the Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison. So about four weeks later, it turned up and then I just read it, cover to cover loads of notes. And I’m a kind of, I think it’s called an external processor. So when I’m learning, I tell everyone about it. That’s what reinforces my learning, is talking about it. So everybody knew that Andy Goldring was into this thing called permaculture. So someone said to me, about three months later, they said, oh Andy, there’s a course at Bradford University on environmental design and permaculture, you should give it a go. So I applied, I got a place and it was probably the best funded course ever. I mean, it was just, it was kind of some government money left over from regeneration work in Bradford. And because of that, most teachers in the UK kind of came and did a slot and it was three months long. And so I met lots of people, this fantastic introduction led by a New Zealand guy called Russell Withers, who is an environmental designer. And I had no responsibility, I had no kids, I had nothing I had to do, so I’ve just been involved ever since that point, really from the moment when I said International Permaculture Convergence, what’s that?
Morag Gamble:
Can we just take a nit of a step back because you said there was a course at a university that included permaculture way back then.
Andy Goldring:
Yeah.
Morag Gamble:
Wow that’s phenomenal!
Andy Goldring:
It is. And I think it’s, I mean, this is, I think that was due to Andrew Lankford, I don’t know if you’ve interviewed Andrew Lankford, had done a course, had been cultivating various relationships with different councils and different institutions as part of his pioneering work in permaculture. And he’d cultivated some relationships in Bradford council and taken people around to see various different projects. So when the city challenge money came, they said, oh, opportunity for regeneration, let’s do a permaculture project. So we did this project called Springfield Community Gardens, which was absolutely brilliant, and it’s a beautiful design. Andrew Lankford kind of turned up with his campervan, he was very open in a very participatory design process. And it was so quite a tough white working-class estate, he’d stay on the estate with local people, got the bunyip out to kind of get kids to help the water level and all that kind of thing. So he developed that project and in the process of that, more people in the council got involved, a guy called Jamie Saunders who’s in Superman does permaculture, but it’s been really with the Bradford council probably since 94, 93, something like that. So when we had a bit of money left over, they then had some relationships within the university and they said, come on, why don’t we do this course? So, yeah, it’s a really strong story of how important it is to cultivate relationships. I think outside of our usual circles, I think that there’s, we’ve got a lot of allies out there, we don’t even really talk to. and, that’s a good example.
Morag Gamble:
Yeah, that’s such a big point and you know, I think that’s really where we need to all be working right now, isn’t it? That in order for us to address the challenges that we face at the scale that’s faced, it’s only through the collaborations between them, which is something that you really work a lot on with, with your work. Do you want to maybe talk a bit about some of the programs that are happening within the Permaculture Association now?
Andy Goldring:
Well, I might go beyond the association if that’s all right. So just, I think, so I mean, action needs to happen at different levels and we’ve got different aspects of our lives, so there’s our kind of personal life and the work that we do, you know, in our home and garden. So I live in a Victorian terraced house and it’s got a tiny little garden, we’ve got an allotment where we do most of our veggie growing. But on the street, we cultivate our relationships and share plants and it kind of, you know, have a discussion about kind of what’s important in the world. So those kinds of relationships are really important for me. Then in Leeds, I’m now involved in a project called the Climate Action Leeds Program, which is part of our future Leeds, which is a two and a half million pound five-year program to develop a zero carbon, nature friendly, socially just Leeds by the 2030s. And I wanted to bring that one in because it’s a really interesting example of where we’ve managed to bring a whole host of different organizations together. So we had about 40 organizations that worked together to put proposals to the lottery. We’re very lucky in this country to have a lottery, I think, is one of the biggest, kind of funders in the world and that they’re investing in climate change. So we’ve got this partnership together. It’s now being delivered by, you know, five or six kind of main partners. And in that, we take, we’re working with different community so there’s eight communities in different neighborhoods, but then also at a kind of city level, and my job there is to create a city hub where we bring people together to do participatory planning for the future, and my kind of goal is to do a permaculture design for Leeds.
Morag Gamble:
Wow.
Andy Goldring:
So I think what’s interesting there is again, because I mean, I’m quite a loyal person. I think because I moved around so much as the kid, you know, I’d be somewhere and then we’d go to my dad’s next job and then go somewhere else in the next job. And that I kind of never just get to know people and then, you know, I’d leave. So when I got to Leeds, I thought, no one’s making me leave. So I’ve been here since 1989 and that kind of embeddedness, actually starting to put your roots down and really connect. I think that’s so important because it means you, those relationships make things possible. So things in the nineties, when we were talking about local agenda 21, and we’ve both that sort of wave of environmentalism, all those people I still know, and we’re still, we haven’t gone away. And then you’ve got, obviously this youth strike and a big new influx of energy and for the last couple of years, we’ve been able to combine that. So we’ve combined that kind of older generation, the gray-haired people like me with the young generation, with the people with the new energy, but also recognizing that there’s interest, not just interest, but you know, the council is committed, businesses are committed, civil societies committed. We’re bringing in the whole kind of social justice and black lives matter angle on, not angle, but, you know, important aspects of the work into it, and really trying to create a project where we can think differently about the city. Actually, we’re gonna change the goal of a city. That’s our goal, is to change the goal. We want us because Leeds is very much a money city. So, there’s that working Leeds and men, that then becomes quite an interesting case study for what we can do in permaculture. So in the Permaculture Association where there’s, what are we doing? There’s all sorts of different things, I guess there’s work to make permaculture more accessible. So that’s about both from a kind of communications perspective, how do we reach more people, but also from an access perspective of what’s the barriers that stop people being involved. So a barrier might be, it might be, they just don’t think permaculture is something they’d be interested in because, you know, that’s aren’t you all white people, it might be big barriers of ethnicity or cultural barriers. There might be barriers because people can’t access events because they’re low income. So there’s financial barriers, there’s all sorts of different barriers. So we’re trying to understand what they are and work with people to overcome them. So that’s about making it accessible. We want to accelerate learning about permaculture, so try and find different ways for people to learn about it. So we start small online learning and the events side, I think is quite important, although there’ve been less events recently, obviously, but the online learning, the events is kind of quite a key part and we’ve got an educators group. So we’re trying to bring, I think we’ve got about 95 educators that are working together to think about how they can support each other and develop their work locally and online. Then we’ve got the third objective is about growing networks. So we’ve got something called a LAND Network, which, land was just, you know, if you want to get funding, you’d normally have to have a great acronym. So LAND was like, Learning And Network Demonstration. So recognizing that people learn really well by being practically involved in things it’s about celebrating the practical side of permaculture.
Morag Gamble:
And you’ve got quite a network of those land centers, I understand around the UK, but also beyond now, too, that I know we were talking a while about getting some land centers set up in Africa and we’ve got to the point now that those centers exist and I would love to kind of connect in
Andy Goldring:
Yeah. And I think it’s one of our really, such a strong point about permaculture, isn’t it? There’s so many theories about what things are, how things can be, and then permaculture is doing it and it has the theory as well. So it’s a great combination. Yeah. I mean, that’s probably the most exciting thing for me is the fact that that land spread and we didn’t force anything, we just had a project, we created some criteria, it’s really quite straightforward. All we’re saying is if it got to the point in the UK where someone would phone up and say, Hey Andy, or Hi, we’re interested in permaculture. We’ve got a busload of kids to take to a permaculture project. What would you recommend? And there comes a point where permaculture is growing there, where one person’s kind of mental picture of what’s going on, isn’t enough. You really need a much more systematic approach to, not just knowing which projects there are, but which projects you could confidently recommend to a school teacher.
Morag Gamble:
That’s right.
Andy Goldring:
So there’s a difference between someone running a permaculture project, I mean, lots of people are doing that, which is fantastic, but some of them are set up specifically with visitors and volunteers in mind, with that kind of public outreach side. So the land centers is much more focused on the, not just doing great permaculture, but doing great permaculture in a way which then can engage business and volunteers. So it’s got that public outreach angle and yeah, it’s a growing group where we had some good funding for it a few years ago we haven’t had any since really, but it’s mostly held its own. And, certainly the number of projects are increasing. We need to kind of rejig our accreditation system, I think, to make it a bit simpler. But yeah, it’s really exciting then, men that was picked up by Cat Dolleris in Denmark, another brilliant pioneer. She then spread it to various parts of Scandinavia, I think the Germans are doing it, I think, I’m not sure which other countries in Europe, we’ve now got an EU funded project, which is helping spread that in different European countries and Steve Charter, who’s another brilliant dynamic pioneering guy. He’s been with the IPEN, International Permaculture Educators Network, he’s really invested in putting some money into various projects in other parts of the world. And I mean, that for me is just so, so important that we see ourselves as a really global movement and start acting together as a global movement because you know, UK, we’re pretty rich in lots of different ways. We’re blessed in so many ways, healthcare system, education system, it’s a huge wealth based on kind of empire and it’s our duty really to share our abundance and to not impose anything, but to work with them and to share and to learn. I mean that the learning that I’ve got, I’ve been very, very fortunate. I’ve been to various international convergences and the learning you get from people that are working in Padma and Narsanna Koppula from Aranya Agricultural Alternatives. People say, oh, the Permaculture Association is so well organized. You know, you’ve got the most, whatever, I say, well, yeah, I have maybe it’s okay, it’s good. But actually you’ve seen what they’re doing in India, they’ve got 70,000 women in 70 villages that’s seriously cool, you know, what they’re doing is way beyond what we’re doing. So, really we’ve got different strengths in different parts of the world. And I think if we could somehow link them up, we’d, our potential could just really increase.
Morag Gamble:
Yeah, absolutely. And you’re right too. I mean, looking out beyond our own, you know, bi-regions and beyond our own sort of nations, that we start to connect as and see that permaculture is this myciliating network globally, and that how it manifests in every different part of the world is finding its strengths and just rooting itself there. It’s amazing seeing what’s happening, for example, just in the refugee settlements in East Africa at the moment, it’s just phenomenal. So yeah. It’s like, wherever you look, I kind of think about when you lift up the log in a forest and you see all those mycelial threads, it’s like, wherever you go to any community and you lift up the logs, you’ll find these threads reaching out. It’s just phenomenal, as well as the land centers. I know that you’ve been doing work around collecting research. Do you want to share a bit about that? Because I think this is so important. There is so much research that happens about permaculture, but it’s really hard to find, like it just is, it gets stuck on someone’s shelf or in a, you know, I would love to find out more about this personally as well.
Andy Goldring:
Yeah. So, I guess it’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Research? I mean, to a certain extent I had a kind of mental block and I think a lot of people maybe have sort of a similar thing. I mean, research can always seem like, you know, it’s presented with the men in white coats and it’s all very high fluting, big tech, it’s somehow can seem quite a remote idea of research. But really it’s just a form of learning and there’s actually quite a few approaches, it’s not a single approach. And actually with some fairly simple tweaks, we’re kind of all doing research. We’ve got those research capabilities. It’s just a few simple tweaks, which enabled us to kind of turn that into something that you can share in a way which is sort of valid from a scientific method perspective. So, I mean, even stories are valid. I mean, there’s lots of different research approaches. So, I think when I, when I sort of realized that actually research is just a kind of advanced form of learning, well, if permaculture wants to be really kind of pushing forward, then it’s got to be learning. It’s gotta be learning. I mean, we can’t just rely on what Bill wrote in 1984. You know, it’s gotta keep moving because the world’s changing and we’re learning new things and the world’s learning new things. So that ability to learn is so important. And I kind of, I’d always thought of the permaculture association as being an education-led organization. And that’s still very much the case, but really for it to be great quality education, you need to put research and even in advance of that, because then your education is based on sound knowledge, good evidence, and great case studies. Some people like numbers. I mean, some people are totally happy just to listen to the stories and other people say, yeah, but what are the numbers? How do you know that like compost bins? You know, do they create more methane and go to the atmosphere? Are they reversing what we should be doing, well we need to check actually. And we got to keep on researching
Morag Gamble:
We keep on researching. It keeps moving that information and different ideas come through and different fields of knowledge are also threaded into the work that we do. And that kind of keeps it absolutely exciting and fascinating for those of us who’ve been in it for decades already. That it is not this static thing. It’s not just this curriculum. well, there is a curriculum, but the structure within that keeps shifting and changing because it’s a living, the information is a living system too, I find.
Andy Goldring:
It is. And I mean, I think in terms of our research, so just to try and answer your question, I guess we’ve had a research coordinator we don’t have at the moment because people probably don’t have capacity, basically. That’s, we’ve not been able to continue that, we’ve got researchers, but we haven’t been able to put as much effort in recently, but we have got, we’ve developed a research handbook or research digest which has got hundreds and hundreds of things that we’ve collected, so that’s still available. We are doing research, but it’s more incorporated in other areas. So we don’t have a kind of formal research coordinator as such. There’s a group called the Permaculture International Research Network, which is sort of re-igniting and I hope we can get some more energy behind that. And I mean, we’ve got people like say Coventry University, so a country is called CAWR, C-A-W-R the gosh, what’s going to be what’s the acronym, oh gosh, I’ll come back to the acronym of CAWR, C-A-W-R anyway, there are now some universities with quite strong permaculture focuses. So that’s quite useful to know as well.
Morag Gamble:
When you say that, does that mean you can actually do like an undergraduate of permaculture at these places or is it that they have subjects within it? How does that work? What does it look like?
Andy Goldring:
So at Coventry, they have had people doing permaculture studies as, but as PhDs and masters students. So it’s more, it’s not the cost in permaculture, but it’s something they’ve looked at.
Morag Gamble:
Who’s the supervisor, main supervisor there that keeps that, do you know who that is?
Andy Goldring:
Oh, there’s a whole host of people, so the overall director is Michelle Pimbell, and then he is joined by Julia Wright, who’s both of them longstanding permaculturalist, Georgina McAllister, yeah, there’s a team of them there. This guy called Dennis who did my course in Leeds, so yeah, there’s a good group of permaculture trained people at Coventry University and that their research program is continuing it. So that’s really good. What else to say about research? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the key things that we haven’t quite got to yet, but I feel is really strong is that if you look at the design process, so, you know, starting with observations, surveys observations, get your goals sorted, do your analysis, do the design, implementation, maintenance, then you’ve got the evaluation and the monitoring and members tweaking it. There’s a kind of process that maybe it’s different in different parts of the world, but certainly in the UK, we advocate this design process. It doesn’t take much to turn that into a research process so that all that initial survey information is your baseline data. So when you’re doing that first survey work, taking the photographs, looking at what the soil’s like, doing the measure of biodiversity, maybe recording how many people are working on the farm, whatever it might be, that’s all your baseline data. So in a way, what we’ve got is we’ve got this global network, a huge global network of in-situ experimentation, and it’s not that much of a tweak to suddenly create this a huge database of research evidence.
Morag Gamble:
We could be describing permaculture, then as a massive network of citizen scientists.
Andy Goldring:
Absolutely. Yes, and I think that’s a really important, little phrase there, it’s not just the citizen science, but what we really need is citizen scientists, because what often happens in citizen science is you collect the data from someone else. So you collect the data for the bird organization. It might be, [just a second, thank you Julie. Yeah, impromptu coffee has arrived] So yeah, a lot of citizen science is essentially you gather data from the people. And I think what we really need is we need to become citizen scientists because then the data we gather can be for other people as well. So we can aggregate our data and start to see what’s the trends and the patterns in our wider networks but it’s got meaning for us. That’s what’s so important when we get the data, we go, ah, that soil method we tried worked, I’ll do more of it. Or actually I’ve just created, I’ve just got lots and lots more slugs. That’s the important bit is that we build up a research approach, which is, builds people’s own capacity.
Morag Gamble:
And then to then around that, creating these sort of communities of practice, because, I see permaculture very much as a practice, as opposed to like a thing, it has movement it’s constantly evolving, developing, and then we create a community practice where we’re learning together and it’s like, oh, I’ve just been trying this. And this happened, what do you recommend? So that’s kind of what I’ve been trying to integrate into the sort of work that I do, that we have this, you know, you’re not alone just trying to work it out by yourself. And this is, I guess, where things like the Permaculture Association come into play, but also in sort of smaller hubs where people have this daily connection with each other in a way that there is this sense of this ongoing learning. And each time we hear from someone, it could be from the other side of the world as well, but different people experimenting with different things and find different bits of information.
Andy Goldring:
So I think the communities of practice is really important. I mean,we’ve been, um, involved. We are involved in a project called BLAST, which is blended learning and socio-ecological transformation. I mean, basically it’s about adult learning. I can never remember .
Morag Gamble:
You’ve so many wonderful acronyms.
Andy Goldring:
So many acronyms. I didn’t invent that one. It changed a couple of times anyway, BLAST, all about blended learning, but it’s so mixing online and in-person, but mostly the key is about really setting up communities of practice. Cause that’s one of the key ways that you can develop transformational learning as people learning with each other and inspiring each other. So I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to maintain a kind of community of practice. It may be the more sort of formal end of it, not formal, but maybe a more organized end. And that’s so powerful, you know, you can really get so much change and so much progress and development from working with each other in a fairly simple format. I mean, at the local level, there’s kind of little action learning guilds, or just support circles or working bees, or I think so much of it can kind of happen very, really quite informally, you know, get a group of friends together and say, let’s all learn how to do an allotment or whatever it might be and that can be quite straightforward. I think when you get to the kind of global level, then it needs curating and it needs someone who’s gonna make sure that the zoom link goes out and everyone knows how to use the technology and you know, there’s other aspects to it. But yeah, I think it’s a really powerful way and it really suits, I think it suits our kind of vibe of permaculture. Yeah.
Morag Gamble:
It does. I think so too. And I, and I really like this way of learning because it gives us a chance to have some input, some formal input and then a chance to go and practice it wherever we are and then to come back and then to toss around the ideas and then get more input. And like you’re saying, it’s this blended learning, you know, I’ve had the same experience. It’s such a powerful thing and gives a chance to really have that experimentation in there that it’s not just sort of go and do, a course, you know, I’ve done that for decades as well. And I still love those courses, something about this way of learning that I think goes, well it supports the lifelong learning approach I think is really what happens .
Andy Goldring:
Yeah. I mean, this takes me back to a kind of quite important piece of reading that I did, which was, I don’t know if you’ve ever come across Ivan Illich but he’s a kind of South American well he was South American kind of radical priest. And he wrote a book called Deschooling Society. And Deschooling Society, chapter six is for the best description of the kind of future education system, I feel like I’m working towards, where there’s learning everywhere, learning all throughout your lives, learning isn’t just happening in an institution it’s happening in the community it’s happening in shopfronts. It’s happening everywhere really. And in that, he talks about, you need places, you need things to learn from. So that could be a place you go to, a demonstration center, you go to demonstration farm, you learn in a place or by the objects, you know, the kind of the books for concepts themselves, you need some guides and some teachers, but mostly you need each other, you know, you need each other. It’s for other people that also want to learn together, which is the most powerful side. And I think at the moment we’ve got this well, we’ve got such a huge transformation needed in society. If we could find a way to help groups of people to learn with each other in that kind of peer to peer manner around permaculture and the related areas that kind of, it’s a learning revolution in a way it’s almost what’s needed for me, you know, it’s cause we just got to find new habits instead of chop, chop, chop into the bin, it’s chip chop, chop, chop into the compost bin, it’s not necessarily that difficult or complicated, but it is a habit to change. It’s something to learn. And those changes, those habit changes. There’s so much easier if your friends are doing.
Morag Gamble:
Yeah, that’s right. So I wonder too, I’m just, I remember hearing from Lachlan McKenzie about the 52 climate actions program. So was this also part of this reason I’m thinking of that? It was because it was lots of little actions that people could tangibly take and then maybe do with others in a community learning environment and address the multiple issues that we’re facing, particularly around climate change. Do you want to just tell us a bit about the 52 climate actions? Cause I think it’s a great tool for communities to pick up.
Andy Goldring:
It is really good. And it does come from that piece of psychology, which is, understanding kind of behavioral science, which is that a lot of people feel quite paralyzed by, oh, climate change, it’s enormous. What can I do? And actually finding a simple step people that have taken a simple step towards something, and more likely to make another step and people make two steps more likely to make the third and then bigger ones and the whole process of change. So whilst we absolutely recognize that climate change is a systemic issue and there’s 70 companies, which produce the majority of fossil, of climate change gases. And, you know, we need to tackle the fossil fuel giants, absolutely. We also need to change our own behavior for all sorts of other reasons, too, including our health and our wellbeing. So what we did was we looked at, well what are the simple steps that people can take? And actually for each of the 52 climate actions, there’s kind of three different levels. So one might be, you know, plant a tree. So plant a tree might be something you can do yourself in your back garden and give some advice on how to do that. But then there’s a community action. So the community action might be, create a community forest or a community forest garden, or a community orchard. So the community level action that goes with that simple action you can take. And then there’s a kind of more campaigning actions that might be joining the Woodland Trust or get involved in the national tree planting campaign. So it’s couched in, here’s a really simple thing you can do, but it makes it really clear what the bigger things are that you can do as well.
Morag Gamble:
So very easily too [inaudible]
Andy Goldring:
It’s really about 170 actions. They’re all evidence-based. So again, this is application and research, very well-researched, really nicely put together, lots of activities that people can do. It’s a bit like we don’t, we talk about permaculture in it, but we, it’s not the headline. So all the partners involved were permaculture people. But we’ve chosen 52 climate actions because it’s accessible, it’s directed to the point and it’s a way in for people to permaculture. Yeah, so we’ve had a couple of experiments with that. We had a campaign called We Love Living for a while and we love living, you know, we love living, so we created forest gardens and you click on the link and then it takes you to the Permaculture Association. So, yeah, because the word permaculture can be a block for people as well when we don’t know what it means. Finding other ways to draw people into our web.
Morag Gamble:
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about where you see the permaculture network or permaculture in general addressing climate change. I mean, there’s programs like 52 climate actions, but where are you seeing, particularly in the UK, like permaculture and climate action meeting, is there, are they sort of one and the same, are there sort of, what’s the response that you’re seeing from the broader permaculture community to address the climate change and to follow on from the climate strikes from September 20, you know, particularly around that time, was that about 18 months ago. So now I know that the world has changed a lot since then, but it has.
Andy Goldring:
It’s such a big and complex challenge. I mean, I think when we know that people that do permaculture have got smaller eco footprints and we’ve got some research from there’s a Peltington peace research by professor Peltington down at Exeter, we’ve found that some of the lowest eco footprints, well, what he found was that people living in eco houses that hadn’t got training in permaculture had a bigger environmental impact than people living in normal houses, but did permaculture. So what he concluded was that the way to retrofit houses is to train people in permaculture.
Morag Gamble:
Interesting.
Andy Goldring:
Exactly, yeah. So there’s no doubt that permaculture as a practice and as a sort of systems thinking and design approach, philosophy and worldview, so to speak, but all of that kind of combines into making us have a much lower carbon footprint, higher positive impacts in terms of biodiversity and frankly, more resilient to shocks, you know, so permaculture is clearly a really powerful way of addressing climate biodiversity and other kind of existential threats. So more people doing more permaculture is gotta be a really important goal. How we achieve that then, I guess is really the interesting issue. So it’s like the personal action stuff is fine, that’s gotta be done. Community action, I think there’s a lot in the UK, for example, there’s a lot of interaction between transition network and permaculture. So some transition groups were effectively kind of rebranded permaculture groups or people that been doing permaculture work and central players. So there’s a lot of collaboration there, that’s also true with other similar sorts of initiatives. So, you know, where towns or villages have taken some kind of action often, there are people in permaculture that are behind that so I think when you get to that next level of kind of community or town or city level work, it’s not so much that we have to call it permaculture, but it’s about bringing the ideas and helping to kind of co-create and co-design a project and then, even at the global level, I mean, I think, the thinking is still totally relevant, but the reaction I think is bi-regional really, I mean, to me, that we can take, we’ve got total control over our homes and gardens more or less, we’ve got some control and can co-create in our communities.
Andy Goldring:
We can participate at the city and bi-regional level. And that’s where we can have real influence at the kind of national and international levels. It’s very hard to see how such a self-organizing, not very, not centrally organized groups such as permaculture can have much political influence other than to infiltrate all the other institutions. So I would say kind of infiltration, I don’t mean this in any sort of sinister way, but because it’s, I don’t know what the other word would be, but to move into other institutions and, and to see how they can start to adopt permaculture and related approaches is really powerful. And, you know, I was thinking about it, Regen Ag is really getting big in the UK. Regenerative Agriculture is getting big and I can’t help feeling that actually, Darren Doherty coming over, the first course was led by Aranya, the permaculture designer. He brought Darren over, I was the first person to bring Allan Savory over to do holistic management grazing and you know, everyone’s talking about agroforestry and Regen Ag now, now we’re not talking about permaculture and even regen ag, I think that’s some extent, sort of maybe potentially lost some of its connection with permaculture, but those ideas are out there and that’s fantastic so I think it is about seeding ideas.
Morag Gamble:
I wonder why you think, why is it that something like holistic management or Regen Ag can take off and permaculture stays like incrementally moving itself through the community, in this sort of gentle way?
Andy Goldring:
I think permaculture is fundamentally, deeply radical and that’s great. You know, it really is. I mean a different, well, no, so yeah, I think permaculture is deeply radical. We want an earth care, people care, fair shares future that is not corporate capitalism. It’s a completely different economic model. It’s a different political model.
Morag Gamble:
I guess, yeah. You can probably still do Regen Ag within that structure, can’t you? But within permaculture there’s, there’s a deeper, I mean, yeah, go ahead.
Andy Goldring:
I think you still do permaculture in that structure, but I think there’s part of it is branding, part of it’s maybe about how do we demystify it, and part of it maybe is that it’s okay if we’re at the edge, maybe that’s all right. Maybe it’s about the change, but change will come from people understanding it and incorporate it into their work, but necessarily talk about it. I mean, my vision is a little bit like, you know, I’d like the permaculture association to become as irrelevant as British Mathematical Association. No one needs a British Mathematical Association in order to sustain mathematics as a discipline in the UK. It’s so well embedded in courses and so on that you don’t need the mathematical association to take it forward. I’d like to see permaculture thinking as widely, I mean, basically, we’re ecological beings on an ecological planet living system. At some point we’ve all gotta get eco literacy and understand that how we interact
Morag Gamble:
I was gonna ask you, like, how has, you talked about how it’s embedded in some universities, which is absolutely fantastic. It’s kind of infiltrated its way in there quite nicely. How about in schools, in high schools or primary schools? Are there any permaculture programs.
Andy Goldring:
Yeah, there are, but it’s not necessarily very explicit. There are individuals that take on permaculture and it’s a rapidly increasing number because you know, the great work for children in permaculture projects has done, books out there, it’s been thousands and thousands of copies have been sold. Lucy and her colleagues have done training on how to become a children’s permaculture practitioner, people are using it in schools, nurseries, and there’s no doubt that it’s out there. It’s not been adopted by the mainstream education system, but the link there would probably be outdoor learning, is probably the biggest area of potential for how it could kind of connect. So it hasn’t got kind of institutional backing, but it’s got kind of the backing of some teachers. So again, you can see it sort of growing and it will have an influence. And maybe in the future it will be called a regenerative curriculum or something. I don’t know, who knows, but I think, if influence is there, I think we, all of this for me, lots of it comes back to how willing are we to spend some more time on the movement aspect of our work. You know, so, [inaudible] who was our research coordinator and still involved in the association, he said that permaculture is a global movement for local change. And we’re really good at local change bit, but we’re not very good at the global movement bit. And, you know, we’ve been involved in a project called the Permaculture CoLab which was originally the next big step project. And now it’s called Permaculture CoLab. It’s, we’ve had a couple of big challenges. One is that people weren’t used to working online, that’s broadly changed now so I think that’s good, that’s one less big barrier, but the other one is just having people that have capacity to also link to and connect at a global level with we’re not many are doing that. So there’s not many people, but also because we’ve got this idea, but it’s all about local change. There’s not much inclination for people to step up and say, but we’re all local change makers, but we’re doing this in a global movement. And if we were to actually spend some time maybe with our global communities of practice, how are you doing education work? Oh, that’s really interesting. I could do that too. I think that’s the kind of work where, you know, Ego Lemos, East Timor, permaculture in every single school. Now why isn’t there a queue of people from every country in the world doing permaculture saying, Ego how are you doing? How did you manage to make that happen? How could I have permaculture in my state education system in Argentina or Taiwan, or, Mozambique or Whales? You know, that for me, if I’m very inspired by permaculture, I’m really super motivated and still want to kind of take it forward. But if it’s a frustration, it’s that somehow we don’t prioritize that next level of kind of collective organizing. And I don’t know if, I don’t know what attitudes are like in Australia, whether I can say the anarchist word, but, you know, I’m an anarchist from my, if I have a political kind of philosophy, I would say I’m close to, and I look at all the political kind of philosophies available to me. I would go for anarchism because it’s about self-organizing, it’s about not having power over people. It’s about mutual aid. It’s very much the mode of permaculture bi-regional non-threatening, it’s about birth care, people care, fair shares. It’s not about authoritarian structures, which basically govern over us and tell us all what to do. Obviously it’s a long process to get to a kind of utopian future, we’re not ready yet, but that’s, I would aspire to a governance style where we could question people’s authority, people can question what I do, the permaculture association at any point. I’ll very happily answer any questions and stand aside if it wasn’t doing the right thing, so we can be self-organizing but that doesn’t mean to say that we can’t create organizational structures, which facilitate the things that we want to do. And I think we’re very good at dealing with self organizing local stuff, but we’ve not been very good at doing the self-organizing global movement stuff.
Morag Gamble:
I think this is where I’m really inspired by them, by what the perma youth are doing right now. I really see them reaching out and stretching out globally and connecting intergenerationally, cross-culturally the permayouth.
Andy Goldring:
Oh permayouth, yes, absolutely. Very much .
Morag Gamble:
So, you know, like, I feel like they’re coming at it from that point right from the very beginning and then kind of connecting with local hubs and, inspiring local hubs to form but it is very much about that always coming back in together as this, they are basically a global community of practice and things are just sparking out of that. It’s just phenomenal. Yeah. I totally agree with you like this idea. I’m so glad that we do now have far more acceptance of coming together online. And if we bring that together with the idea of having communities of practice, so, you know, we’re coming together and having this chat, but if maybe all the people that I’ve been speaking with on these conversations we’re actually all together in the same room, that would be. phenomenal.
Andy Goldring:
Let’s organize it.
Morag Gamble:
Okay. Let’s do that. All right.
Andy Goldring:
I’d be very happy to help organize that. I think that might be a fantastic thing to do. It’s just about, I mean, there’s so much that can happen just from having a conversation. Even if we’ve just had some regular conversations, I think we could really push things forward. But the idea of a CoLab quite simply was to say, look, the permaculture movement is growing really fast. It’s growing all around the world. People have got all sorts of successes and all sorts of challenges. Bill put together this idea of having an international permaculture convergence every two or three years around the world. It’s not viable now as a global movement to rest all of our strategic thinking on an occasional event that happens somewhere we have to fly to. That doesn’t make sense of the opportunities in the world, which has got something called the internet.
Morag Gamble:
Yep and this is exactly too, why the perma youth decided that we’re going to have a, that we’re going to go to Argentina and interview people there and then beam that out into the world, when Argentina didn’t happen because of COVID we thought, okay, well we’ll have a youth summit. And then we thought, hang on, a ticket youth summit means just all at one time, all in a few days and sitting for four days on it, on the internet, let’s spread it out, let’s have a meeting a month. And so that’s what’s been happening ever since that got canceled. And that gives us this ongoing conversation. And I think we can do that as grownups as well.
Andy Goldring:
Exactly, exactly, I totally agree. You know, really inspired by perma youth. And I think, I mean, they’re not constrained by old thinking, they just grow up with phones and computers and internet and friends all around the world and that’s normal and that’s brilliant. That’s the kind of, but very much we need to do, grown-ups need to get on board, basically, totally agree with that. And I think there’s nothing wrong with having kind of in-person events that’s fantastic too. But we can’t rely on, they can give a pulse of energy, broadly, we need to move to regional convergences. You know, we’re having European convergence in October and which will be online. Our carbon footprint will be way low than it would be if we were to meet in person and we’ll have a lot of connections and yeah, hopefully that will energize the network. And then that will feed for conversations that we can have for the next two, three years before we have the next big event. Yeah. So I think events have a role, but it’s to stimulate the conversation that we can then have on a regular basis and community practice.
Morag Gamble:
And having those regular conversations afterwards, and, and I know that there’s, I know Hannah from Abundant Earth, been trying to get the Weaver network happening so that there’s this online platform where you can have forums and find who or all these people. So I’d love to see that happen. I know she’s still really keen to see that emerge as well, but, so what just, what are some of the things that you’d like to suggest that people could tap into in terms of the things that you’re organizing that you’d like to let people know about or things that you’d like to sort of encourage people to sort of step up and speak up about? Because, you know, like we’d have been talking about it well, we need to change the world and permaculture is a possible way that we can be doing this. And how do you see us?
Andy Goldring:
Well, I would say, I think, okay, so www.permaculture.org.uk. If you’re in the UK, come and check out what we’re doing. If you’re not in the UK, borrow anything or take, just you know, use it, it’s fine. There’s a great knowledge base, there’s loads of resources, YouTube has got millions of videos. I mean, basically there was, when I first came across permaculture, it was like a secret society. If you’re lucky you might happen upon a crumpled leaflet at the back of the cafe in central alternative technology. The world’s awash with information about permaculture now. Pardon me? I’m just getting a glass of water. So there’s no shortage of information. I hope this isn’t too strange, a way to suggest a way forward. But I think there’s something about people really noticing where is their own passion? Where is their own curiosity? Where is their own enjoyment? What are the things that genuinely make them feel happy? What are the things that, what are the things they feel angry about? Actually, there’s something about sort of like listening to them, listening to ourselves because I’m absolutely, just like we think, you know, you put, you need to put plants in the right place, can’t have too much sun or they need more sun or they can’t have too much water or they need more water. Each plant has got its own needs and its own. When those needs are met, it creates the most beautiful flower. You know, it couldn’t be better. And I think humans are just the same. It’s like, we’re all different, we’ve got our own role. We’ve all got our own unique contribution and I would n’t want anything more of an each person just be the fullest expression of themselves. So for me, it’s like, okay, Earth care, people care, fair share, what is it in that big, broad vision of a future, a flourishing earth, a flourishing community, a world where we’re sharing and we’re healing, a lot of healing in that vision of a future. Where do you see yourself? What’s the contribution that you can make? What would give you most satisfaction, then just Google it, there’ll be a community of practice, there’ll be a forum, there’ll be a group, there’ll be loads of videos, there’ll be a book to read, talk to your friends, share a conversation. Write out a plan. How can you learn that? It might be, I’m really passionate about growing my own food, great, grow a garden. I’m really, you’ve got all the things there. Create superb soils, make your garden, grow abundant food, grow food forests. There’s so much we can do in our gardens. We might want to retrofit our homes and composting and drought proofing. I did a course and I put last permaculture course and someone realized that they were really, really into retrofit. I did a bit retrofit and I really, really love it. And if they want to change their career.
Morag Gamble:
This is the last thing that I wanted to ask you about too, is like, where do you see? You know, a lot of people talk about, well, I love permaculture, but you know, I just want to keep it as a hobby because I don’t understand how I can make it my career, like permaculture is my career and I know many people, it’s career. I’m assuming it’s your career as well. How can, what are the suggestions you have in terms of actually embracing permaculture as a career? Like you find the passion that you have, but how do, how can permaculture be your work as well as your life?
Andy Goldring:
I think there’s, for me, permaculture as a practice and so there’s all that kind of the things about becoming a grower, there’s all the kind of practical sides of permaculture, which you can learn them and you can, you know, yeah. I guess be involved in, so food production, et cetera, then there’s the kind of educators, consultants, designers, more of a kind of consultant and supporting others to create their own systems. Then you’ve got the kind of world change, organizing, networking, those kinds of skills of being an organizer, but then there’s, so there’s all this stuff which you might think of as the kind of permaculture jobs, but then there’s a step out. And this is where it goes a bit like maths as a useful analogy because there’s lots of people that use mathematics in all sorts of different jobs, but don’t think of themselves as mathematicians, but they couldn’t do their job without it. And I think we need carpenters that have done a permaculture training and they’d think about where the woods are coming from, they think about the kind of products they make, they think about where the outputs go. We could, we need people, permaculture people in retail. We need permaculture people in the police force. We need permaculture people putting on theater performances and doing the arts. It’d be really deadly, boring, actually, not very effective if everyone was just doing that. Well, so I guess what I’m trying to say is, for me, it’s at its core, permaculture gives us a really amazing set of values, insights, and skills, which we can apply to every realm of human culture. And so people might say, well, I’m really interested in permaculture as a hobby. Great. So what’s your main job and how can you apply your permaculture thinking to your main job? So maybe you were working in an insurance company. How can you bring your permaculture thinking into the insurance company to say, okay, Earth care, people care, fair shares, ecological thinking, climate risks, et cetera, et cetera. How could we use this thinking to shift the way we work in our insurance? You know, so it’s, I think it’s, for me, you can apply permaculture to pretty much anything. So yeah.
Morag Gamble:
Perfect, I think you’re absolutely right. And that it is because in many ways, like you said, it’s a practice, but it’s also a way of perceiving the world and perceiving yourself in relation to the world and relation to everything that you do. And so taking that way of thinking the systems, thinking the permaculture thinking, and whether you’re in your neighborhood talking to your neighbors or whether you’re creating a new organization or whether you’re educating your children or whether, whatever. And, and we’ve often talked about this as you go through the course, but really, I think unpacking this a lot more to talk about how we can apply it to, you know, every single aspect, whatever work that we’re in and that really opening up that potential to see permaculture is a skill for life and a skill for work and a skill for being a radical activist, but in whichever way that that may look and it doesn’t have to be something that you might not normally engage with because you think, well, that’s a bit too radical, but in actual fact, just the simple act of thinking differently is a radical act. And the shift in thinking is action in itself because it ripples into everything that you do.
Andy Goldring:
Yeah, I think, where did I see the quote, Thought is Action. You know, that the way we think does change the way we behave in the world and I was very one of my formative workshops. The first permaculture convergence I ever went to was with a woman there called Sylvia Eagle, who was one of the early pioneers of permaculture founders in the UK. And she’d been really inspired by Bill and a lot of the work that he’d done with indigenous people. And she was saying how one of the Aboriginal sayings is, you know, We sing and dance the world into existence and she couldn’t get her head round. She’s like, ah, I just, can’t kind of what’s it mean, how does it work? And I think she was on a tube station one day and she was kind of going down, in which we have these long escalators, those all sounds, all the people and sounds and noise and motion. And then she just had this sort of phased out a bit, suddenly thought, well, if we didn’t come down here and we didn’t do this, the world would be different. Just had this moment where she realized that the way we talk, the way we move, all of our thoughts, all of our actions make the world what it is and that’s almost magical. It’s almost like a sort of, it’s almost like, wow, we’ve all got so much power. We’ve got so much power because everything we say and everything we do can make a difference. And I think bringing that sense of attention and power to whatever we’re doing, whatever context we’re in, gives us the opportunity for change. We’ve all got that possibility to heal the world.
Morag Gamble:
Absolutely. That’s such a powerful way of saying things. And I think the other thing that’s really powerful that helps too is giving yourself permission to step up and speak up quite often, we think, oh, that’s the expert that does that. Or it’s the leader or the person has been doing for decades and that they can stand up and speak up. But actually everybody, everywhere can be the agents for change and be the difference that makes a difference.
Andy Goldring:
They can. And it’s so true, isn’t it? It’s like I’ve got friends who live in East Germany, and before the wall fell and basically no one would mentioned anything, you know, everyone knew it wasn’t working, but no one could speak. And it, when the walls fell, everything changed because the conversation changed and people could speak differently. And it was just processed by, it unlocked this potential to kind of challenge. And I think that’s what’s happening in the world now at the moment, is we’ve got this basically fossil fuel driven capitalist system is literally killing the planet and people are starting to speak, but people are speaking from all sorts of quite unusual places now, the conversation is changing and it’s that conversation changing, which will lead us to it is part of what is just a very different sort world. I mean, it’s a reaction too, but it’s what we say and what we choose to talk about and even at the dinner table with friends, you know what, we’re pushing it a little bit further and saying, well, what do we really think about, is that good enough? And changing the conversation is in itself, something that all of us can do. What’s really valuable for us. What’s important for us? We can even talk for hours.
Morag Gamble:
Yeah, I think it’s a beautiful place to close our conversation and imagine that we can open up a bigger conversation with people around the world. So I’m dedicated to work on that and work on that with you.
Andy Goldring:
So am I, yeah, fantastic. That sounds really good. Morag, I’d love to interview you at some point because you just do so much great work and I want to thank you for it.
Morag Gamble:
Oh, thank you, Andy.
Andy Goldring:
Yeah, no, you real, real energy. It’s great.
Morag Gamble:
Well thank you for your time today. And it’s just been an absolute delight to spend this hour with you and I know we’re gonna stay more in touch from now on, which would be great.
Andy Goldring:
Fantastic. Thanks. Okay, bye.
Morag Gamble:
So that’s all for today, thanks so much for joining me. If you like a copy of my top 10 books to read, click the link below, pop in your email and I’ll send it straight to you. You can also watch this interview over on my YouTube channel. I’ll put the link below as well, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a comment. And if you’ve enjoyed it, please consider giving me a star rating. Believe it or not, the more people do this. The more podcasts bots will discover this little podcast. So thanks again. And I’ll see you again next week.