To learn more about growing a permaculture garden simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

Hi! It’s Morag Gamble from Our Permaculture Life from the Permaculture Education Institute and welcome back for another live. Usually, I’m out in my garden, or maybe somewhere in my kitchen, or lounge room talking about something to do with how you can reduce the plastic use in your life. But what I wanted to do today here from my office, is talk about some of the resources that are available. That you might like to dive into either some books or some online references, that will help you to kind of look at the many other ways that you can get single-use plastic out of your life this plastic-free July.

So one of the ones that I wanted to mention and actually, I should say that I asked my daughter in the Perma Youth Group for a bit of advice on some of their favorite resources for this too. So some of the ones that they mentioned were stories of stuff obviously. Now, if you look up storystuff.org, there is a huge resource there. Of films and information, and graphic material too that can help you not only to understand yourself, but to explain to other people some of the things that we could get rid of. And also, some really compelling arguments why this is not just a little issue, but it’s a really major issue in our world and for the planet right now.

So storystuff.org is a really good one, and of course particularly those of you who are watching from Australia. The war on waste series is just absolutely fantastic.So if you just google war on waste, you’ll find Craig Rue Castle’s brilliant series. But also, a whole lot of materials that have been developed to support that, to help you to find really great ideas of what to do. And to give you more of the backstory as well, of what’s happening within a whole range of different sorts of industries. And there is also on the ABC Education site, a really good collection of activities. So if you’re still at home doing homeschooling, that might be something you want to dive into and explore with your children.

Now some of the books that I just put like there’re so many, so how do you pick? But some of the books, my really good friend you see, Rhonda Hetzel has written some great books. That really helps you, to dive into looking at how you can live a more simple life. So she has down to earth there we go that one and the simple home. So they have so many great things, about how you can live more simply and more packing less packaging. And then, there’s also low to life from another friend of mine Alex Stewart, who not only talks about I’m just simplifying life. But also getting rid of all the toxins and so essentially, by starting to think about how you can live a less toxin field life. It also means that you are getting rid of plastics because it generally comes back to actually making things from scratch as well. There’s a really great book you may have seen these books, Grown and Gathered by Martin Lentil. And they have so many different tips in here, of how to make things from scratch as well. So that’s a really good one to look at. If you think well, how do I do all this stuff and I not getting stuff made in and packaged, and sent to me. So they have brilliant recipes in there, and also this book is just brilliant as well. There we go, the Weed Forages handbook and this again is another Australian book. And it goes through all the different plants that you can find in and around the landscape, that you can just eat for free. And they also give you some really good tips on how to do that foraging as well. So there are some other of the things that I thought might be helpful to you. So the story of the War on Waste, the Weed Forages handbook, Grown and Gathered Botox Life, the Simple Home and Down to Earth.

So I’ll put the links below, and hopefully some of those are really useful to you, maybe you’ve got some of them already. If you have some that you use, that you find really helpful stick them down below as well.

I’m sure everyone would love to hear about what it is that you use as your inspiration. Or for cooking, from scratch or all those sorts of things. Or great references that you’ve got online that you have found, all right?

Well I’ll catch you again tomorrow, for another live talk about ways that we can get rid of a single use plastic.

The post Books and Online Resources with Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

The post Permaculture Regeneration – International Permaculture Day 2022 appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Last time Looby and I recorded a conversation (and I had no voice!) we were in her garden in England (in pre-covid times). This conversation recorded over zoom is really part 2 – a follow up now that her 4th book has been released by Permanent Publications who also produce the Permaculture Magazine.

Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

Looby is a thought leader and innovator in the social permaculture space and has been teaching permaculture for nearly 20 years. Her first book was the first to focus on the people care ethic People & Permaculture. Looby is also author of 7 Ways to Think Differently and Strands of Infinity.

As well as running the Applewood Permaculture Centre with her partner Chris Evans and 2 daughters, she is also one of the partners of the European Mother Nature project and is an active member of the UK permaculture community.

• You can purchase Cultural Emergence here in Australia, or here in the UK from Permanent Publications.
• You can also now freely download her wonderful little book 7 Ways to Think Differently as an ebook here.

Watch the Conversation

Or click here to listen to the Podcast on your chosen streaming service.

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, regeneration, and reconnection.

Morag Gamble:

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.

Morag Gamble:

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 on which I meet and speak with you today. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Morag Gamble:

So this week on the show, I welcome back a good friend and fellow permaculture teacher, Looby Macnamara. She runs the Applewood Permaculture Centre in the UK, a permaculture teaching space with her family, and she’s also authored four books. So, her first book was People & Permaculture, u h, followed by a fabulous little book called 7 Ways to Think Differently, which she tells me is just about to be released as a free e book. So, I’ll give you information down below of how you can access that. She wrote a poetry book, u m, called the Strands of infinity, but her latest book, which is the book that we’re talking about here in this conversation has just been released by Permanent Publications called Cultural Emergence. So essentially it’s a toolkit for regeneration. She gives a whole lot of principles and processes that support us to actually help to work towards this cultural emergence. S o, Looby has been a permaculture teacher for a couple of decades now and her focus has been particularly on developing the work around social permaculture around the people care ethic. And this book i n this conversation is really an extension of that into looking at not just individuals, but together, how we can start to shift cultures in a way that is going to help us to address the climate crisis. And in fact in her book, she writes, the climate crisis is a symptom of a cultural crisis. And so the response is actually working at that cultural level. So grab a cuppa, sit back and I hope you enjoy this conversation with Looby as much as I did.

Morag Gamble:

So thanks for joining me on the show again, Looby. Last time you were on the show , I was actually at your place and over in England at Applewood Permaculture Centre. And , I don’t think I had a voice then. So this time it’s really nice to actually be able to talk to you properly rather than the kind of , a whisper that I had. So , anyway, before we get started, I just wanted to check in, too with you. You’ve been in lockdown almost since I saw you last. How are you going? How’s things in your part of the world?

Looby Macnamara:

Yeah. I think, no, I think you were here a year before, I don’t think it’s been quite that long.

Morag Gamble:
Gosh, the year has flown. That’s right. It was almost..

Looby Macnamara:

Yeah . Yeah. So it was , cause it was we both got children who have the same birthday and it was near their birthday. But yes, we have been, it has been nearly a year of lockdowns relaxed , you know, trying to get back to normal and back to lockdown. So it’s been 11 months now of kind of complete pattern disruption on so many different levels. I mean, I lean into the practice of gratitude and that’s been really helpful, but in these times to just appreciate that and to understand what’s happening in terms of pattern disruption, and how it’s impacting us on different levels.

Morag Gamble:

And I think your work started with permaculture and then evolved into social permaculture and now , you’re describing it as cultural emergence. And I want to sort of dive into that and unpack that a bit as we go along. But I just wonder, you’ve mentioned pattern disruption and in that context of cultural emergence , um, what’s been your observation or your thoughts around COVID pattern disruption and cultural emergence. What are you, where’s your mind going with that?

Looby Macnamara:
Well , um, if we start with my working definition of culture as this complex web of patterns of seen and unseen patterns of thinking, behaving, feeling, interacting and if we think of that as cultures , you know, there’s many definitions of culture, but that’s one I like to use. And during , pre-COVID times that complex web of patterns is quite fixed and quite stable. It moves, it moves through the seasons. It does move, but what’s happened during COVID is that that pattern has become completely unraveled because it’s web of patterns . So you change one thing and then suddenly all the other patterns shift. So you change your work patterns and then your eating patterns change and then your sleeping patterns change. And then you start to question your values and your beliefs and things that were unseen before I’ve started to come up to the surface, like global inequalities, like the distance that it feels comfortable to be talking to a stranger or close friend or an acquaintance that we had unseen patterns of where we would stand in relation to someone. And we probably didn’t give it much thought until someone stood too close and you’re like, I don’t really know you that well, why are you standing so close? But now since COVID, of course we’re all really aware of how close we’re standing to someone. And it’s like, okay, I’m , uh , I know that I’m only socially distanced enough when it feels awkward. So all these patterns and these values and these cultural priorities have come to the surface and they haven’t quite landed yet for people , into, you know, or some of them have, but then they keep on changing again, like, Oh , okay, well, you know, our children have gone into school and then they come out of school and now they’re doing online schooling, but in a different way to how they were before. So it’s just constant pattern disruption, which can be quite tiring for people. And in cultural emergence, I’ve talked about 3 different phases and we need to have them in balance for this fertile cultural emergence to happen. And one of the phases is , challenge and awaken. And this is where you get pattern disruption, you get awareness of culture, you get awareness of systems and how interconnected , all these systems are. And those are all practices that will help activate the challenge and awaken phase. And we’ve gone into this global challenge and awakened phase that has made us feel challenged and awaken, even if we’re not struggling in terms of our health or finances or work. Although a lot of people are struggling in one area or another, but even if we’re not, we still are immersed in this collective challenge and awaken phase . And then the other two phases are the move and invigorate and nourish and empower. And those phases are not getting as well activated. And so we’re a bit out of balance. So that would be one of the things that we kind of collectively need to do is to bring those other phases more to the forefront, to balance it, and to help us e merge the regenerative culture that we want.

Morag Gamble:
Something that you wrote in your, in your book that I really liked. Well , it’s lots of things that I really liked , but there’s one point just connected to that. It’s a sense of that we have , uh , we have a collective sense that the culture is something out there. Whereas how you’re describing is actually something about how it’s our relationship with the patterns that we’re connected. You want to just talk about that a little bit about. Like how it can really be seated in that sense of culture so that we can then be a collaborator for that emergence.

Looby Macnamara:
Yeah , it’s true. It’s culture is one of these words that we use all the time, but we’re not very sure how to define it, or when we tend to think of it as, you know, our country or something really quite big and immutable really. Um, and, and actually, if we go back to that definition of the complex web of seen and unseen patterns, we see that we are , we all have our own unique, complex web of patterns that comes from all the different cultures we’re part of. And if we think of , in permaculture, we talk about microclimates and the we’re really aware of how the micro climate, even on the same piece of land can be very different from where it’s the sunny part of the land and the shady part and the wind tunnel and the frost pocket. And they’re all these different micro-climates within a larger climate. And we can think of the same thing with, in terms of culture that where there’s many cultures nested within each other . So we might be part of , um, you know, I might be culture part of the, we are part of the macro culture of being a woman, which is a global culture and part of the culture speaking English, then we’re part of very different cultures, whether you being in Australia and me being in the UK, I’m in winter here with all my warm clothes on the beginning of the day, and you’re in Australia and the heat at the end of the day. So we’ve , we’ve got different macro climates.. Macro, and micro climates, as well as mac,ro micro cultures. And the smallest micro culture is yourself. And I’m sure most people, even when they think of it in this way of being a complex web of patterns, they recognize that their complex web of patterns is different from their partner’s or their children or their flatmates or their parents. And when you start thinking about it like that, it seems obvious. Yes, I’ve got a very unique, complex web of patterns that no one else has. And some of those patterns I will have inherited from my parents, some from the media, some from my friends, some from my education , my dietary choices, all sorts of different places that I inherit parts of that web of complex patterns that makes this unique mosaic that is very specific to myself.

Morag Gamble:
Hmm . I wanna jump to like a big culture, a way of thinking, I suppose, another point that you mentioned in your book was that the climate crisis – I’m just going to read it here. “The climate crisis is just one symptom of the deep cultural crisis.” And I thought that was a really interesting statement because, you know, often we point to the climate, you know, this is the issue and what you’re describing as it’s a symptom of something broken in that system of relationships. And I was going to also ask you kind of about, well, where is it that we’re stuck and maybe that’s part of this. Like we have a cultural crisis and where is that stuckness and how do we come unstuck?

Looby Macnamara:
I mean, part of that is that there’s these unseen patterns. So we start thinking of the seen patterns of behavior and pointing fingers at that, that those things need changing. But those things arise from the unseen patterns that the beliefs, the priorities, the cultural tolerances that we have. And the thing is that we tend to perceive those as – if we do perceive them at all – we tend to think of them as quite fixed and cultural givens that our political system, for example, will act in this way. Whereas they’re not givens, they could be different, but we need to , explore them a bit more, bring them to the light and question them and say, well, is that really what I want? So I want to , like on a personal scale, maybe we have , you know, the pattern of having , uh, a mid-morning snack. And we keep that pattern, which used to be really relevant to us when we’d get up seven o’clock in the morning and have breakfast then, and cycle to work, and then need a mid morning snack to keep us going. But maybe where they’re now working from home, getting up two hours later, but we’re still having that snack and not questioning it. Do we need it? Is it still serving us that pattern and on a much bigger scale than we’ve got these political systems that aren’t actually serving the climate, they’re not serving the people they’re not fit for purpose anymore, but how do we change them? How do we actually come to the realization that they’re not serving us? And we define them, which is of course, huge questions to ask even that , even that understanding that it is a cultural issue helps us to look in the right direction for solutions.

Morag Gamble:
I was just going to ask you, you know, what do you think are some of those starting points of helping us to get unstuck from a cultural emergence perspective? And I think what you just said then is that awareness and seeing where sort of the root of the challenges that we can start to sort of build up some, a different approach. You know, one of your previous books was , 7 Ways To Think Differently. And in a way it’s absolutely that, I mean, in order to solve issues that we’re facing right now and bring the change that we need, it’s not about throwing tech at it. It’s actually about thinking differently. And then if we have tech , it fits within that different thought pattern, the different way of perceiving our relationships in our cultures and, and , uh, and our understanding. So, you know, you’ve been very much focused on that ways of thinking differently, I know that you embedded that too, in, in cultural emergence , your book, I saw that you’ve included the seven ways of thinking differently there. So, maybe if you could just mention a little bit about, about the seven ways of thinking differently and a little bit around that idea of yeah where do we start with that? So using the different thinking.. What flows from that as some starting points that people can kind of grab a hold of, like maybe even some practical examples of how you’ve utilized it in, you know, like your community. I know you’ve got something you call the great collaboration, you know, in your local area. What, what does that manifest like in a community?

Looby Macnamara:
Yeah. So the, the origin of seven ways to think differently was thinking about what permaculture has given to so many of us beyond the garden, that actually, yes, we have gone into our gardens or farms or small holdings, and we designed them and, you know , created these really healthy, productive systems. So it’s like, how do we create healthy, productive systems in our businessses, in our relationship? And we do that through shifting those thought patterns that then enable us to manifest differently out into the world. And then it was like , okay. So if permaculture is a way of thinking differently, what does that actually mean? And that’s where I categorized it into the seven different ways of thinking. Sorry, I’ve lost your question.

Morag Gamble:
I know it was a very big question. Sorry about that. I was.. what I was , um, what I was asking after that was, so we, we need to be thinking differently and the seven ways of thinking is a fantastic way to sort of be able to see that and see that different type of thinking. When I read through it, I was just, it’s a great little book and it’s so clear, and it helps us to understand that the next part of the question was really around well, so if we understand about thinking differently, how does that then translate into how we could start to act differently? What’s that call to action and where, what are some of starting that? Like, how do we action that new collaboration , uh , and, you know, maybe you’ve got some examples of something that you’ve seen working in that way.

Looby Macnamara:
Yeah. So I think it is bringing a whole kind of level of different understanding to how we approach life. And that really then ripples out from there in to all the behaviors we have and to be able to make that connection between how we’re thinking. I know also how we’re conditioned thinking, because each of the ways of thinking that I identified had a corresponding kind of mainstream narrative around it, and like a negative mainstream narrative that fed like the opposite beliefs. So for example, the first way of thinking is abundance thinking. And we are fed as consumers with our adverts or around scarcity thinking that what we have isn’t enough. So the home we have the sofa, we have it isn’t big enough. Isn’t comfortable enough. You know , it’slike this thing of not enough is the narrative that we are constantly fed with all the advertising. That is how advertising works is it says what you have, isn’t enough, you need this. And it is quite subtle to understand that that is the message we’re being constantly fed. Once you engage with that. And , um, you know, I’m sure many people listening to this will already know it, and then many people will also be able to really identify it as soon as it’s kind of brought to awareness as soon as it moves from the unseen to the seen. And , so shifting to abundance thinking so within permaculture is more about valuing what we have and shifting our thinking from that’s waste to how can that be used and become resources that shift from waste to resources from something being liability to an asset from being a problem to solution that that thinking comes from abundance, thinking it doesn’t come from scarcity thinking and being grateful for what we have is a part of that abundance thinking. It’s the doorway into abundance thinking. So when we become aware of these unseen patterns and this links in with the work of cultural emergencies to recognize the cultural conditioning that we have, that all of us are constantly being culturally conditioned. And when we recognize that, whether we can start stable, how would we actually like that conditioning to work and start reprogramming our thinking patterns that then reprogram how we operate in the world. So that’s very , um, awareness of culture and awareness of all thinking patterns that we’ve been conditioned with, help us to unpick that conditioning to actually question it, is that really my own beliefs? Or is that something I’ve been conditioned with that questioning to just pick?

Morag Gamble:
So Looby.. Where did that come for you? What began your thinking in this direction? How did you find permaculture and what kind of fuels your flame to continue this work? Because you’ve also been doing this for a very long time. So what is your inner flame with this?

Looby Macnamara:
I’ll start with my journey with permaculture, and then carry on to the second interesting question about what fans my flame. I did my permaculture culture design course when I was doing my university degree. And there’s a huge contrast between my university degree, which was human sciences, and it was anything with an ology, ecology, anthropology , biology, philosophy , and they were all quite separate things. And then I’d go to my permaculture course, which I did over weekends. So I’d be doing university Monday to Friday and then come to Saturday. And I had so much fun during my permaculture design course. So there was a lot of fun and collaborative learning and a lot of recognition that we don’t know all the answers, which was quite a contrast to university where, you know, we were kind of expected to regurgitate lots of the answers and not give our own ideas in that . Um, and the other thing that permaculture did was it made these threads of connection between the ecology between anthropology, between the philosophy and made lots of threads of connection there, which , was really valuable. So I came to permaculture not as a garden as my first experience and the delight of growing my first crop of Swiss chard and being able to eat it. But that was the only crop I grew. Um, and it was, it, it was the way it was taught that really captured my imagination and made me think, yes, this is what I want to carry on doing. And then after teaching for a while, it was like, I heard it several times this point that we have earth care. So we have all the earth care solutions we need on the planet for fast earth care and repair. We have those existing already, we don’t need more solutions. We know how to plant trees. We know how to collect rain water. We know how to grow food. That’s not what’s limiting us. It’s the people care that’s limiting us. And what is it about the people is it’s about every single level from our own personal energy up to international politics. It limits us in so many different ways. So with permaculture , as you know, when we have a limit, we flip it around. So limit becomes a need for our design. So we need more people care. We need to examine our culture. We need to examine our thinking. We need to examine the cultural narratives that have led us to where we are at the moment. And so that’s been my journey to really focus our attention on that. Because I do believe that if we can shift our thinking, if we can shift those cultural narratives, that then we will shift direction. I love your arrows there in the background, you know, the food forest. You know, it’s like where’s your , where are we pointing with our cultural narratives? What do we believe? What are the priorities, what is our role to play within that cultural narrative as well?

So, we haven’t yet spoken about this word emergence, but I think this is where the answer to the next question of what keeps me inspired and keeps me going, and it’s this concept of emergence, which is a systems time . And it’s when we put things together. So we have this one, plus one equals one – sorry, one plus one equals three. So it’s like more than the sum of the parts. And that is synergy . It’s like, we get more, that there is more of the same and with emergence , we have this indefinable leap to something different that has some emergent properties. We have one plus one equals blue, or a spiral or something unimaginable that wasn’t present for in the one, the one or the one. It’s something completely different. And it is like this whole quantum leap. And we, you know, we have emergence around us all the time with the water we drink . We can’t tell from looking at this, that this is hydrogen and oxygen here. And it has all these different properties that neither hydrogen or oxygen have, and it’s all life force and, you know , emergences around us so much that we take it for granted and we don’t see it anymore, but I believe that when we contribute and we give our gifts into the greater whole, when we start moving together and we start acting more like a starling murmuration like something getting conflicted and pulling in different directions. When we start moving like that, you know, that we will create this harmony that will actually move us into this whole different way of being on the planet that will move us away from this climate emergency into a nourishing, fertile cultural emergence. And that’s what gives me hope that that can happen. And that the more we find our gifts, the more we contribute, the more we hold on to that vision, the more likely it is to happen.

Morag Gamble:
So I wanted to ask you too. You mentioned in your book about deep adaptation, if you could just describe how you see the relationship between permaculture, deep adaptation, cultural emergence, and maybe something too about the pace of change. And are we moving fast enough. Is our current pace of addressing it through, you know, the small and slow solutions. Where do you see the permaculture solution fitting in that the need for a quite dramatic shift really in how we’re doing it. And I think, you know, like we’ve all been thrown into, you know, like you’re saying, the disruptive force of COVID has given has kind of like cracked open enormous possibilities for something to really shift quite dramatically. But I’d just love to hear from you, like, with that deep adaptation, particularly in that climate response to an extinction, you know, we’ve got the extinction, we’ve got the climate, all these discussions were happening and particularly strongly in the UK before COVID, and then just where you feel we need to move with that.

Looby Macnamara:
There is kind of many levels on and if I focus on my own personal level and what I see happening with course participants, with friends on community level and how we can really move tremendously and really shine and really find our life purpose and, you know, feel grounded that was really helpful then on the bigger level of the planet as a whole, and the trust that I have to adapt and respond and to be resilient and come back from what’s thrown at is that’s really comforting and grounding as well. This is sort of at the level, that is, I think for lots of people. Most challenging is when we focus on the political level and the sort of larger scale cultural levels and how that feels quite disempowering and disheartening. And the conversations are happening there, let alone the solutions being found or even focusing on the right problems. Soyou know that can be really difficult.

Morag Gamble:
So you’re talking about the bigger picture. We talked about exploring sort of that pace of change or the scale of change, but you also talked about cultural emergence being about creating lasting change. And I think this is a really important part that it is about, it is much about local, this about deep change and lasting change. And I think this is a really important part of what you’re talking about, isn’t it?

Looby Macnamara:
Yeah. So with cultural emergence, it isn’t an end point, a destination that we’re heading for. One of the premises of culture emergence is that there is an ongoing process that we have to continually be redefining our culture and checking is moving in the direction that we wanted to, which is part of the problem. It is being quite static in some ways, of course, in all the ways for those of us that can remember life pre-internet, of course it’s dramatic shifts there but has the political system changed over that time? It hasn’t really so there’s .. It’s this ongoing process of examining our culture, redefining itwithin the current context, which changes as well. And, you know, this is the question is, are we acting quick enough? Well, no. Um , you know, we, as our political systems, as a global community, no, we’re not working quick enough. We’re still suggesting solutions that come from the same , cultural narrative. So the shift from petrol cars to electric vehicles isn’t going to solve the climate crisis. It’s just kind of replacing one problem with another problem. It’s like, actually, how can we, you know, invest in public transport? How can we l ocalize? How can we meet our needs more locally? Those are the questions that we need to be asking. So it, it can feel quite frustrating about the pace of change. And you asked about deep adaptation and I can see the value in having that awareness that, you know, huge collapse can happen. U m, it also maybe is a bit more, i s a bit disempowering for people. On the one hand, on the other hand, it can feel like that’s the only way it’s going to go. And the only way how we’re going to kind of break out of this trance that we’re in as humans, that we are in control, that we are the most important species on the planet, those kind of beliefs that are shaping how we act on the planet a t the moment a nd, and bringing us to destructive ways.

Morag Gamble:
So I want to just come back into your book because your book is full of principles and processes and tools. So it really is a kind of like a guide to help us along this journey. Can you just share a little bit about what kind of tools and processes people will find in there to help them to get into in a deeper way.

Looby Macnamara:
Hmm. Yeah, there’s like keystone practices. So things that will really activate the phases that I talked about to the beginning and we’ve got awareness of culture and sensing systems, which are the keystone practices for the challenge and awaken phase. And then the move and invigorate phase is the keystone practices manifesting through design and actions . So that’s the shift with the design and thinking things through. And we do this a lot in permaculture is actually design systems. So we think through the connections, we think through our vision on our limits and resources , patterns and reflection and action plans, and then actually do things, implement the designs. And so that brings us into the move and invigorating phase. We feel like we’re not stagnating. We’re not just in that challenge and awaken that overwhelm it’s actually like, okay, this is happening. This is what we need to do. And it would be lovely to see that being reflected in our political systems, having clear action plans of, okay, how do we design our way out of the pandemic? Do we design our way out of the climate crisis and into climate health? Also we can use out on small levels for ourselves, how do we design increasing our skills or looking after elderly parents or all sorts of things we can use that design framework for which is the design web, which I in permaculture. Um, and then, and then we’ve got for the nourish and empower. We’ve got the Keystone which are outines, which are connection practices, and that’s connecting to ourselves, connecting to other people and connecting to the more than human world as well, and bringing ourselves into alignment and resourcing ourselves through those connections. And what I found is that those different components, there’s other practices as well, that support these, but that has this extra emergence through those connections of all those things. So the cultural awareness will lead our designs to be more effective. And the connection practices will , enable us to be more aware of our culture. So there’s this web of connections between those keystone practices that support us to bring those into balance as well.

Morag Gamble:
And then a lot of who’ve been listening to this are also either permaculture teachers or starting to be a permaculture teacher as well. So I imagine that , um, these processes and principles could also be used to help design really wonderful education programs. And I just wonder whether from your perspective as someone who’s been teaching permaculture for awhile , um, I, you know, maybe just reflecting a little bit on what you love about teaching permaculture and how you’ve been able to use these ideas in that to help cultivate really wonderful experiences.

Looby Macnamara:
Yeah, so the cultural emergence talk is like, it’s an embodied experience as why it’s not a theoretical understanding. It’s like we might have a theoretical understanding of awareness of culture, but it’s bringing it into our bodies and being able to shift our sematic experience relating to our culture. And when we come together in a group, whether that’s a community group with the purpose of creating a project or whether that’s on a course with the purpose of learning something, when we come together as a group it is a sematic experience an embodied experience that then enables you the direct connection with your own gifts that really helps those gifts to surface that releases you from your own web of patterns, that allow some expansion of yourself, of your own patterns, of how you perceive your own self. And I call them creating fields of encouragement and that encouragement moves in all directions and can land with people in very different ways. So that creative spark can take someone off in a completely different direction to what you thought you were doing with them. I’m sure you e xperienced t his on permaculture courses that, you know, someone comes in a course and you’re teaching them about design and ecological systems and what they go away with is, wow.. I sung it. With people around the fire in the evening, and I didn’t know that I could sing, and that’s just shattered this limiting belief that I had about myself. Wow. What else could be different than, you know. Or I stood up and talked in front of the group and I didn’t know that I could do that and s ay, it’s all these other side consequences that we might consider a just side effects t hat actually can be the real tipping point and turning p oints for someone. But then, you know, that belief that they had about themselves, shakes another belief that they had about themselves, shifts a belief that they had about their family, about the world, about other people, b ut then they go away and think, what c ould I do now? And that might be something entirely different to what you’ve been teaching them about. So that’s w here it was, is embodied personal experience, but then there’s also a collective experience of collective realization that we are greater than the sum of our parts that we can do amazing things. And there’s a lyric from a song, “we know our might is tenfold in connection”. And I l ove that. L ike t his, when we come together, these things that we thought were immovable truths about the world, we discover all these cultural assumptions that can be q uestions and can be shifted.

Morag Gamble:
That’s beautiful. And I really loved that. What you’re saying about the fields of encouragement and it’s really, you know, a permaculture course , it’s not just about the content, it’s about how you show up and build those relationships. So something like what you described can happen. So Looby maybe you could just tell us a little bit about where people can get hold of this book and what other resources that you might have available that people can dive into to learn more about the work that you do in all of its richness.

Looby Macnamara:

Yeah. Thank you. I’ve got a website cultural -emergence. com and on there, we’ve got resources and there’s lots of videos on there. And you can get the book directly from me. You can also get it from Permanent Publications as well . We will be looking to release 7 Ways to Think Differently as a free ebook as well, to get that out into the world as well and other places. So and there’s online courses happening and about to happen as well. So do check out the cultural hyphen emergence dot com and I’ve got newsletters . Yeah. So also find me on Facebook as well. So , there’s various ways you can find out and so I’m training up facilitators at the moment as well. So there’ll be more people offering cultural emergence in different places around the world, and that will grow as well.

Morag Gamble:
If someone wanted to become a facilitator in that, how would they go about doing that?

Looby Macnamara:
There’s learning pathways, there’s different courses that I run that focus on different elements of the toolkit. So when people have a good grasp of the content, then there’ll be a facilitator training as well. So, you know, it is a long term process because it is complex , um, and it can give you results. So is a lifelong process of , uh, we examine the whole culture and trying to make a difference in the world is well .

Morag Gamble:
Um , and then maybe when COVID finishes, people might actually be able to come and do a course with you at your permaculture center, maybe when that all changes again.

Looby Macnamara:
I do, I do hope so. Yeah. I do hope that we will be able to run courses here again. Um, we’ll see how that emerges. It’s about being in a state of emergence and openness and awareness and looking for opportunities. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:
And, and just connecting in different ways. You know, I think there’s been a really big opening of huge, you know, global connections that are happening more than I think they were before. And I think there’s a lot of possibilities in the learning in that as, as we move ahead. Well, thank you so much for your time today Looby it has been an absolute delight to catch up with you again. And , um, I know that you’re going to be joining us again actually very soon , um, with the permayouth. Hopefully with one or two of your daughters , uh, joining in with the permayouth festival, the next permayouth festival. So

Looby Macnamara:
Yeah, I’m looking forward to that.

Morag Gamble:
Until then, enjoy the last days of your winter while it’s still there and your nice fires. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining me. It’s just been an absolute delight to talk with you. And to sort of unpack a bit of some of those things that we really need to be exploring when we’re, when we’re diving into permaculture, that, that it is so much about the people care and the fair share and the ways of thinking and that once we have that, all of the different practical tools that we learn along the way can help us to cultivate the change that we really need to see in this world. So thank you for bringing that to the floor, writing it down for us all too.

Looby Macnamara:
Yeah. Thank you Morag I know you’re really busy, really productive, I should say. And just in all the different areas, and different people you support around the world and really encouraging so many other people to share their gifts. Thank you.

Morag Gamble:
Thanks Looby. So that’s all for today. Thanks so much for joining us. Head on over to my YouTube channel – the links below, and then you’ll be able to watch this conversation, but also make sure that you subscribe, because that way you’d be notified of all new films that come out and also the release of the extended tour of Lammas Ecovillage where we go into the landscape and the common spaces, too. And also you’ll get notified of all the new interviews and conversations that come out. So thanks again for joining us, have a great week, and I’ll see you next time.

Would you like to teach permaculture?

Permaculture education reaches across the globe connecting communities, ideas, and resources, and builds hope and possibility. Becoming a permaculture teacher is a positive way to make a difference – as a volunteer or as your job – and support communities around you (or on the other side of the world), and connect with and regenerate your local environment.

Join a global network of [pr]activists addressing the interconnected crises humanity (actually, all life) is facing today.   The Permaculture Educators Program joins people together on 6 continents – from Nambucca to Nepal, Sikkim to Spain, California to Kakuma refugee settlement.

Subscribe & Share

Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.

Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design and action is so needed in this changing world.

What is permaculture?

Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-17yos). Please kindly support our registered permaculture charity, the Ethos Foundation, supporting refugee youth with free permaculture education, women’s community farms and more.

Thank you.

I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging.

Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing.

Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.

The post Permaculture and Cultural Emergence with Looby Macnamara and Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Looby is a permaculture teacher, social permaculture facilitator & cofounder of Applewood Permaculture Centre in Herefordshire, England, with her partner Chris Evans (founder of the Himalayan Permaculture Centre).

Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

Looby has authored 3 permaculture books: Cultural Emergence: A toolkit for transforming ourselves and the world (2020), People and Permaculture: Designing personal, collective and planetary wellbeing (2012)  and 7 Ways to Think Differently: Embrace Potential, respond to life, discover abundance (2014).

In this conversation, Looby & I talk about her work with cultural emergence & ways to create real livelihoods with permaculture. The late, Polly Higgins, who wrote the forward to People and Permaculture, said ‘permaculture is the biggest job creation scheme in the world’!

Cultural Emergence is framework & toolkit that Looby is offering to enable us to design the world we want to live in – informed by indigenous wisdom, permaculture design and systems thinking.  Looby launched her book just this month at the National Permaculture Convergence, UK & it will be available in November 2020.

I was excited to sit down in Looby’s garden with her in pre-covid times. Unfortunately my voice left me that day so please excuse the huskiness and listen instead to Looby who’s voice is clear, like her clear leadership in the social dimensions in the world of permaculture education.

Watch the video now:

Download and stream the Podcast here.

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 worthwile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation..

Morag: 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.

Morag Gamble: 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. IIf 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.

Morag: 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 on which I meet and speak with you today, The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. Today, I’m delighted to welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World show, internationally recognized permaculture teacher Looby Macnamara. Looby is the founder of Applewood Permaculture Centre in Herefordshire, England with her partner, Chris Evans, who also set up the Himalayan Permaculture Centre in Nepal. So Looby is the author of three permaculture books, each offering radical new perspectives. In 2012, she released, People and Permaculture – caring and designing for ourselves, each other, and the planet, which launched the conversations around the social dimensions of permaculture. And in 2014, she released 7 Ways to Think Differently. A wonderful little book that I absolutely love, including different types of thinking like abundance thinking, systems thinking, thinking in nature, cooperative thinking and more, and how these relate to permaculture. And just this year, she’s released Cultural Emergence – a toolkit for creating regenerative change. In this conversation. I talk with Looby about her work with social permaculture and cultural emergence. The vision of cultural emergence is to accelerate global cultural transformation towards a peaceful connected world for positive regenerative future. After knowing of each other’s work for a long time, it was really wonderful to sit down in Looby’s garden last year, while I was on a pre-COVID journey to the UK. Unfortunately, my voice had left me the day that we were doing the interview. So please do excuse my huskiness and listen, instead to Looby, whose voice is clear, like her clear role in the social dimensions of the world of permaculture education. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Morag Gamble: So, I’m in Looby’s house. We’re about to do an interview. I don’t have any voice, but I’ll do my best. Hi, it’s Morag Gamble from Our Permaculture Life and Permaculture Education Institute and I’m very sorry about my voice, but I’m here today with Looby Macnamara and she has a voice. I’ll try not to speak very much and hand over to Looby. And I’ve been watching Looby’s work for a long time. So Looby’s here in England. I’m based in Australia and I love the work that she does. I’m so delighted to be here to hear a little bit about how she got into permaculture teaching cause it’s really very exciting. So thanks for taking the time.

Looby Macnamara: Yeah, lovely to meet you. Welcome to Applewood Permaculture Centre which is my home with Chris which you’ll meet later and yeah, it’s great to have you here and see more permaculture.

Morag Gamble: Nice. So you’ve been here at Applewood Permaculture Centre for a couple of years now.

Looby Macnamara: Yeah. Nearly three years. And we were lucky enough to move into a place where we were, it was kind of ready to go with courses. The first week after we moved in we held our first ever cultural emergence course globally.

Morag Gamble: Fantastic! So you run permaculture courses and cultural emergence courses here all throughout the year.

Looby Macnamara: Yeah. And teach training courses as well. So a real diversity of courses and we’re always pushing edges and exploring new things here.

Morag Gamble: So that’s exciting cause my focus too is around teaching permaculture teachers. So really excited to talk to you because you’ve been, you’ve written books about this one here, People and Permaculture. It’s been rereleased, which is a fantastic book that focuses on really it’s kind of like social permaculture side, isn’t it. And pushing the boundaries of what permaculture is about. And I love this book as well. This one. 7 Ways To Think Differently So those of you who do my course, you would have seen me referencing these books and this is Looby. This one I haven’t seen. Can you tell us what this one is?

Looby Macnamara: This is a poetry collection based loosely around the work that we connect spiral as well. I need to explore that tonight.

Morag Gamble: Can you firstly, just tell me a little bit about how you got to permaculture

Looby Macnamara: Yeah. So permaculture, when I first came to permaculture, I hadn’t really an idea of what it was like. It was just, people were talking about excitedly around me and then I went on a course and I went on a course while I was doing my finals of my university degree which was human sciences, it was lots of different bits of different things. And then permaculture came in and it was like this thread that tied loads of things together. And also the thing really excited me and really kind of lit my fire was the way it was taught and the way we were really invited to be this collaborative learning group who could find the answers together and who could explore things and have fun and be creative. And that was quite a contrast to my university degree in mainstream education. So I was really inspired to be in that learning culture again, that learning environment. And that was really what inspired me much more in there even than the content at the time, which I didn’t necessarily have the space to kind of integrate all the content I was learning in my life. But the, the way it was taught just grabbed me and said, this is what you want to do.

Morag Gamble: It’s hard because I think it is, isn’t it it’s about feeling connected to something like it’s connected to global movement opening up and feeding each curiosity. And like you said, giving space to have fun, to be creative with it, rather than just kind of putting another skill and other information, pretty much an approach that feeds and nourishes you as well as giving you practical skills.

Looby Macnamara: Exactly. And that whole community and the wider community of movements and the community of the course and how that fitted in to wider movement of permaculture was really inspiring. And I just came alive in a way during that course that I hadn’t been alive in mainstream education. And then at the end of the course, we were invited to do it, to dream big and to share our long term goals and visions and to not think about what you, it wasn’t like project planning, what do you really want to do? And how are you going to get there? It was just like this expansive, like What could you do? What would you really like to do with your life? Yeah your imagination? I did this what if? Wouldn’t it be great to teach permaculture? Cause I was having so much fun and it was like, wouldn’t it be fun to just be in this kind of learning environment all the time. And just from having voiced that out loud, it was like the universe went okay and you know, and just laid down these kind of laid steps for me that just opened up my pathway to becoming a permaculture teacher.

Morag Gamble: I think there’s something really powerful about that intention. That what if imagining things into, into being independent reality, like if you hadn’t have said that it may well have not ever come about what it might have just been still floating around the air just waiting..

Looby Macnamara: Exactly, exactly. And it was just this inviting in what I really wanted. And that was really powerful not to get caught up in whether it was feasible or whether it was a good idea or whether, you know, it was going to be the right career choice for me or anything like that. It was just like, what would I really want? And you know, I love it nowadays. And I kind of looked back where you know, around the fire pit here obviously in the day we haven’t got the fire going, but I just love the fact that when I was a child, I would go and kind of go sit around the fire and sing and that was all real time that I came alive as a kid. And now as an adult, I get to do courses and as part of it we have fires in the evening and we’re, as you say, that whole person approach and that whole community approach adds well to courses. So whatever the style of whatever the content of the course is where we are creating this, what we like to call it in cultural emergencies, culture, collective intelligence, and just really inviting that actually what we know and can contribute to this regenerative culture together is far greater than any of us can do individually.

Morag Gamble: That’s fantastic. So is that how you would define cultural emergence?

Looby Macnamara: Well so culture emergence is this opportunity to emerge a new culture and to have this fertile cultural emergence. So there’s so many kind of turning points that happen that can kind of end up with this destructive cultural emergence, which ends up in war or arguments on a smaller scale or apathy or disillusion. And what we want is that fertile cultural emergence, where we’re invited to shine our gifts. We’re invited to bring our creativity, our imagination, our commitment, our passions, our skills, and invited to put all of that into the mix and emerge more of that. So that it’s really this ongoing process into integrating these regenerative cultures. And breaking down this regenerative culture. What does that actually mean to us? And it’s like, well, how is it this culture, personal leadership? So we take responsibility. How do we create this culture of collective intelligence and responsibility as well? So we really invited to what happens between us is much more powerful. And it’s like this collective genius that can come through. And then the third aspect of it is this culture of planetary care. And when we’ve got those three happening at once, well, that’s really potent. You know, when we’ve got this personal leadership, collective intelligence and planetary care, that’s what we need on the planet at the moment, if we can create those cultures. So with cultural emergence, it’s not saying this is the blueprint of the culture we want. This is where we’re going. It’s not doing that. It’s saying that there’s this ongoing process is ongoing conversation. There’s ongoing development that needs to happen for us as humanity, as individuals, as communities. And that when we get that as those three things happening, then we really accelerate into this regenerative culture.

Morag Gamble: What I love about it is from hearing you speak is that it’s about being in it being really present. It’s not about working towards something. It’s not like an end point, it’s a process. It’s always like you’re inviting people into imagining the future like that at a power moment like you’re creating the space to invite people into that point, because really until we allow ourselves to find that place, we’ll just still keep going on rationalize things and put things aside. Whereas this is very exciting. And so it started, when did you start doing culture emergence?

Looby Macnamara: Well? It’s interesting because the journey with cultural emergence and the journey with Applewood here kind of have happened simultaneously. As I said, this was the first course I did here. It started through collaboration with myself and Jon Young. And we’re looking at not only what was the overlap between his work with nature connection, village building and my work with personal and social permaculture and people permaculture. And it’s like, well, not only looking at what was the overlap, but what was that emergent space that we could grow into? What was that next big step in the evolution? And that’s kind of what I was looking for as well at that time, it’s like, okay, people permaculture been out in the world for while it had, you know, but really opened up the conversation within permaculture about what do we do? How do we use it for our own personal wellbeing? How do we use it in groups? What’s the bigger picture of what we want to do in permaculture. So I’d kind of opened up that conversation and then was really thinking what’s next, what’s the, how do we expand beyond permaculture as well? And there’s always been this question about permaculture being permanent culture. And that really is setting us up for a bit of failure though. Isn’t it, you know, cultures are never going to be permanent. They’re really dynamic. And so actually, how do we invite this emergency as well? So that we really start to shift our culture into this regenerative space. And as you say, it’s an ongoing process. And so we started to really kind of look at creating this toolkit and looking at, Jon has these core routines of nature connection. We were like, well, what would be the core routines of cultural emergence? And then permaculture, we love our principles, don’t we. So what are the principles of cultural emergence as well? So those are just two parts of the toolkit and that really is really potent.

Morag Gamble: So for people listening, can you clearly articulate permaculutre, social permaculture, cultural emergence, just so that there’s a really clear definition there.

Looby Macnamara: Yes. I mean, there is this real continuum of all of them as well. So I mean, it’s a tricky one, isn’t it? So permaculture is about design. I would say it’s really clearly about design. It’s about shifting our thinking, which is why I called my second book seven ways to think differently. Cause it’s like when the shifts happen out in inside there, then they change. And whether it’s on the landscape or in relationships, it’s like the shifts start there and then they manifest differently..

Morag Gamble: When you see things differently, you can’t unsee can you. Most of the things that we need to change is about our perception and Fritjof Capra talks about all the crises that we have in the world being essentially a crisis of perception. That’s kind of the different ways of thinking.

Looby Macnamara: Yeah. So I would say that it’s also like the emergencies that we see at the moment on the planet are like this cultural emergencies they all stem, all these problems, we have social, ecological, our cultural problems. And so the problems are cultural, then making cultural shifts can shift the problems as well. And that’s sort of like looking at how do we really get deep down into what are the kind of the root causes and the paradigms that cause these problems. And so permaculture is really well known for being this land-based system and really focusing on earth care. And I think that’s partly because it’s you know, it’s tangible, it’s visible. I can say to you come and see our permaculture garden. It’s kind of a bit weird to say, come and see my permaculture relationship, but that isn’t to say that so many people have, you know, positive benefits from bringing permaculture into our relationships.

Morag Gamble: It’s a platform for those relationships to form.

Looby Macnamara: Yes. Yeah. And it’s so I would say that’s a kind of continuum from looking at permaculture in the sort of classic way it’s been currently used in terms of land-based and providing our very physical needs of water, shelter, food, and then energy, and then broadening out into our wellbeing needs as well. And so how do we do that in terms of, I say people permaculture, so personals and social. So how do I use permaculture for myself to really enhance my wellbeing, my emotional wellbeing through my thinking, my physical wellbeing through just observing my own body and in my own needs all the way to my spiritual wellbeing as well, and finding my purpose and feeling like I’m contributing to the world. So that’s all contained within personal permaculture and then social permaculture is what happens between us. So in our relationships, in our groups, then on bigger social systems as well. And I think this is where people in permaculture may be quite unique in terms of the permaculture literature of really taking it into our education systems. And our healthcare systems are looking at how we relate into generationally. And then how do we take that out globally and really feel connected globally and really you know, which is where the fair shares ethic really comes in as well as really critical. How do we pay attention to the fair shares ethic in terms of social permaculture people permaculture, and then moving it then out into the cultural emergence that’s where I’ve kind of expanded into and really looking at that, this question of, okay, if that is our belief that the problems are cultural, how do we really find cultural solutions there? And that’s also our personal culture as well. It’s not just culture being this big thing out here, but actually how do we use these tools to enhance my own personal culture, which will then ripple out into all the other conscious on the part of, so there is a continuum and I’m just edging out different tools in different places. And there’s overlaps and synergies that happen between them.

Morag Gamble: That’s right, as, you know, throw nested systems too, aren’t there. And I think the more you develop an understanding of it in a smaller scale system, it gives you an opportunity to really start to see how it can be of great relevance to any system of any scale. And I do talk about that in the in the original permaculture design courses, but is this you articulating what that means and how to use it?

Looby Macnamara: Yes. And just bringing in a lot of tools from Jon Young’s work of nature connection, and village building as well. So peacemaking and just really bringing more tools. And I it’s like emerging new things, it’s emerging new principles and it is providing this space. So when we have this course, it’s like we create this field of encouragement that allows this culture of personal leadership, that we are encouraged to step into our own personal leadership. We’re encouraged to have this collective intelligence that invites us to come up with solutions and to be imaginative and to throw something into the pot that can actually join with something else and just create something new. And so it’s really exciting dynamic causes that happen. And then the planetary care to really feel, how am I part of this bigger system that this locally in terms of the plants, I’m connected to the trees around me and part of this huge planet and this whole bigger ecosystem of life we’re part of, a small part of. So really connecting with ourselves as humanity is part of this web, and then how do we actually feel like we can, we got positive parts to play as well, that we, you know, humanity..

Morag Gamble: That’s what we want. We wanna feel that we can, we have so much to spare. And there is so much, I know depression, I think in a lot of people thinking, well, gosh, if you’ve done it, am I right. To have an opportunity to be in something that gives a sense of a possibility of something different or something that we can be part of and we can make a difference, I think is hugely powerful. For children as well.

Looby Macnamara: Definitely. Definitely. And this is what, you know, I’d like to, if I was going to give a sort of strapline for cultural emergence, I would say it was a message of hype and tools for empowerment. That’s the, like the two things there.

Morag Gamble: Now I want to ask you, cause I’ve just been in Totnes, chatting with Rob Hopkins and there’s the whole transition movement. So how do you see transition movement and cultural emergence weaving themselves together?

Looby Macnamara: Yeah, I think there’s conversations that have been had and can be had further. And I think the cultural emergence, it really looks at weaving a lot of things. So it’s like permaculture, links in eight shields. It links in transition, links in the work that reconnects. And it’s almost like looking at it as like this mycelium, right. And connecting all these things. And you know, when we look at the toolkit, a lot of them will, the tools might seem really familiar and it’s like coming into this really well organized tool, good tool shed with instructions saying there’s possibility of making all sorts of things with it as well. So it’s, I see that it’s kind of cross discipline in a way of just really connecting many things and that through those connections and through bringing in, again, it’s bringing in that collective intelligence that we, you know, a lot of groups being looking at different things and it’s like how do we look at that? Or the structure between those things and look at the connections between those things.

Morag Gamble: One other thing that I wanted to ask you, because it’s something that people ask me a lot too, is about how permaculture can be your way of life and your way of thinking and your livelihood. And so, I remember saying to people a long time ago, like I think in my entire life, I’ve had a real job for nine months. Maybe, the rest of the time has been permaculture, teaching permaculture, working permaculture-related community-based programs all over the place that’s been. So what about for you, do you take permaculture and apply it to your livelihood as well as your programs?

Looby Macnamara: Certainly, and I think this is another thing that people might think, Oh, I’ve got to use permaculture, I’ve got to leave my job and go into permaculture, but there’s also bringing permaculture into your jobs or into your business, whatever that is, you can benefit from using permaculture to be more effective, to bring the ethics alive within your business, to bring more balance within your business. So actually, you can bring permaculture in to your existing jobs, as well as finding opportunities that, where you can use permaculture. I mean, there’s so many things. Polly Higgins who wrote the foreword for People and Permaculture said n the foreword, Permaculture is like the biggest job opportunity scheme in the world. If we’re looking at opportunities and niches to be filled or on earh care, people care and fair share, there is endless opportunities for that. I mean, yes, we need to bring in more opportunities that are money through that, but they are there and it’s like again, it invites us to be entrepreneurial, and, and use our curiosity, use our creativity and, create platforms for ourselves to do that. And I know that there’s different circumstances and people might not have the privilege or the space to just kind of leave their job and find that. But so it’s building it slowly as well. So it might be that, you know, you keep your day job and then create small steps for yourself and build confidence and build those networks and opportunities for you to then find. So, I mean, I would say to anyone, there’s kind of like thinking, I want to create a livelihood myself with permaculture is just get designing, get the confidence up, so bring it into your life. And then when you start to make those shifts and got the skills and knowledge base on the designs behind you, then the opportunities will come to you. So you don’t need to, it’s not an all or nothing. It’s not a, “Oh, I can’t leave my job” and “Yeah, a permaculture full time job today so I won’t do anything until that possibility is there”. So actually create that possibility by doing what you can here and now.

Morag Gamble: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for spending the time today. I can see the sun is about to.. down below the barn here at Applewood Permaculture Center. I just want to thank you again for spending the time and sharing that because, it’s such a huge field. It’s like this big sort of big ceiling and opening to explore a whole different way of thinking around permaculture. And like I said, building relationships between all of those different things that are happening in this space, which is really exciting. As you’re talking about it you’re eyes are twinkling, I just love that. It’s a true sense of possibility and amazing potential. Thank you for doing the work that you do.

Looby Macnamara: Oh, thank you so much. It’s really lovely to meet you and to feel that enthusiasm for the people permaculture and for cultural emergence. And I’d just like to share with everyone that, we are, I’m just, just about to launch, like literally tomorrow, our cultural emergence online taster course. So we’ll put the link here for you and it is a free or pay as you wish, if you want to donate something to contribute to the ongoing development. But also if you just want to join it and find out a bit more about it, then please do join that.

Morag Gamble: I’ll put that link below and also all the links to the books, to the Applewood Permaculture Center, and also to Looby’s website, which is loobymacnamara.com. Thank you so much.

Looby Macnamara: Thank you.

Morag Gamble: Thanks for tuning in to the sense-making in a changing world podcast today, it’s been a real pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe and receive notification of each new weekly episode with more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively and core positive permaculture thinking of design interaction in this changing world. I’m including a transcript below and a link also to my four-part permaculture series, really looking at what is permaculture and how to make it your livelihood, too. So, join me again in the next episode where we talk with another fascinating guest, I look forward to seeing you there.

Would you like to teach permaculture?

Permaculture education reaches across the globe connecting communities, ideas, and resources, and building hope and possibility. Becoming a permaculture teacher is a positive way to make a difference – as a volunteer or as your job – and support communities around you (or on the other side of the world), and connect with and regenerate your local environment.

Join a global network of [pr]activists addressing the interconnected crises humanity (actually, all life) is facing today.   The Permaculture Educators Program joins people together on 6 continents – from Nambucca to Nepal, Sikkim to Spain, California to Kakuma refugee settlement.

Join Permaculture Australia too!

Subscribe & Share

Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.

Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design, and action are so needed in this changing world.

What is permaculture?

Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-16yos).

Warm regards,
Morag Gamble
Founder, Permaculture Education Institute

I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing – a challenging task this week with poor connection

Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.

The post Cultural Emergence with Looby Macnamara and Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I am thrilled to share this conversation with Amanda as we explore leadership, transition, power, way-finding, change and resilience. I truly value Amanda’s perspective – as a thought leader in this space, and a dear friend.

Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

Amanda is CEO of The Next Economy, founder of the Centre for Social Change, an Associate of the University of Qld, and the Sydney Policy Lab . She was a content expert/ advisor for the 2040 movie, and featured in the movie too talking about the importance of educating girls, particularly in the global south. I joined her as a guest on a 2040 webinar she hosted about Farming for a Future last year.

Amanda is also Churchill Fellow for 2020 exploring how climate action can build regional economies that are more resilient, just and prosperous.

I hope you enjoy this conversation and I invite you to share this episode and subscribe to my podcast here.

Read the Full Transcript

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 worthwile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

Morag Gamble: 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 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.

Morag Gamble: 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.

Morag Gamble: 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 our 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 on which I meet and speak with you today.. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Morag Gamble: So thanks so much for joining me this morning, Amanda. It’s absolutely wonderful. And I’d like to introduce Amanda to all of you who are watching this because Amanda has been a longtime friend of mine, but most extraordinary woman who has inspired me so much with the work that she does. So I just tell you a little bit about her first. So Amanda is the executive director of the Next Economy, and she’ll be telling us all about that. Um, she, she was also the founder of, um, The Center for Social Change. She’s a Churchill fellow. Um, she’s an Associate of the Sydney Policy Lab and or UQ, she, um, advised, uh, Damon Gameau on the 2040 movie and was featured in that too. Um, her work has taken her to many places around the world, uh, and worked with, uh, communities in so many different contexts and that’s really part of the core of your work. Isn’t it? Actually looking at what is change, how change happens, how we can transition to a society into a way of living that is actually going to be, uh, supporting wellbeing of people on the planet is essentially what I understand your work to do. But so maybe we could start there really about what is the Next Economy and what is the kind of work that you do that the Next Economy?

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Yeah, we do lots of different things. So it’s sometimes a bit hard to, even for me to get my head around, but basically what we’re trying to do is work with governments and business and communities, um, around that question of how do we transition to an economy that works for both people and planet. So I guess we’re a bit different to a lot of organizations around at the moment because there’s kind of this acceptance of particularly now since the Coronavirus hit and the economy does need to change. It’s not working for a lot of people. Um, and a lot of organizations focus on trying to build that power build a movement around the need to change, to convince leaders that we need to change. We kind of come in at a different angle around, um, working with people when they, they kind of realize that they changed, but they don’t know where to go. So we’re kind of not focused on trying to convince people we need to change. We’re focused on helping people navigate that, that change no matter where they’re at. So where’s the opening where people are ready and then how do we help them access the knowledge, resources, um, skills or other people that they need to actually like a step in the right direction.

Morag Gamble: So, so you’ve worked a lot in this world of transition. So what, what do we mean by transition? What is the, what, what are we transitioning from and where is it that we’re actually looking to transition to? I know that’s a very broad, big question, but I think it’s a key thing at the moment, isn’t it that, you know, change is happening and transition is happening in and around us. And how do we shape that, that type of transition that we, that we really would like to see in the world. So in your mind, the kind of work that you’re doing, what, what is transition and how can you, how can you support people to transition in the ways that they would like to see that happen?

Dr. Amanda Cahill: I guess, yeah, I use transition as a shorthand, because actually we’re always in transition, there’s never a stage where we’re standing still, we’re always moving. Things are always changing and it’s not linear either. I think often we think we’re transitioning from, you know, um, often we’ll talk about transitioning from the need from, uh, an economy that’s based on extraction of value, um, from people, the planet or the land or the water resources, um, for profit to something that is about investing or regenerating, um, land, water, and people in communities, but change doesn’t actually happen that way. There’s kind of openings where things there’s a crack that appears and whether or not that gets papered over and we try and keep going with the status quo or whether that crack appears. And something goes through that crack is kind of that question. So I don’t think, um, I guess I use the word transition, but really it’s about how do we find our way through change? So probably the analogy that we’re using in the next economy is the difference between say navigating using a map versus wayfinding, which is sort of the ancient art, or, um, either navigating by the stars or like seafarers used to use or indigenous people still use today where you kind of look for signs, um, in nature or science actually will say go this way. Not knowing necessarily where the end destination is, but having an idea of where you want to end up. So being guided by those principles around, um, that we need to, we need to move to a system that is regenerating the planet and people, um, that is more just, that means that an equitable that people have access to what they need, not just to survive, but to thrive in the world. So what does that look like? We need to act on climate change. So how can we reduce? So these are the kinds of principles and things that we want to see in the economy that we’re trying to build, accepting that it’s never going to be this direct when you pass to get this. So it’s meeting people where they’re at and then going, okay, if we want to head to this direction, what’s the next step based on where you’re at. Cause it’s gonna look very different for a minister or government department to a local community group. Um, they’re very different. The work looks different, but actually the support around them and helping them take that step is very similar.

Morag Gamble: Just as you’re speaking and the type of change or the type.. The way in which you’re working with communities is completely different and it’s old and it’s new at the same time. So what is, what, where did the inspiration for you come from? I mean, obviously you’ve worked in this field for decades and where do the old different sorts of communities from all different kinds of backgrounds? Where do you feel like sort of, kind of the roots of this, this way that you’re working with is coming from?

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Yeah, probably, um, so many places, but I think, um, from a really personal level, I actually went to a one teacher school. So I grew up in the bush and at the one teacher a school you don’t have access to a teacher who’s like stepping you through things all the time. So often we were given kind of a lesson plan or a sort of a workbook to work through. And if you got to finish that your work quickly, you could actually help other people. I had three or four other people in my grade. You could help them with that activity or you can go and help the other grades, the younger grades with their reading and writing. And I learned at a very young age that you couldn’t just tell someone what to do. You had to figure out where they were at and how they were thinking about that, and then start with where they’re at and then introduce something new, help them to play with that and experiment take the next step. So I think I’ve worked out that that’s kind of where it probably first came from, but then that was strengthened through work I was doing, um, I went to Brazil when I was 17 and started working with a women’s group there. And there were the women who were in the poorest section of the town, helping themselves. They went, Oh, we’re just pulling together the resources that they had to actually meet needs of their neighbors. They weren’t waiting for someone to come and save them that were just doing that. And I turned up and, um, just wanted to do something, um, because I’ve walked down the street one day and just sort of just couldn’t handle it anymore sort of very idealistic 17 year old, burst into tears and walked into the nearest church and said, you guys are going to be doing something about this work. What can I do? And the priest pointed me to church up the road that had women’s group. And I turned up and they were like, well, what can you do? And one of the things that they did was a sewing group. I went, well, I know how to sew. And they’re like, great, here’s a sewing machine. We need 130 nappies. I was like, okay, it’s that kind of, I guess it’s a more feminine approach to just work with what you’ve got and more of an emergent kind of way of problem-solving. Um, and that was reiterated again, when I worked with Aboriginal people and Aboriginal health in Australia, about 2001, again, it was people saying you’re an outsider. You’re never going to understand that culture. Don’t think that you can never tell us what to do. And I was like very young at the time. So they’re like, you know, it’s, you do not speak. You sit listen and we’ll tell you what we need. So it’s those processes of working with amazing leaders and a lot of different countries actually that are saying you have something that we need, but we’re in charge of this process. So actually meeting that and supporting that.

Morag Gamble: Yeah. And similarly, so the experiences I’ve had to kind of process of listening first, I think is such an important part. And, but I know too, that emerging from that grounding and that understanding, you have been exploring a lot of the ideas around, around change and around leadership. And so what is the kind of leadership that we need now? So there’s, you know, there’s one of actually being, uh, you know, being present and, and listening and that’s sort of part of engaging, but what type of leadership do we need in, in our world today considering what’s going on, considering that the kind of leadership that we’re seeing in many parts of the world is actually not taking us in the direction that we need to go in. And yet we’re seeing other types of leadership that is really starting to work well. What is, what is a leader within this frame? What is, what is a good and is leader the right word as well? You know, I’m just wondering.

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Right. It’s definitely a need for leadership. I think, uh, I’ve, it’s been a long journey for me. I think we’ve, we’ve talked about this before. Um, I started out as a facilitator. So my role wasn’t to my role was to hold a space for people to figure out what they wanted it wasn’t to sort of set the agenda and then get people to act in a certain way to get to a certain outcome. Although, you know, there’s a bit of a gray area with facilitation too. Um, cause you are there for a purpose. Um, but I’ve seen over time that even when people are willing and you see this little time with community groups on the ground, people can say that there’s a problem. They’ve got some, they want to start taking action. Um, but they not, everyone has the big picture vision that it’s needed that or the ability to bring lots of people along and coordinate that action, um, to keep an eye on the end goal. Um, the confidence just to an, a presence that actually inspires people to trust. I think so all of these things, I think the need for leadership is still really important, I think we can have really good processes that enable a lot more participation and equal and democracy and our decision making. But I still think there’s a role for someone who pulls that together and can own that. And I think what now more than ever in a time where we’re seeing around the world, very that strong man leadership, that kind of autocratic top-down follow me leadership, um, is a sign that people are looking for leadership and that they are scared and that they need someone who can kind of hold things together to enable them to have enough [inaudible] to be able to take a risk, to trust enough, to take a step, to take a risk. So that sort of leadership is more important than ever, but we don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water, like I don’t think, and it’s really interesting seeing how COVID is playing out where you’ve got those leaders who are very top down and very strong. Um, and we’re not seeing really great results in terms of how things are playing out because people are become paralyzed, waiting for direction. Um, and sometimes those calls have been great because there’s no way that any one leader or even government can be across all of those issues. So there’s a different kind of leadership. Like you look at, um, people like Jacinda done in New Zealand where right from the beginning, she spelt out the problem. And then she explained to people that there were stages around how they were going to manage it. And she gave people the information up front saying there are, I think, four stages to this response. We’re starting here. Once we see these kinds of things, we’ll wrap it up and we need your cooperation with this. It’s only going to work with you. So there was an invitation in, there was trust of the people to give them information so that they can make decisions for themselves. And it was enrolling their confidence. It was saying, are you going to work with us to make this happen? Because you are part of a whole, and it’s, it’s a very different kind of leadership model. Even within the climate movement. I noticed there’s like a lot of campaigning organizations are feel the pressure to come up with the answer, the campaign we’re going to push for this one thing. We’re going to build power around it and make this happen. Um, and that’s important and it’s, it can happen very, especially when things need to have a very quickly, but at the same time, I think we missed an opportunity where there might be opportunities for real transformative change by actually going okay, here are some principles that we can work behind. Here’s the vision that we all agree that we’re working together, engage people around that conversation about what they want, which enables people to then go out and start taking action in concert. So it’s more like an orchestra, like people are doing different things, people playing with different instruments. But if you look at the whole, they’re creating beautiful music because it’s, it’s aligned with, um, a certain direction. And in that case, the leadership is more like a conductor of an orchestra. It’s a very important role. Um, but it’s, they’re not there to tell each instrument each musician how to play the instrument.

Morag Gamble: And I think you touched on a really important point, right? At the beginning of, of how you describing that too, was about taking the fear out of it. And, and that, you know, when you get sort of a sense of like, Oh, I’ve got to wait until I’m, you know, I know what’s happening in the leadership will tell me what’s going on and it’s kind of secret and we’ll find out when we need to, whereas actually having this transparency and having the capacity to be part of that decision making process and to, to actually feel uplifted and supported and enabled and empowered through the leadership that exists, I think is a really amazing thing. And like you’re saying, it’s when you see that happen in community groups too. I mean, I know from, uh, even from community garden groups that I’ve worked with, when there is an engaging inclusive process that people understand and that they’re taken along, it doesn’t really, there’s sort of no real, even no real central boss at that point, you know? And like it’s really important that there’s that understanding from a, from a group perspective about, about how change happens in about how you can engage in that and, and, and step in and out if you want to not always have to be part of it. I mean, I think there’s a lot of stress and pressure that’s put on groups when they feel like, Oh, I’ve got to be part of this committee. And then there’s all these rules that apply. And then, you know, it just kind of sort of fall in on themselves where a different type of leadership I think is really needed in, in all scales, from, from our governments through to our community organizations, whether they be formal or informal groups. So you mentioned a few, um, principals before. Do you want to just touch a little bit more, what you feel those principles of change our leadership? Um, how are you describing those that..

Dr. Amanda Cahill: With a few different things in my head? So just going back to, I guess what you were just saying then it’s, um, I guess a question around always questioning, like who needs to be involved at what time, for what purpose? I think there’s something, we are the go, we need a complete flat structure, or we need a top down kind of leadership structure, but actually there are ways to engage people, the right people at the right time to the right level, because I think sometimes we go too far with the community groups and everyone, like you said, everyone has to be involved in every decision. Then there’s endless meetings and nothing actually gets done. Um, and there’s a really good paper that was written, I think in the mid 70s, by someone in the feminist movement called the Tyranny of Structurelessness, which is available online, which I recommend everyone have a read off because, you know, we’re so committed to principles around democracy and participation and equity, um, that sometimes we don’t have the right processes set up to enable people to do what they need to do at the level that they want to get engaged in. Cause particularly between that society wide change, not everyone wants to be involved. Some people just want to get on with it and that’s fair enough. Like I don’t actually want to have to manage all of my own water systems and energy systems. I want people who know what they’re doing to take care of that so I can get on and do what I do. So I think that’s a really good principle around leadership and groups, I guess, change. I’m thinking about change. I think in terms of working with people, knowing that the nexus between leadership and change, I think about change from a sort of stages of change model, which I learned about when I was doing health promotion work with Aboriginal communities, which is accepting that different people are on that, um, different stages of that change cycle. Some people, um, even aware of the need for change. And so the work that you do with them is about, um, you know, raising that awareness. Um, some people are aware that there’s a problem and things need to change. Um, but they don’t see how it’s important to them. So how do you actually get that point where they’re concerned or they can see how it’s relevant to them? That’s the work that needs to be done. And then when they get to a point going, Oh, something needs to change. Um, then it’s what DNA to arm them with intent. So they can actually take measures to move in the right direction. So that’s at capacity building or resourcing stage. Then people can go through that and then go, actually, I’m, I’m ready to, um, not just take action, but to lead other people, we’ll bring community together. That’s a different kind of, um, support that you need to provide people like that. And so, and then people move around that, that cycle of change and coming into different parts or move backwards. So I think that, um, that’s what we’re trying to do is meet people where they’re at on that cycle and then give them the resources they need or the knowledge they need or the core networks that they need to actually, um, keep moving along that cycle.

Morag Gamble: So what does that look like when you..people work with you? So you get invited to come and work with, uh, with a community and, and then what do you do? How does, how does it actually work?

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Um, well, I guess it’s like, you’ve probably divided up the way I can afford. So one, the, the actual, what most people know about what we do is we go and work in regional areas. Um, so far we’ve been going since beginning of 2018 with the Next Economy. So most of that work has been focused on, um, how the energy transition and how reducing and absorbing emissions across all sectors of the economy can create jobs and opportunities in regional areas. Um, so sometimes that’s a workshop, um, that we’ve had have been funded by government to do, or a local group, maybe an environment group, or the local councils to do some training or presentation, um, around those aspects. So, and sometimes that’s supporting projects on the ground. So Byron Bay, for example, particularly there was going to zero emissions within 10 years. So we supported them on that process, project management side of that. Um, so this work on the ground, we do a lot of, um, sort of more what we’re calling education. So actually doing work to try and highlight that we’ve got so many different economic possibilities and options to build a different kind of economy. So that’s more that public facing presentations, media webinars, things like that. Um, increasingly we’re doing a lot of work with decision makers within often state government whether in a movement or industry like energy companies who are trying to get their head around what their options are. So we’ve done some policy design work, um, or just helping the strategy. I actual direct advice around what the next steps are, and we’re developing a report for the Queensland government right now around economic stimulus ideas. Um, and then finally, it’s sort of a new area that we’ve worked out that there’s actually lots of amazing people out there who are working on that edge of economic transformation, whether they’re in the food movement or housing, or they’re often small organizations, often isolated, very under resourced and, but doing amazing work. So we’re trying to figure out how do we actually provide a coordination or support role to the leaders who are already there trying to do systems change, work, to amplify their efforts. And we’re looking at some programs like for what that leadership program looks like next year.

Morag Gamble: Amazing amount of workAnd I it’s quite, it’s, it’s such, um, the change that’s happening in the world is changing. Things are changing so fast and I’m wondering, you know, like you, you had been focused before on, on, you know, it was the energy transition. I know you still are. Um, and particularly, you know, looking at the work and how it influences our response to climate change and all of that’s embedded within there and, and, you know, um, uh, women’s empowerment and all these, you know, health and wellbeing, all of these different themes that kind of embedded within what you are calling this sort of this economic transition. And, you know, maybe, maybe you could just speak a little bit to, um, was sort of two questions starting to emerge here. One was about why is it that you’ve picked? Uh, you know, this may seem really obvious to you, but I’d love if you do just kind of articulated, is that, why have you picked the economy as the thing that you talk about that represents all of the rest of this? And then, um, how is your response changed or has it not with what’s happening now with the Coronavirus has that changed the way that you’re working in the way that you see that your work emerging from now on. Two questions bundled up there.

Dr. Amanda Cahill: They’re great questions. Um, so the economy, um, well, the way, I guess the way I think about the economy, it’s just how it’s just the systems and processes we use to produce things, exchange them, consume them, um, organize work, and also what we do with any surplus or profit that comes out of that. So, um, we’re trying to let, so to me, it’s how we live. It’s how we do all those things that actually support our living. And I’m not just talking about the cash-based, capitalist society. Um, if we took all of the volunteers, unpaid volunteers, formal volunteer programs out of our economy, it would collapse like w uh, hospitals at schools. Everything relies on that. Um, households the amount of unpaid labor and caring work that’s important. So it’s actually, um, to me having really creative conversations about, well, how do we do things? How do we get, what we need to live is, is the basis of everything. Um, so we can do it so many different ways. We have so many different options. We can be so much more creative about that in terms of how things have changed with the current moment. Um, I guess, I mean, doing this work for a long time, and even at the center for social change, we’re talking about economic change. And even with the energy transition, we couldn’t get cut through, like people were like, Oh, that’s interesting, but you know, people aren’t ready to talk about it. When I first started talking about the energy transition work in 2014, literally had government leaders saying, Oh, people aren’t ready to talk about that yet. Maybe in five years yet, we know we need to try to change, to transition, but, you know, later, and I think, and even the public, people think it’s really interesting, but they couldn’t say the, how, how are we going to take actions on it? Um, so for example, there’s been discussions about things like the Universal Basic Income or job guarantees or cooperatives, but it wasn’t landing in Australia because a lot of people were too comfortable and there wasn’t really that push to actually make radical change or it seemed a bit risky. Now, I think everyone’s kind of everything’s up for grabs. Um, and a lot of the assumptions we had about the economy have been shattered. So even that the role that government is playing right now is completely different to what they were saying six months ago. Like it was like governments shouldn’t be involved in the economy and now dictating everything that’s gonna happen. So, um, I guess for us, it’s meant I’ve I had to be very about the economy it was and why we focus so much on the energy transition was because people were sort of saying, well, what should we do about the energy transition? There was sort of, we had to be pragmatic and make what people were needing and what they’re asking for. And even in coal mining communities were asking you to come and talk about the shift to renewable energy. So I met that need there, but I think now there’s an opening to actually have much bolder, more radical conversations about how the whole system needs to change, rather than just whether we get electricity from this source to that source. We can actually be more direct about saying, we need to think about how we do that. Like, are we just backing in big private companies and doing business as usual? Should we take public control over all of our utilities to make sure everyone has access as a public right, or service or human rights? Or should we be going to small scale cooperative community owned systems that have a whole economic democracy element to it? Or is it a combination of all those? We can actually be much more ambitious now about saying, look, we’ve got an opportunity here to, to shape the economy in a completely and shift the direction in a different way.

Morag Gamble: I think, you know, that the opportunity that’s presented right now to, to, to put things on the table that they’ve been on the, been around the periphery for a long time, you know, decades, these ideas have been around and they’ve been experimented with, you know, child around the world, you know, experienced communities that are doing amazing things, but it’s always been seen as something that’s fringe. And I really feel like now is a possibility to, to bring those, like you said, into, into part of that mix into to inform something that might happen. And I’m really curious because you talk to people in all different levels of government all the time. Now, do you feel like there’s an openness to this? I mean, you’re saying that this is what you’re wanting to put forward, but, you know, have you bounced these ideas off them yet and, and seeing what they, how they respond?

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Uh, there’s sort of two levels to that. So even before the coronavirus hit um, we were doing some regional work and what’s really surprising to me that, um, people in local councils and just general business community people, it just people in, you know, in places like central Queensland or Southeast Queensland. So Southwest Queensland, where they were the ones bringing up things like, um, UBI and, um, things like cooperatives taking and community owned, renewable energy, or, um, completely different radical approaches to waste and zero waste. So these, these terms were like coming out of people’s mouths that we weren’t raising, they were raising. So I think there was an appetite and it was all around resilience and the feeling that people have been left, especially in regional areas of doing a tough one, a number of fronts, and they didn’t have that resilience on the basics that they needed. So people were talking about food justice and local food systems, for example, and what’s happened to agriculture and, um, the power of the supermarkets and taking away people’s ability to just buy and grow food locally. Um, so these radical ideas where we’re bubbling there. So there’s definitely an openness there in terms of, um, second federal government. I think that it’s been surprising to me, um, how open they are to hearing the ideas from regional areas about how they can build economic resilience. Um, so I, I literally sent a whole bunch of emails to advise ministerial advisors, uh, the state and some federal level thinking that this was about six weeks ago thinking they would, um, if I got a response, it would be come back to us in a couple of months when things have settled down, I literally got three emails within five minutes back from ministerial advisors, like top advisors and saying, I’m really sorry. I can’t talk to you today. Do you have time tomorrow? And I was like, Whoa, but it was unexpected. I’m not ready to do it. Um, yeah. So I think they’re desperate. I think, you know, and I was framing it as look we’ve been doing work on at a regional level on energy transition ideas. Um, you know, I think you can keep moving in the direction that, you know, you need to go in because behind closed doors, they all say, yes, we know we need to act on climate change, but it’s whether or not they feel like they’ve built the political commission to do what has been the block. Whereas now they’re like, can you show us how we can do what we need to do and bring people along with us, but that window, you know, how long that’s going to be open? I don’t know.

Morag Gamble: So that was my next question is like, so the community saying, this is what we want, governments are saying, we’re looking for a different way forward and we get it. What’s the next step? How, you know, how does then this change actually happen because we’re kind of at this, I feel like, well, I mean, it’s a simplification. We were at this point now this bifurcation point, whereas everything’s fluid at the moment. And then as we emerge out of, out of this crisis that we’re in right now, there can be this, um, recovery project. That’s, you know, an amplification of, of business as usual to try and get people back on track. Or it can be something more along what you’re talking about. So what is what needs to happen right now to see his head on the path that you’re describing? The community’s asking for that, you know, governments are saying, they know the need that we know that, you know, society needs communities need the planet needs. How can, what, what needs to happen right now? I mean, I know that this is a huge question and I don’t expect that you can answer because that’s like the whole [inaudible] problems, but, you know, but it is a big question, isn’t it? Because right now it feels like there’s a sense of urgency about speaking up right now about the things that matter and putting on the table firmly, real and viable alternatives that work that people want. And that economically actually makes sense.

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Um, well I think it’s going to be messy and I think that I’m already starting to see just in the last week or so, the number of voices who are clamoring for attention around their economic stimulus ideas have expanded exponentially. We do know that the minerals council of Australia, for example, has been very quick off the Mark in putting in their ideas and demands for how economic recovery should go. And they’ve got direct access to the prime minister’s office. Um, you know, the head of this COVID, um, advisory group is, you know. So it, you know, that they’re and how much that, but I, I know, I think something has fundamentally shifted. The Prime Minister himself is saying we can’t go back to business as usual. So, but what does he mean by that? I don’t know. We’ve got big groups like, um, get up and some of the climate action, climate groups, um, and environment groups, and mobilizing their membership around key demands and trying to encourage people to get directly in contact with to say, you know, we want you to build back better. We don’t want you to build back to the status quo. There’s a movement called #gobackbetter, um, started circulating through social media. So I think there’s a momentum and an energy around different ideas and people wanting something different is definitely there. And I think the politicians are hearing it. Um, which ideas take hold, you know, who knows what’s going to take hold? Um, I think that’s how change happens. Yeah. It’s kind of, kind of that sort of things bubbling underneath the surface. And then which thing pops up and is going to actually take root and holes and grow into something. So it’s just going to get squashed or, um, covered or..

Morag Gamble: What do you see happening around the world at the moment in those sorts of things that are popping up. I mean, there’s things popping up in Australia, but you’re seeing other things happening in other parts that we could, you know, bring forward part of our conversation more here.

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Tell you the truth. I haven’t been looking at that much. We’ve actually, we’ve planning to do a webinar series through the next economy, looking at how different countries are responding to the economic stimulus, but interviewing people who are working very much on economic transformation and have been for decades to get their commentary on what the opportunities are to do things differently. And what’s popping up in terms of different economic movements. Um, so if people interested in that they should sign up, I guess, to the next economy page. And we can talk about that.

Morag Gamble: How do they get on to finding.. How do they get onto your list of information. Can you share..

Dr. Amanda Cahill: If you just go to the Next Economy’s website which is nexteconomy.com.au there’s a subscribe button, and then we’ll send you out any notifications of activities. Um, so that’s the webinar series. We’ll be directly, um, talking about that. But, um, at the moment I haven’t actually been looking, I’ve been trying to spend the time, um, where things are slowing down on. I’m not traveling like a crazy person to actually just come back, um, and reflect on where we’re at. Um, and try and make sense of the local first. So I haven’t been really looking globally at, but I know there’s been some really interesting webinars that Naomi Klein’s been doing. Um, there was one that the Australia Institute this morning interviewing Joseph Stiglitz, which apparently haven’t looked at yet, but it’s quite revolutionary and quite inspiring. Um, uh, I think we could also not just look at how response is happening now, but also previous responses, like in times when Greece was facing the austerity, how communities organized and mobilized, um, and that led to political change. There’s been some interesting stuff in Spain as well. Um, Argentina about 20 years ago where we had workers taking back over factories when they were closed. So I think it’s also looking at other times and looking at how communities would responded. Detroit and the growth of the food movement in Detroit. Um, so I think there’s plenty of examples that we can, we can look to.

Morag Gamble: And even it’s not such a sort of an immediate thing, but even looking at what’s what happened in Maleny for example, you know, it was a dying rural town. How did it rebuild itself through these of cooperatives and women’s groups and, you know, local banks and local economic systems. And, you know, it’s quite an interesting story, the Maleny story, even, you know, here in Queensland.

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Yeah. And there’s other examples popping up now with a very similar model. Like you’ve got Preston, but they’re called movements or, um, you know yeah. There’s things happening all over the world right now. Yeah.

Morag Gamble: So, you know, sharing the, sharing these and, and, um, sharing the stories of these. Cause, you know, I, I don’t know how much the stories of other ones being told, but I know the story of Maleny really hasn’t been shared that very much at all. And it’s quite a remarkable story. Well, thank you so much for joining me today and, um, um,I look forward to our ongoing conversations because I know that, um, you know, that’s something that we do all the time. We get on and have a chat about what’s going on in the world, what leadership is, where the change needs to happen and, and I’m constantly inspired by the work that you do. And, and I know that everyone who’s listening to this is going to be signing up for, um, for the webinar series and, uh, do you have a newsletter as well that you send out? Or what, how does it work?

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Yes, we’ve got one in process at the moment.

Morag Gamble: Excellent. Yeah.

Dr. Amanda Cahill: Well maybe next time I can interview you.

Morag Gamble: Yeah, let’s do that. That sounds like fun. Well thank you so much. And I’ll put down all the links of things that you’ve mentioned and, um, ways to get in touch with Amanda as well. Well take care and thanks for everything you’re doing.

Morag Gamble: So thanks for tuning in to the sense- making in a changing world podcast today, it’s been a real pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe and receive notification of each new weekly episode with more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regenerative and core positive permaculture thinking of design interaction in this changing world. I’m including a transcript below and a link also to my four-part permaculture series, really looking at what is permaculture and how to make it your livelihood too. So join me again in the next episode where we talk with another fascinating guest, I look forward to seeing you there.

Subscribe & Share
Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.

Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design, and action are so needed in this changing world.

What is permaculture?
Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-16yos).

Warm regards,
Morag Gamble
Founder, Permaculture Education Institute

I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing – a challenging task this week with poor connection

Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.

The post Episode 16: The Next Economy with Dr Amanda Cahill and Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

It is my great pleasure to share with you on Sense-making in a Changing World today, a conversation I recorded with Daniel Christian Wahl PhD as we walked through the ancient olive terraces around the medieval monastery, Son Rullan on the island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean. We met there last year for the first time – the beginning of a friendship after knowing of each other’s work for  years. We both are deeply involved in ecovillages, education, regenerative design and have a deep affiliation with Schumacher College, the Global Ecovillage Network and Gaia Education.

Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

Daniel’s book, Designing Regenerative Cultures, published in 2016 is essential reading – helping us to reframe the crises we currently face and exploring how we can live our way into the future.

Son Rullan has hosted many ecological gatherings and conversations, including an Ecovillage Design Education program, and my family and I were so graciously welcomed there as guests for the duration of our stay.

Daniel and I talked in pre-COVID times, but I am sharing this again because what Daniel shares is so relevant to where we find ourselves today.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Daniel and I invite you to share this episode and subscribe to my podcast 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 worthwile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

Morag Gamble: 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 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.

Morag Gamble: 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.

Morag Gamble: We’d love to invite you to join our 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 on which I meet and speak with you today.. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Morag Gamble: It’s my great pleasure to share with you today on sense-making in a changing world, a conversation I recorded with Daniel Christian Wahl a great friend of mine and someone who I consider to be one of the most brilliant thinkers of my generation. This conversation was recorded as we walked together through the ancient olive terraces around an old monastery called Son Rullan in Mallorca last year. We met there for the first time actually, and it was the beginning of a friendship that’s continued. We known each other for years, but finally we met, uh, we’re both deeply involved in eco villages, in regenerative education and design and have deep affiliations with places like Schumacher college. And also with the Global Ecovillage Network. Daniel’s book, Designing Regenerative Cultures published in 2016 is what I consider to be essential reading, helping us to reframe the crises we currently face and explore ways that we can live into the future. He brings together some of the most important thinking of our time and weaves it together with a series of questions, which helped to provoke us to think about how we can collaborate in the creation of diverse and regenerative cultures. So I hope you enjoy walking with us in this conversation, in the Mediterranean.

Morag Gamble: I’m here in Mallorca at the moment with Daniel Wahl, and it’s a great pleasure to be here. I.. We’ve kind of known of each other for 20 years or something. And finally, we get to meet in this place as well. You can see behind us. So what’s this place called?

Daniel Wahl: Son Rullan.

Morag Gamble: Who’s place is it?

Daniel Wahl: It’s owned by a friend of mine who’s a fashion designer called Sybilla Sorondo and she has been stewarding this place for, I think by now 20 years. And it’s been home to a lot of people who, um, at some point in their life needed to kind of reflect and have a break and kind of cower down a bit. And it’s such a magical environment to do that.

Morag Gamble: And you run a lot of different programs here, too.

Daniel Wahl: Yeah. When we first got to New York, Sybilla invited Alice and me to stay here for seven months.

Morag Gamble: It’s such an amazing experience. Oh my gosh.

Daniel Wahl: And I helped Mandy organize the first ecovillage design education course here In 2011, which was right there on this terrace that we just walked past.

Morag Gamble:
If we swing around a bit, this way, we’re surrounded by ancient olive trees and a huge mountain up behind us, which I actually don’t think I was quite expecting when I came to…

Daniel Wahl: That’s Mallorca secret because we have the mountains and we have them where they are. It means that all the moisture that comes over from the Pyrenees drains off in the mountains and we’ve pretty lush green area in the mountains. And then on the other side of the Island, it’s almost a semi arid desert.

Morag Gamble: What brought you to Mallorca. I mean, you’re German, aren’t you?

Daniel Wahl: I’m German originally, but, um, ever since I am a little boy, like six months old, my grandmother took me to Italy for my holidays. So basically by the time I was 18, I’d already spent a year and a half in the Mediterranean and realized that one doesn’t need to live in Northern climates if chooses to, and, and I’ve always wanted to live in, like I tried twice to live in Spain. And then the third time after leaving, Fintan, Sybilla who I had met at the Bioneers conference, organized, invited me that I could come and stay here for awhile. And I also really liked the idea of Mallorca being a case study site for bioregional development because after, um, my time in the ecovillage movement and also helping with transition town initiatives at the beginning of the transition town boom, I sort of realized that the scale at which you can create a really regenerative sustainable system is bioregional and not quite so small as I have thought for 15 years. Self sufficiencies story that a lot of people get into in the beginning I realize to really create resilience you have to create it with lots of people in your region and with lots of communities in the region.

Morag Gamble: Absolutely. Yeah. So just tell me a little bit more about that because you’re, you’ve written a book and the book’s called Designing Regenerative Culture. So maybe we could start and say, what do you define as being a regenerative culture? What does that mean to you? What does it, what does that look like in your eye, in your mind’s eye? If you imagine it, what do you see?

Daniel Wahl: Well, um, first of all, that it’s really important that it’s Designing Regenerative Cultures, that it’s plural because, um, I think that these cultures have to be very carefully adapted to what I call the biocultural uniqueness of place. So the local ecosystem and it’s, um, opportunities and challenges and the whole history of the local culture and, and who lives there and their stories. So each regenerative culture will express itself depending on their history and their place. And for me, because everything keeps changing continuously. It’s really about the capacity of the people in that place to live in ways that leave the place more bio productive, more abundant, healthier, more valuable in all ways, not just in terms of human value, then they’ve received it from the forebearers. Yeah. So it’s about healing, the landscape and restoring ecosystems and making them as bio productive as they can be, which is what you’ve been busy with all year.

Morag Gamble: So I was about to ask you though, I mean, what, so in order to do that, what’s the type of education that we need to support that unfolding or the emergence of cultures that you’re talking about?

Daniel Wahl: I think, first of all, we need to get off the mindset that education is something that you do in the first third of your life, and then you just work and then you get tired. And we have to re discovered education as something that is a lifelong process of drawing out our full potential and the potential changes as we gain experience and our surroundings change. So it’s, it has to be lifelong learning. And, um, I think we know a lot of wonderful educational initiatives that both you and I have been involved in the, in the ecovillage movement GAIA education GAIA, university, the whole permaculture network, the regenerative agriculture, and it’s all, all those networks that are doing wonderful work. Um, other people like Otto Scharmer with Theory U and all these processes, we need a Holistic Education that brings that enables people to do this regenerative work in their place. So one of my mentors from the Regenesis group in their regenerative practitioner training, they really highlight the importance of capacity building as part of working regenerative.

Morag Gamble: And so when, when you say that, what, what do you mean by capacity capacity building? In what way?

Daniel Wahl: It’s all mentioned this in the GAIA education curriculum, we have the social economic ecological worldview that I mentioned, and I think we’ve, we’ve created an education system that creates too many generalists. And we now have all the information. So at our fingertips through computers that we really need generalists that know how to integrate and synthesize and connect information. And that requires being able to talk to people. So it’s communication skills. There’s also how to run a project and how to budget it and how to fundraise for it and all those kinds of things, or have innovative ways of funding it. So you have to have some kind of economic literacy too, social literacy, economic literacy, but then of course, all the ecological literacy that we can draw out of permaculture and other, um, such methods that have studied the patterns in nature and have tried to invent human ways that connect with these patterns and to enhance them because we are part of nature. We’re not separate from it. Um, they also can meaningfully inform how we do business and how we build our communities. And absolutely, and I think that it’s, it’s the big challenge we talked about this yesterday, is that, can we create, um, the network that now that we’re at this critical point in human history where I believe that if we get it right, we will, up-skill millions of people in the next five years to do this work.

Morag Gamble: I think my mind started going a buzz when you started talking about the scale that you’re talking about, I think it’s absolutely critical, but it sort of bounced me out of my kind of thinking about local and community and even by regional, because what you’re talking about is a, it’s kind of like a global awakening. Yeah.

Daniel Wahl: But it’s glocal, it’s locally grounded in the story of place in the biocultural uniqueness of place. I think what we were sort of at the brink that at least a percentage of the people who are part of that elite monetary class that has amassed vast amounts of money, uh, beginning to realize that there will not be able to enjoy that money if the planet goes to ruin and we’re going there fast. And so I think the money will be made available to train up these people. And so that means all the organizations who for years, 30, 40 years, some of them have been struggling in scaling up a few permaculture teachers a year. Like how many do we get to 10,000 a year for lucky, globally? And it’s amazing, but at the same times, it’s not enough. And so I envision bringing all these players together to, to at least make visible this pathway that already exists, that somebody could take to really become part of the regeneration, realizing to, to find their path and all this to maybe specialize a little bit, say I’m more of a facilitator guy and I’m more of a, of a agroforestry, but, um, to at least know the value of all of them and how they, how they talk to each other in the regenerative system.

Morag Gamble: And so how do you, how do you see all of this linking in with the major movements that are emerging now? You know, the climate action.

Daniel Wahl: I just, this morning had had a real moment. Like I was watching all the footage from last weekend in London and the extinction rebellion. Yeah. And as much, I mean, as good friends of mine activating. Um, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. Maybe rebellion speaks to a certain age group in a way that you get more excited about joining it. But for me, it has a sort of, as much as they say, there is still a chance. I see the negative message first. And I feel coming from fear, isn’t really unleashing people’s creativity for me catching all that energy. That is an extinction and catching all that energy that is not with Greta Thunberg’s amazing work in Fridays for Futures and really giving it a little bit of a spin towards we are the regeneration rising. We can in all these places become a force, to heal our ecosystems and in that process heal ourselves. And, and, and then to really also challenge these, these silos, we’re still in the, I don’t think that the world of the 22nd century will be a world of nation States and will be a world of people being carefully adapted to that bioregion in global collaboration. And so all this thing that we’re still holding onto of national identities and stuff, they, they they’ll take generations to be absorbed and not become so important anymore, but we need to start realizing that we’re one humanity on one planet, part of the community of life. And either we express that, that we are part of the community of life. I think Janine Benyus nailed it with saying life creates conditions conducive to life. And as life we are capable of creating conditions conducive to life. And that’s what we need to do.

Morag Gamble: There’s a couple of things that you’ve just said. Now, one of them being about just slightly turning or it’s like, wow, it’s something about, you know, there’s this, there’s this movement rising. And I feel like all of the work that we’ve been doing in the ecovillage moment, the permaculture movement, bioregion where we’re like for decades, all this work is, is there kind of waiting for this activation to happen, but my question is about how do we turn on, how do we kind of connect the two so that it’s this fluid. And if you have any ideas on that.

Daniel Wahl: I’m still waiting for it to happen to some extent, like I’ve, I’ve reached out to some of the voices in the extinction rebellion. And, and we, for example, George Monbiot really picked up on Jeremy Lin’s work, but I’ve not seen him fully embrace this idea of the regeneration rising and all the kind of regenerative movements around the planet, which is exactly what he’s calling for. So, um, I think we, we really need to like, certainly in my work, I, I try to make these movements visible to each other. And I try to celebrate our diversity, um, rather than kind of trying to create a sort of storyline around how regenerative is better than biomimicry and better than permaculture. I see all of these, these are regenerative cultures, these movements they’re now coming together. It’s like a confluence. And that means that we all need to be able to amplify each other’s words.

Morag Gamble: I think what you said about making them visible to each other, that is just such a critical point. Isn’t it? And it’s, and it is about supporting each other and, and working with each other. And I think that’s kind of, that’s going to be the key cause we all want really the same thing. Yeah.

Daniel Wahl: And it’s, it’s part of our, what we do, you asked earlier, what education do we need, we certainly need an education that teaches us to think in a yes. And rather than a no. And even I think that in our movement, we still fight. I still find it so often that people pick up on the little bit where they don’t like the wording or they don’t like that, particularly a nuance of somebody’s way of working, instead of saying wonderful. We’re all broadly aligned and whilst they’re learning, I’m gonna say if I didn’t quite like the second side sentence that this person, but I loved the rest of the conversation. Let’s not start at the little bit, we’ve got a niggle with. Create a world that, that actually embraces our diversity. Also a diversity of opinion as part of our creativity.

Morag Gamble: Yeah. So what do you think is some of the next steps that we need to be taking in this regenerative movement?

Daniel Wahl: Not to create an other because we don’t really have time for another round of them in us type gaming. Um, and so that for me always is an invitation to whoever the people that I would feel least comfortable talking to and then seeking them out to talk to them. And, um, I also think that we’re still a little bit under the illusion of how many of us now the numbers are growing rapidly and they’ve been growing rapidly in the last three or four years. But, um, I think we need to go beyond that into popular culture. We need to engage the arts and the music industry.

Morag Gamble: So you’re talking a little bit about this yesterday, about how do we, this process of amplification, this process of connecting the movements. And so I’m interested to sort of hear a little bit more about how you, how you see that emerging, because I think this is a really key point. Isn’t it?

Daniel Wahl: A couple of projects that I’m beginning to dream into with some friends is, um, engaging key people in the music industry to basically create it’s not, not another life aid, not another Woodstock, but something that is an ongoing process of inviting people who write songs and sing and play music to message, what we’re losing and the hope for what we can restore and message this, this kind of on the one hand urgency of avoiding climate change and that this, the shortness of the window of opportunity that we still have. But at the same time message the possibility that we can make it through the eye of the needle and that we can create a better world together and that it might take a bumpy ride of a couple of decades, but it’s, it’s a meaningful thing that you can engage with at this point in human history.

Morag Gamble: It’s a way of connecting with people at a different level. It’s not about trying to tell them about something or try and convince them about something. It’s an almost in a way, creating something that’s so inviting and enticing that people just joined because it’s the joyous path forward.

Daniel Wahl: And I think that’s why in my book, I pay such attention to questions rather than solutions is if you want to engage people, ask them questions, what is meaningful to you? What does, what would you like to see in this place? What is the vision that you have for your community’s future? And then really work with the diversity of answers in a way that you can cocreate from that. And I think that’s where we need them, the creative industries to begin that kind of, to make it trendy and fashionable to ask those questions. And so everybody can go out and engage with their community to say, okay, um, we can’t save the world, but what we do we do in this place. And the beauty of this at the moment is that preparing your community for a rocky ride of three decades of tough climate change and [inaudible] and all that, which is probably ahead of us building the resilience is actually the same pathway as restoring the system. So re-regionalizing and production and consumption, increasing your capacity for local food, cleaning up your local waterways, reforesting, bringing soil, bringing your soil back to life. All of these activities are at one at the same time, climate change reversal activities. And over 30 years will possibly get us through this walkie ride. But at the same time, they also increase the capacity that as there will be disruptions and breakdowns to, to respond to them so that there is at least as sort of win, win and taking that path.

Morag Gamble: Absolutely. I wanted to just ask you a little bit about what you think is, you know, what’s ahead of us on the next little while. What, what, what’s your interpretation of what we’re heading towards in the next few years, even?

Daniel Wahl: Well, it’s staggering to think that the effects in terms of climate change, that we’re currently observing with these freak warm winters and, and flash floods and storms and superstorms, and all of that is really, these are the results of greenhouse gas emissions from the 1990s. And to really feel the result of what we’ve admitted since we’ll take another 10, 15 years to really hit us, which is this issue that even if we get it right now, we will actually have to prepare people for the fact that they might see a global groundswell of positive work that maintains itself for three, four, five, six, seven years. But during that time, things are getting worse rather than better. On the one hand, you see some ecosystems come back a little bit and all that, but there’s still be catastrophes. And it’s this, this awareness that we’ve left it late, and we are undergoing a species level right of passage. And part of right of passage work is that you don’t know whether you’re going to make it, but that precisely is what’s going to cook us down enough. So our heart breaks open and our relationship to earth and other can be healed to my mind. And so I’m not seeing as rosy future in terms of there will be grief and suffering, but at the small scale, if we come together and we choose a positive healing future, we’ll also have a wonderful time because we’ll have more meaning we’ll have more community that we’ve had for a long, long time. And, um, and so I, I’m beginning to prepare to pay more attention to the second half of glocal. Um, like I I’ve loved my global work and as long as the Internet’s running, I can do quite a bit without leaving home, but I really want to, um, dig into my bioregion and build a future for this Island that we’re standing on.. And for my family in a community on this Island.

Morag Gamble: Yeah, that’s awesome. And I think so in a way, you know, a lot of that work through, you know, things like the permaculture movement, the eco village movement that, you know, they’re being carried out over the last decades is in forming a lot of the kind of direction that we do need to head, but in a connected way, you know, in our bioregions. And I know I’m kind of seeing it at, you know, where I live too at Crystal waters and Malania, and our whole area, it’s quite a strong, strong place where I feel like we were starting to even create almost like a local economy where we don’t need systems or things like that. People have got to a point where they, they just do try and exchange because they trust, you know, and it’s, and it’s great to see how you don’t really, it’s quite a short period of time. You can create regenerative culture, you can regenerate the land. Like we’ve been out there for 30 years and that’s, you know, 30 years, it’s not a very long time, but you know.. And it’s kind of, I think it’s, so what other places have you seen around the world do you think are really fabulous places to look at to kind of see what’s going, what’s going well, what are some examples that we can kind of look to and go, Oh, okay. That’s kind of how we could do it or…

Daniel Wahl: Well. I mean, I remember when, when, um, Robert Gilman and Daniel Goleman traveled around all the ecovillages and look at them all, and then they kind of came back and this was in the 1990s saying, um, that not one of them was as proper sustainable community that would function at forever after, but that if you overlay the patterns that they were all working on, um, you could create a meta pattern that that actually made sense. And so I, like, I feel tempted to name Findhorn is one of those places I lived there for four years and it also has its functionality still. And these intentional communities, they’re more, I see them as pressure cookers for human development and opportunities to really learn fast and experiment with things in a way that is sort of a bit outside of the normal system, but we really need to bring it into the cities and into normal people who don’t have that impulse to join intentional community. Um, but in terms of maps of hope, um, my friend David McConville from the Buckminster Fuller Institute, um, started a map that’s on Google. If you look regenerative projects, map, Google ask me for the link because what’s on that map is it’s not just, um, all the projects we could find. It’s, it’s basically projects that are established enough that they have a little video and they have a website that tell a story and amazing projects all around the world. Great Bear Forest in Canada and some of the projects in Brazil that should get a lot more visibility work on central Africa, um, agriculture and, um, yeah. All around the world.

Morag Gamble: So the link to that, cause I think people are watching this would love to kind of dive into that and see what you’re talking about.

Daniel Wahl: I don’t know the exact link. It’s basically, if you go onto the BFI website, Buckminster Fuller Institute website, and you look for regeneration project map, then you’ll find it.

Morag Gamble: Ok great! I’ll try and find it and I’ll put it down below. Yeah. So what’s your next step, just as we’re heading back to the..the things you are your work coming up in this next year or two..

Daniel Wahl: On the one hand, I really want to, um, find a piece of land and start growing my own little food forest and increase my own local resilience a little bit, which will take up a lot of the time. Um, but I’ve also got some funding to do something that I wanted to do for a very long time, which is I’ve been blessed with the proportionate amount of mentors for one lifetime. And that makes me almost tearful to, to mention it because it’s really something that for a long time, I was actually, um, finding it difficult to live with the responsibility of having learned so much from so many amazing people in a personal connection. And it’s, since my book has come out and I’ve started to share this more through social media, that I feel a certain relief of that burden. And, and basically what I want to do is to interview, have conversations with all these mentors. Some of them are now in the eighties and some of them are much younger than you and to, to basically make visible their work again, make them, make them visible to each other, make their wisdom known to the people that, that I’ve got on social media. I’m interested in basically spreading the good work that they’re doing, but doing it in a way that is in a conversation where I can kind of weave the connections between all those pieces there. Yeah. So that’s one of them.

Morag Gamble: Wait, you know, it’s kind of funny you say that because that kind of feel very much the same, so we should keep sharing our conversations that we have. And, and, uh, cause I think it’s, I think it’s a really important thing, isn’t it? That it is about sharing, sharing the stories and helping to, to evolve a new story about where we’re heading, because it’s, that’s kind of, I think how, how the message does ripple out is through those personal stories, through the personal connections and through feeling into it. You know, I think we need to move out of our heads quite often and actually into our heart and then create those really practical skills locally that you’re talking about and, and connect all those things together.

Daniel Wahl: Yeah, again, it’s, I always find, I agree, we need to get out of our heads and into our hearts, but we also don’t need to forget our heads.

Morag Gamble: No of course not! Yeah.

Daniel Wahl: It’s always this, this, this being really aware that one of the things that happens a lot in that, in our movement, that’s what we’re talking about. Paradigm shifting. I think that there’s a danger in the framing of a paradigm shift that is a, from this to that. And too often in human history, have we forgotten what was valuable about the old system in this frustration with it, that then made us swing over to the new system. And I think we really need to become more integrative in that way of, of valuing all that diversity. And in terms of what you and I are doing with social media work, like the more we amplify each other’s outputs, because there’s such diversity of people out there, they will resonate. One person will resonate with that. Person’s framing another person or that person. So the more we keep our diversity vibrant, the more people we can reach, act this way. And then as we, as we do so in a mutually amplifying supportive way, people begin to realize that, yeah, okay. Like I can learn from this person to learn from this person and we create a pathway for people to go deeper with them.

Morag Gamble: Yeah. That sounds fantastic. I look forward to working with you more and hopefully seeing you again. It’s just so wonderful.

Daniel Wahl: It’s wonderful. I know. Look at this background!

Morag Gamble: It’s such a magical place yeah. You’ve found yourself to a beautiful place to live. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for spending the time today. Thank you.

Morag Gamble: So thanks for tuning in to the Sense-making in a Changing World podcast today, it’s been a real pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe and receive notification of each new weekly episode with more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regenerative and core positive permaculture thinking of design interaction in this changing world. I’m including a transcript below and a link also to my four-part permaculture series, really looking at what is permaculture and how to make it your livelihood too . So join me again in the next episode where we talk with another fascinating guest, I look forward to seeing you there.

Subscribe & Share
Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.

Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design, and action are so needed in this changing world.

What is permaculture?
Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-16yos).

Warm regards,
Morag Gamble
Founder, Permaculture Education Institute

I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing – a challenging task this week with poor connection

Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.

The post Episode 15: Regenerative Cultures with Daniel Christian Wahl and Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

His other books include:
The Power of Just Doing Stuff: How Local Action can Change the World (2013)
The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience (2008)
The Transition Companion: Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times (2013)

Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

I caught up with Rob in his home town of Totnes last year – nearby to Schumacher College where he is a regular contributor. We recorded this interview in the Transition Town Totnes office. He is one of the most ethical and interesting thinkers I know with a grounding in permaculture too. It’s no wonder he was voted one of the Independent’s top 100 environmentalists and the Observer’s list of Britains 50 New Radicals.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Rob, check out his podcast too, From What is to What If, and follow him on Twitter.

I invite you to share this episode and can subscribe to my podcast here.

Read the Full Transcript

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 worthwile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

Morag Gamble: 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 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.

Morag Gamble: 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 our 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 on which I meet and speak with you today.. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Morag Gamble: Hi It’s Morag Gamble from Our Permaculture Life and the Permaculture Education Institute. It’s my great pleasure to be here today with Rob Hopkins.

Rob Hopkins: Hello!

Morag Gamble: In Totnes, actually!

Rob Hopkins: Welcome!

Morag Gamble: Thank you. It’s been years since I came here. Transition Town Totnes was happening back then. So the focus that I have in the work that I do and all the materials I create is around Permaculutre and I know that’s kind of where you started with the whole Transition Town. Could you take us back and..

Rob Hopkins: Tell you my Permaculture story?

Morag Gamble: Yeah that would be a good place to start.

Rob Hopkins: So when I was about 22, 23 or something…I went traveling, uh, in India and Pakistan and China and traveled upto mountains and I was traveling with a guy called Chris, who was from Maleny Crystal Waters, Permaculture Village.

Morag Gamble: Oh that’s where I’m from.

Rob Hopkins: Chris, Chris Gwyn.

Morag Gamble: No way. You’re kidding me.

Rob Hopkins: Really I travelled with Chris because Chris is Buddhist and we both met in Dharamsala.

Morag Gamble: He’s my neighbor.

Rob Hopkins: It’s a small world.

Rob Hopkins: It is a small world!

Rob Hopkins: So Chris and I and somebody else this guy called Dave. So we traveled through Pakistan and Chris at the time was writing. He would send a little sort of like mini articles back for these local permaculture magazine. And every time we run into anywhere with Permaculture, he got very excited and started writing, writing new things. I mean, he kept talking about Permaculture. This is permaculture and I have no idea what he was talking about. And then we went to the Hunza Valley, which is which, which I now recognize as being one of the great original permacultures. And, uh, he was like beside himself with permaculture, further dashing about writing off of these articles about how lazy I was. And cause I didn’t know what permaculture was, but I remember it had a real impact on me that place I’d never been anywhere that felt so kind of a content or sort of resilience and sort of, there was something really extraordinary about it that had a real impression of me.

Morag Gamble: A similar experience I had was spending time up in Ladakh. I went up there in 1992 spent almost a year. It had a similar impact on me. This is what it means to be well. Exactly. It’s content. People are content and simple. Natural food. A community. Excellent music. It was fun and and I just went… what are we doing?

Rob Hopkins: Yeahh! So I, um, so then when I traveled with Chris, he kept talking about permaculture. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then when I got back to England, a friend of mine gave me a copy of the designer’s manual. Just like, Oh, enjoy this. Really nice present. So you might enjoy this. So, and it completely blew me away. It was like that concept of earth repair. I was like, wow, she has written a book about earth repair, it’s just amazing. So then I found out it was a permaculutre group in Bristol and I kind of harassed them until they organize the design course. I want to do the design course, which kind of rewired my brain really. And then I..

Morag Gamble: Can we just stop there for a minute. When you say rewire your brain I hear a lot of people saying it. What is it about permaculture courses that you think helps you rewire people’s brains? What is it that shifts?

Rob Hopkins: The way I talk about it is, is, um, I, in [inaudible] called They Live? Have you ever seen that film? It’s hilarious. It’s the beginning of it is beautiful, there’s this guy going down this alleyway and he finds this box full of sunglasses and he takes out these sunglasses and he kind of puts them on. And when he puts them on, you can see the world in a completely different way. So you can see that actually half the people that are aliens..and they say things like shine your hair with whatever. [inaudible] it was like, it gives me my kind of, um, possibilities glasses of looking at things in a very different way and looking at spaces and thinking actually it doesn’t have to be like that. It could be like this. And it gave me the tools to be able to think about what it could be like. Uh, I think that was an, and, and it rewires your brain to think in systems and connection rather than isolation, isolating things down, which is very much the culture we grew up in. So then I did a degree that was the first sort of sustainability degree at the time, which thank God I did a permaculture course first because otherwise I’ve jumped off a bridge halfway to the ashes. I need some of the tutors. Occasionally they say it was so great. Cause we learned loads from… And then, uh, then we moved to Ireland then basically spent 10 years just trying stuff out. So we did a kind of ecovillage project and built cob houses and then for college I started the first two year full time course.

Morag Gamble: That sounds amazing.

Rob Hopkins: Yeah. Which was, which was amazing. It’s only really coming here that I really see how amazing it was. You know, that actually there was this little fertile edge in the Irish education system with this very visionary principal who I went to and said, I’ve got this idea, John, for this school.. I even have a friend and he told John the other day I got this idea for a course.. and never heard of Permaculuture before. He said, yeah… how many people would you, how many people do you think would want to do it? I said, well, how many do you need? He said, well, if you got 15, we could run it the first year. So the first year we had 24 and then every year after that we had 40, we could have filled it twice and we built forest gardens and gardens.. The last year I was there. We built a theater hall theater out of all materials from within five miles.

Morag Gamble: What do you think people are attracted to do it a 2-year course in Permaculture in Ireland. Because I know in Australia people would love to do it but they get to the point of thinking.. You know, there’s no kind of job. People get stuck on thinking and it always still stayed in the hobby world.

Rob Hopkins: Well it was a one year course. And then in the last year I was there, we added a second year on this. A lot of people just really liked it. They were like, can we, can we do some more? So the half of it was a one year course then it was like an expanded design course with loads of practical stuff. Um, why do people do? I think it was, in Ireland you can do a course like that for free and it was great. I had ended up with an opportunity to design the permaculuture course I would have really liked to do. And we went to see loads of great projects and move to trips and tell them..

Morag Gamble: Do you know what people started to do after they did that course? Did they go out and..

Rob Hopkins: I think at the time, I don’t think there was a particular.. I think that kind of emphasis that says, okay, how can we create enterprises and livelihoods? This wasn’t such a big part of it. But now suddenly with the transition movement we have put that more strongly.. I think, but at the time, yeah, there are some people who went off and did and maybe started started buiilding companies or gardeners. Quite a lot of people then have actually settled around then started interesting businesses. So there’s some good kind of CSA, vegetable growth production stuff in there. So it’s like you build this and be like, like with Totnes where you’ve got dances and art college for years. And so there’s loads of people stay and then you’ve got a much more creative terms.

Morag Gamble: So how did you transition from that to where you are now?

Rob Hopkins: So I was teaching permaculture and permaculture was my main sort of everything I suppose. And then in 2004, so we’ve, we were doing an ecovillage project with another family and we were two, the first two houses we’ve been, but we’re building cob houses the first new cob houses is built for a hundred years or something in Ireland.

Morag Gamble: Oh really that’s quite significant.

Rob Hopkins: Yeah…. There was loads of volunteers and people healped out building. So the houses were about six months off being finished. And then around that October all sort of different things happened at once. So I had my kind of [inaudible] how much sort of climate change sort of dark night of the soul, you know, I was like, what really thinking. Wow. Okay. Um, and, Someone burned our house down. We had an, Oh, we had an arson attack on this house that we’d spent two years building, which was the most beautiful thing. It was really, really traumatic. So I was reading David Holmgren’s book came out Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability. So I had a friend who was living with us at the time and we were reading it. And then we’d meet up for breakfast every morning and discuss every chapter on that. That sort of blew my mind that book because it really sort of put permaculture right at but it’s sort of sound like he just drifted off and he put it right back in the middle and said this is the design system for the energy crisis and the climate crisis. And it was so skillful and rich just like when you say, it’s like the most delicious chocolate cake you’ve ever had. You can’t just eat all in one go, just enough to have really thin little slices then go and lie down in a dark room between each one and digest it.

Morag Gamble: It’s a bit like the original Permaculture designs You can’t just sit down and read that either.

Rob Hopkins: Oh yeah.

Morag Gamble: I totally get what you’re saying.

Rob Hopkins: So some had this, then this period of like 8 months of thinking what now? What do we do? And uh, the last, so I had a year, I taught for a year..so the way, so all of that sort of chaos in like October over the year was sort of digested and turned into a project that I gave the second year students. Which was to say, okay, your main project for the rest of this year is if the town of Kinsale what to over 20 years, make the journey from where it is now completely oil dependent for everything to a place where that wasn’t the case anymore. How would it do that? How would you tell that story? What would it look like? The incoming design, what that would look like year by year. So I gave different combinations to students to try, right? You three are doing food and you guys are doing tourism. You guys are doing education. You guys are doing whatever. And, uh, you know, and this is to see this as an enormous opportunity. So they went off and then they do these projects. And over the year we went to see interesting things and research and lots of stuff. So at the end, they all said, they’ll hand it in their assignments at the end of the year, which were this kind of timetable, like telling the story and like, how do these things align? Well, more than doing the teacher stuff. I thought, actually this is amazing. I had never seen anything like this before. So then, so I wrote like a flawed sort of.. Introducing the project, produced it. So put them altogether. So they were like a little book. And then I used the last bit of my budget and just printed 500 copies of this. So the last thing I did before I left Ireland and came here was we organized a conference called Few in the Future. There was a kind of peak oil climate conference. Richard Holmberg came as one of the speakers. And we, we had this thing that we’d made and we had these companies and we didn’t formally launch it or anything. We just had them almost apologeticly on for sale at the back of the hall. Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan we called it and there it was on the table at the back of the hall. And Richard, I gave Richard a copy and he took it away and came back the next morning. And he said, that is amazing. That is the missing piece that we’ve all been waiting for. That is absolutely brilliant. I need to go home and brought copies with him back to America. He wrote about it. We put it online. Someone in Australia ordered a hundred copies!

Morag Gamble: Yeah! Particularly around the Sunshine Coast Area at Millington and the whole Sunshine Coast Transition Town was massive.

Rob Hopkins: Yeahh. So, so that’s the hundred that went off in the box to Australia and then, and then we put it online. It was downloaded thousands of times. So when we moved here in 2005 kind of with nothing really, but thinking, yeah, there was something in that project that was really interesting. And then some of the students who are in Kinsale stayed on in Kinsale and they came up with this term ‘transition town’ to carry on to, which was basically it, it was a name that referred to them, trying to make the energy to some kind of reality, and they took it to the town council. He said, we endorsed this and we’ll give you 5,000 to do something with it. So then things just started taking off.

Morag Gamble: That’s brilliant! Gosh! Oh so now you’re in Totnes and you’ve here for quite some time. And Totnes was already quite an interesting town already. So receptive ground for some change? I’d be interested to hear how you see towns…that are… As I come from a Laney area. And so similarly, we have this kind of receptive ground for new ideas. So if you are to go into a town or there’s few people in town there’s not much happening already. Have you seen transition town coming from a village or a nice different context because.. I am asking this question as I was just talking into the Beyond Development Course in Schumacher college and the students were, were exploring all these different ideas. They said, yeah, that’s really great. I love it, I’d love to see it! Well, I can just see it in my town.. I don’t even know where to start? Can’t even imagine where I can begin with this. And so I guess I’m kind of bringing that question back to this conversation. If it’s… Starting from the very start, what are some of the things that kind of spark the imagination of that community or the interesting in starting on this journey?

Rob Hopkins: So, uh, so I think through what is important about, um, how about Totnes is is, yeah, it is, uh, it’s a place has a long history of being a sort of creative sort of different place. And a friend of mine did a PhD a while ago that said, well, why is that? And it’s kind of the various things in the, in the town’s history. But one of the things he pointed out was that he said, Hey, across the UK, there are six or seven of what you call an arboratory towns. St. Hampton Bridge, Stroud, Louis, Totnes toddlers, places like that, which have a history of being attracting, maybe a higher number of sort of culturally creative people and being quite tolerant and far enough away from London to develop their own kind of identity. And there are places where people try stuff out like Maleny and if they don’t work, then it’s just another mad idea from Maleny. But sometimes those ideas do take off and then they spread everywhere. So the first vegetable box scheme in the UK was came from here. The first transition project was here. So, uh, I like to think of us as the sort of Silicon Valley of resilience.

Morag Gamble: That’s wonderful.

Rob Hopkins: With better a coffee. Uh, um, uh, yeah, so I forgot what your question was, uhmmmm…oh how we got started. There’s a nest somewhere of, of, of sort of places that became transition towns. And the order they did this is…. And the first 10 or 15 kind of places you’d expect Totnes, Brixton, Stroud…then it, and then it kind of carried on spreading out into all kinds of different places. And actually there’s lots of places where it has happened that you really wouldn’t think would be that kind of place. And I think, you know, now we were seeing that transition is an experiment and it’s been a 12-year experiment and we run all the spirit of, we didn’t know how to do it, but if enough people have a go, maybe we can maybe together, we can figure it out.

Morag Gamble: So have you had any…when it all started back in Kinsale, you probably had no idea? What do you think were kind of the key things that spark interest in it so much that it’s just become, this growing phenomenon.

Rob Hopkins: Sometimes people imagine that we just, like, we sort of plotted it like some sort of, burst up like a start up something. Initially the idea was, could we come up with something that might work here in this town that was only, that was the motivation. And then we’ll leave them. We had the launch event here in 2006 in September, there were people who turned up here from like Falmouth and London and all sort of places. I was like how did they even heard about it because there wasn’t a ton, it was an old blog I was doing called transition culture. And, uh, yeah, it’s amazing. So I think, yeah, I think it was something that was really timely because at the time there were lots of people who were really waking up to what was happening in terms of climate change and, and, uh, and all the various other things. And a lot of the responses that were out there were very fear-based responses. What do we do? We go up into the mountains with the baked beans and toilet paper and firearms, you know, that’s somehow that’s the solution. And I think because tradition said, no, no, no, no, no, no. We figured this out where we are with the people around us. And we figured this out by rebuilding social connections. And we figured this out by coming together rather than going further apart and with a model, which is based as, which is a compassionate response to this crisis. Um, and which has a degree of humility built into it from the beginning. It says we don’t have all the solutions, but maybe we can figure out together. Uh, we kind designed transition network from the outset to be very, uh, term enabled self-organizing to have a very loose set of principles and values that people felt they could identify with and sit within. It wasn’t onerous to become a transition town and it was quite light touch, but you felt part of a network. And we always said to people, all the stuff is free, is free to have to pay membership fee. The only condition is you share your stories. So it became like a network of storytelling and exchange. And I was often tell the story about how about eight years ago, I got invited up to learn by this organization that supports social entrepreneurs. And they rang me up, said, you are a social entrepreneur. Thanks very much. And the idea was that you would go and you would pitch whatever your thing was to them. And if they liked it, then they would support you with different ways in different ways. So I went and I presented about transition for 15 minutes, and then it was just long silence in this room with this long glass table and metalchairs. Guys in shirts and looking at me this guy said, so what you’ve done basically is created very powerful brand and then give it away for free to people all over the world over whom you have no control whatsoever. What’s your franchise model. Where’s the leverage. Um, yeah, so I, I, I think it’s because there was something that was, I think people were really hungry for something that said, no, we can do this. We can do this on the neighborhood scale. We can do it at whatever level feels possible for us. Uh, it should feel fun. You know, I think that there was a degree of playfulness and celebration that transition brought and that people really valued. Um, but also, you know, I would, I would really, I would never also underestimate the amount of hard work that went into it from a lot of people who are working in transition at the time, all the traveling and the speaking and the blogging and the films that we made and all of that stuff, you know, it’s like, it didn’t emerge completely effortlessly. You know, there was a huge amount of skeletal. Also I think one of the other reasons that it did that it took off very quickly was that from the beginning, it also had that kind [inaudible] to say, this is not purely about soda panels and carrots, you know, the results…How we do things matters as much as what we do and how we do the meetings and make decisions and run events and all of that, having a mindfulness to minimizing burnout and all that stuff was, was a really skillful addition.

Morag Gamble: I think, echoing what you’re saying, it’s thevery big issues that we’re facing. It’s like, you’re saying you that dark moment facing up where we’re at that a lot of what we get in the area is such a big problem and needing big solutions. And all of a sudden something like transition town comes across and the transition movement, and it’s something like… maybe I can do that has meaning and purpose. It’s actually making a positive contribution and I can see that I can bring my, my family and my community along this journey as well, it personalizes and brings it back down to here and now. And sometimes that gets belittled that kind of the idea of when you think to [inaudible] we need big solutions, whereas actually it’s this multitude of small scale, you know, positivity. And like you said, possibilities, seeing the possibilities, which I guess is where you’re kind of moving now, I can see you just released a book…or almost releasing a book. Imagination is exactly what you’re talking about there. The ability, I suppose, to seeing the possibilities and to imagine the different futures, that one..

Rob Hopkins: Yeah, I am… I find myself reading more and more people who I really admire like George [inaudible]. He kept saying climate change is a failure of imagination. And then they’ve moved off on to something else. [inaudible]. Why are we having a failure of imagination? And then I read this amazing research by a researcher in America who looked at this thing called the Torrance Tests for creative thinking, which is the sort of gold standard creativity tests going back to the 1960s, massive datasets in the US and their conclusion was, and it came out in 2011, this research that IQ and imagination rose together to the mid 90s then IQ kept rising and imagination went into what they called a steady and persistent decline. And when it was published, it was on the front page of Newsweek, it was a big thing in America. What does this mean for economic growth? What does it mean for Hollywood? I never heard anyone in the climate change and social justice world say, well, what does it mean for us? Actually because if people can’t, imagine anything other than what’s in front of us, then we’re toast. You know Margaret Thatcher very powerfully said there was no alternative. I think those words lodged themselves in our culture that there’s, this is it, this is all, there is nothing else in it. And so it sent me off thinking, well, are we living in a time of imaginative poverty? Why would that be, you know, the woman who wrote that report and it was to do with the decline of what she called free and unstructured play, it was to do with the rise of screens. And it was to do with the rise of testing in schools. So I kind of, so that was my starting point. I think it’s also to do with, we spend a lot less time outdoors in nature. You know, the stuff about screens is something which, you know, is, is the more you look into that, the more troubling is the impact that that’s..

Morag Gamble: Inaudible] Having to get in conversations..our imaginations.

Rob Hopkins: Absolutely. We were living in a time of the decline of conversation. There’s a guy called Stan Berkowitz, who I adore and wrote some great books about attention. It’s about culture and how one loses his attention span. And he said, he said, I feel we are losing the very paradigm of depth in our culture, because it becomes shallower and shallower and shallower. So I’ve done a lot of looking at, you know, what are the reasons why this might be happening? And then what would it look like? How do you turn that around as a community? How do you bring imagination back? If you were running a country, how would you bring about what kind of [inaudible]. How would you create a national imagination act. To say, we’re going to, we’re going to put the reviving of this country’s imagination above everything else. I would like how an education system that like, if people left at 18 with their imaginations, like a superpower, how would all of that work? So, yeah, so that’s coming out soon.

Morag Gamble: I wanted to stop..oh not stop but continue on that thought of the education. One of the main things that I’m working on, is creating a platform for Permaculture educators..I’m really interested to hear your insights on where you think we can be working better as permaculture educators or as educators in general. I’m trying to homeschool my kids as much as I can. There’s whole idea of shifting our focus on education to lifting the unshackled boundaries and lifting the ceilings and focusing on the curiosities that urges from working with people. What is your take on education through this perspective.

Rob Hopkins: Well, you know, I was, I was in Belgium last week and I gave a talk in the university and there was a woman who asked a question. She said, I teach in the engineering department, you know, how could we do what we do? So we’re more service to what you’re talking about. I said, um, get the, get the engineering department, ideally the whole university to declare a climate emergency. You know, we’re seeing the rise of extinction rebellion. Their big thing is we want to get the governments to declare climate emergency and that, so that there’s now all sorts of different local district councils who are declaring the climate emergency because of. So, so then when, so then when you declare a climate emergency, then they do that and then they go, well, then mpw what do we do. We have no idea what to do next. And I said imagine if you were teaching as a three year engineering degree through the lens of a climate emergency, how differently would you teach it? I think would be the most amazing engineering course. Imagine like Ok so, uh, you know, you’ll, you’ll teaching me that sense of, you know, the guys who developed the Spitfire in 3 years before world war Io, they, from nothing, they designed and built this plane that was able to… So you know, we are working with people like that. And then what would an English literature degree look like in the context of climate emergency, if a school declares a climate emergency, you know, then you look at everything through that lens. I visited a school when I went to Germany a couple of years ago, and I’ve created a, um, a wildlife garden next to the school. They bought us a little bit of a paddock and they had a pond and all sorts of like wildlife stuff. It was great and the kids loved it. And I spoke to that teacher and she said, I said, how’d you make use of it? She said, well, when we do maths and we want to work out radius and circumconference we send them out to measure a tree and say, let’s say, and they want some focus. They go out and do sound, do they go out use the garden as a teaching resource for everything. So if you have a school that says we declare climate emergency, then you bring in the permaculture teachers to teach the kids. And through that, you teach them maths. And through that, you teach them English, teach them biology, and actually you’re still teaching them the same stuff, but it’s more applied. One of the things I was looking at when I was researching this book, because it’s kind of, so outside of my generation’s experience is what would it look like to live in a time when imagination run free? You know, when we lived in a time when everything felt possible and our imaginations were like [making a swoosh sound] we could just say, yeah, that’s we could do that. We can tackle that. And looking back, where are the times in history when it felt like the imagination was really free? And the most recent one was a month before I was born in Paris around1968 student revolution in Paris, which was all rooted in art and imagination and music and lot of the graffiti at the time was all about power to the imagination, imagination taking power, be realistic demand the possible. And there was some beautiful oral history stuff I found out about people talking about it. And one person said in those two months you learn more than in your whole five years in university because people talk to each other. Everyone felt they could go up and talk to anyone and talk to your neighbor was graffiti that people have on walls.

Morag Gamble: I think to it’s having a context for learning. Because often when, you know, I spent a lot of time working in different sort of universities and just, I take permaculture into this university or something. And it was amazing because mostly we just kind of learning bits and pieces and it’s all just parts. It’s not the connections that we do take do place education in the context, like you’re saying context of imagine, you know, you’re teaching this perspective of climate emergency is about a bigger picture rather than just getting through year by year to get marks and a job. And I think that’s where a lot of people feel stuck at school.

Morag Gamble: My daughter she just went back to school last year, wanted to go to do leadership in grade six. Very quickly got incredibly bored. I said, I have all these questions and they kept telling me to put my hand down it’s not the time to talk. [inaudible] Learning in context. And it doesn’t matter what, what it is that you’re focusing on having the bigger picture and the purpose seems to make all the single piece of sense. So how are you going to take that forward? Cause that sounds phenomenal. What’s your next step with that?

Rob Hopkins: Well, my next book called first of all, I mean, I, uh, yeah, I, I, I love the story that I came across research in the book about the, the, um, Reggio Emilia schools. And it’s so like after the war, when this town, all they had left was a tank and three trucks the Germans left, and then they used the money to build a school that was built around this idea of how do you build an education system to make sure fascism never happens again. So it’s all about, you know, seeing the children as being curious, creative, courageous, and the authors of their own learning. And every school has what they call an atelier in the heart of it to make a space where there’s someone there to help you make anything whenever you want to. It strikes me as interesting that neither of these people designed the school specifically with that intention around fascism. And then we have an education system that’s completely opposite to that. And we’re seeing the resurgence of fascism. It feels like it’s kind of, it’s pretty obvious how you educate people if you want them to be imaginative people. And we’re doing completely opposite. It’s all about driven by test. So you, you, you don’t learn by subject, you learn by project. And, uh, um, there was a lot of pressure in the UK of, so, so the youth strikes a climate, which I just think amazing. And one is one of the demands is teach us properly about this stuff, you know, and I think, I think there’s, there’s, there’s the, maybe the, one of the things we need to look up next is about how do we create that? Something that could just slap into the curriculum.

Morag Gamble: Which I was just about to ask you about, because I think that movement that’s happening now all those young people. I kind of feel a sense of connection with them I mean I’m probably about the similar year as you. And I remember going through a whole series of series about [inaudible] was happening. As a young teenager there was a sense of purpose of being connected to people around the world saying, we need something different and this is not what we want. And let’s kind of come together around that. Then everything went quiet for a long time. I don’t feel like there’s been much happening in the streets where there hasn’t been anyone in Australia. Then all of a sudden pieces went taking off and it’s phenomenal. What was that on 15th of March, there was 1.5 million students on the streets. And after all that margin and going to uni, I got this, I went into a dark place. Oh gosh, that’s what life’s about now. Then it was, I took me quite a while to actually discover how I could make a contribution that was [inaudible] through Ladakh and finding permaculture that I’m kind of thinking, how can we take permaculture and directly to these students, maybe it’s not through the schools. Maybe it’s something, how can it be shared with them in a way that’s..

Rob Hopkins: It’s tricky, isn’t it? Because actually I feel like so one of my kids in particular is very involved with the ones running it. I find them really moving. It feels to me like I get this feeling of like the reinforcements arrived…have arrived. And, um, I love Greta Thunberg.. she’s inspiring. I love when the Australian Education said you should be in school. And she said, you should be in a museum. [laughter] Just so sassy! There’s a kind of a balance for me about actually it’s their, it’s their revolution, you know, it’s their thing. And so on the one hand, I feel like I don’t want to be the guy, you know, you guys all need to be doing permaculture courses. And, but on the other hand, I’m like, I’m really worried that they’ll do it for a year and nothing will change. And that’ll just drift off and be really cynical.

Morag Gamble:
Yeah not having something tangible to show, to show as a result of it. So they have all this passion and this commitment to say this is what we don’t want, or we want this to stop but that the the story and the image and their vision and what’s possible and what’s next and the other, the other potential features. I’m just, I’m not sure how to do this so I’m kind of asking you. I mean I’m spending a lot of time chatting with young people in our area and it’s starting to become a very nice connection it’s happening, but again, the same thing I heard the National Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne, I was, there was some of the Vicky ladies in Australia day and night. [inaudible] to support us. And so I’d like to sort of be there sort of arms open If you’d like this is… What could be a way to make it visible. I suppose, too, as an option..

Rob Hopkins: Uh, I did, uh, I taught a session at Schumacher college a while ago. It was the first time I taught the full, like what’s in this new book I’ve been doing and I did a session with them all day. And, um, and then about four days later was the first student March. And so I met the student March. I went with my, with my son just to support him and to be there cause I really wanted to be there for like a historical thing. So there was about 800 kids outside the County Council offices, making a load of noise and really great banners, really humorous and fun and wonderful. And then after about an hour, they kind of look around and coming over the parks towards them was another little, the 400.. there’s a great big group of kids who’ve marched up from the university and picked up all the [inaudible] marching with this big school strikes for climate banner at the front. And there was this really magical moment where the two groups kind of merged into each other and sort of cheered each other together. And then on the back, coming up in the back, there was a massive banner that just said WHAT IF? And, uh, and it was the students who’d been in the session that I taught. And I was like goosebumps**. And when they arrived they just had this card that says What If? Form Then they just ask kids to just fill them out. They got kids printing, t-shirts with WHAT IF? and asking them about that. And, uh, you know, I think it’s, it’s, um, it felt like a really, it felt like a fascinating sort of element that was added into everything. Um, I guess it feels like they’re kind of really open to ideas. You know, maybe the thing is just to set things up there or just to be there. I don’t know either, but it would be really, really sad if, if it, if it, you know, when the wave occupy and those things that come up like a big souffle and then go down again, and it was like, what we really tried to do with transition was there’s a souffle quick how do you put props in underneath the souffle and then pump it up a bit more. The fact that the transition exists after 12 years it was amazing to me because so many things like occupy, just come and go, come and go.

Morag Gamble: It’s interesting that within the transition.. the movement as a whole is still there. Things within it can come and go [inaudible] Like the Totnes pound there’s an event tonight. Can you tell us a little bit about..

Rob Hopkins: The historical moment you’re here for tonight? So I’ve got it here. So 12 years ago, I walked into a building on the high street and saw this, which is a, which is a, a bank note from 1810 when the banker, when there was a bank of Totnes that had its own that printed its own money. And I saw this and I thought, wow, that’s so interesting. Maybe we could make some more, what would happen? Will the queen come and, you know, smash my windows. And, uh, so we just did it to see if we printed 300, that on one side was a facsimile of this and on the other side, so these are the 18 shops you can spend them in. Let’s see what happens. And then that went really well. So then we did another one pound note and then another different one pound note. And then after a while we did the one, five, 10, and the 21 pound load.

Morag Gamble: Can you tell us about the 21 pound note cause that’s a fascinating one.

Rob Hopkins: Yeah It was, it was an idea we [inaudible] and it was so cool. And it was something to do with like old English money, which I don’t understand at all that it was like 18 groats makes a.. 15 shillings makes a… But there was a thing called a gilly that was 21 something 21 pounds or shillings or something. And so we thought, so that was, that was where they came from it. But here we did 21 pound partly because we just thought, well, why not? Because you can do over the number. Why should we be tied to the same denominations as other money? But also because we did a thing called economic blueprint in local economic and Totnes. So we met the economy in Totnes and said, how much money do we spend on food, energy and care every year? Where does it go? And we found, for example, that we spent 30,000 pounds on 13 million pounds of food every year of which 22 million of that time was spent in two supermarkets. So it meant that we could say that if we could make a 10% shift collectively away from shopping there to support the local businesses, that would be 2 million pounds in the economy every year. And so if, if it was a 10% shift, if we made 21 pound notes and we sold them for 20 pounds, that was the 5%. So it was like saying to people, we’ll give you the first 5% and you do the other five. So the, for the first six months or something, we sold 21 pounds for 20 pounds. That was the idea. But then also Ryan [inaudible], but then so we did it. And so then we tries to have an electronic pounds, [inaudible] but we’re just too small to get a critical mass for that. And this is a town of 5,000 people. Uh, so what we found was over the last three or four years, because people use cash less and less, the amount of trade was sort of dwindling to a point where we thought we could just let it just go along and just or we could just say, okay, we’ll just stop it and have a big celebration and celebrate what it was and how the influence it had on other people.

Morag Gamble: So what other things do you think that helped to shift people’s minds.

Rob Hopkins: Well it’s funny I think, you know, it’s like we can, um, so when you you wrap up a project like that, there’s a part of you thinks, Oh, so it’s a failure, you know, like in our culture you think, Oh, well, you know, we did this, but it’s failed because it’s not become a currency of choice and everybody in Totnes, so you know, I, the way I think of it is if you look at it, as we wanted this to become the, the economic means of exchange for everybody in Totnes and it failed. If we wanted to look at it as something that put Totnes on the map as a place that does unique and quirky things and tries out brave ideas, then I think in a most people’s I know nothing about Totnes. They know that it had is, has had its own pounds. If you want to look at it as a, as an art project, I mean, we printed beautiful things and got people involved in a big participatory community arts project. I think it’s been absolutely extraordinary if you wants to look at it as a project that was about getting people, thinking about why the local economy matters and why we should support it. Then I think it was really successful. And if we wants to look at that as being an imagination project, that was about getting people, thinking about possibilities in different ways. And, and it gave people the opportunity, people who visited Totnes the opportunity to experience living as though there was another means of exchange and it was a real success. And also I think if you want to see it as being a way of, um, challenging the epidemic of loneliness that we have at the moment, there’s beautiful research done in Bristol, which showed that when people went shopping with Bristol pounds, paper, pounds, they had so many more conversations. Then when you went shopping with plastic. And so my experience as somebody who did a lot of my shopping in Totnes pounds was, it was so much more of a conversation piece. And I had so much more interaction with other people. You get Oh interesting! *chatter* and the experience of beautiful colored notes that tell our story and our history and celebrate the people we celebrate been kind of a magical thing, and also it’s inspired so many other people, there’s a lovely quote that I use to like which Thomas Edison said, you know, yeah. I got to make 10,000 light bulbs before I made the first light bulb that was commercially viable. Does that mean that all the 9,999 light bulbs are made with failures? No, they were all successes because they all helped me to realize what didn’t work and got me to this point here. If you’re a sculptor and you’re making a statue the last of the hammer, the successful one. It’s like, of course there’s all. So for me, this was one manifestation is inspired people all around the world to take the idea and create their own versions.

Morag Gamble: You said earlier that this enormous amount of local currencies…

Rob Hopkins: Yeah everywhere I go. There’s like..particularly in the French speaking world, after that [inaudible] and saying, well, why not? You know, actually a lot of people came out in the cinema and like, what can we do? Let’s do that. So I go to places where the way they have a 2.5 notes, or there’s a currency launching that has one, three, 10 and 30 denominations or in Brussels in the early age they have a zero note. I like to say, why do you guys need this note? And they say, well, you know, because sometimes someone does something nice for you. You want to say, thank you. We didn’t want to put an amount on it cause that feels a bit so we just want to say, thank you. It’s like a token of gratitude and then say pass on to somebody else. So I love that kind of again, it’s like, if, if we’re looking at these things as being an opportunity for creativity and playfulness and conversation and connection, then you know, I love that. Who else is going to start currency with zero note? You know?

Morag Gamble: Fantastic. I’m looking forward to tonight’s event, but before we close up, I wish I had a zero note to say thank you… [laughter] Any thoughts about people just entering into the world of becoming permaculture teachers, making the shift in their life from one to the other.. What are some of the things that you think would be? So these are people who are working either with children or in community education, particularly.

Rob Hopkins: Okay. I think my main thinking is, you know, in the same way that we are saying to local governments and businesses and education establishments, you need to declare a climate emergency. I think it’s kind of a question for us as well. How would we operate? It was for me, one of the motivations for starting the transition movement was that I had my kind of climate change [inaudible] as a soul. And I read David Holmgren’s book which said permaculture is the design tool for creating the society in response to this. And I felt so kind of like, right, this is when we stole the barricades. This is our moment. These things are coming together now is the time. And I can look around with the permaculture community around me at the time who actually, most of whom seemed quite happy to be up on a little farm, somewhere making chairs off sticks. And so for me, transition was me trying to design a kind of Trojan horse that I could chuck permaculture in and Joanna Macy and stuff like that. And I didn’t have to spend hours explaining it with flip charts and pictures of chickens and arrows and orchards. I could just wheel it past them and they’d go, Oh, is that transition thing along with other stuff in it? And it could just wheel past and squeaky wooden wheels. And they go, Oh, it’s a transition. You know? And, uh, you know, so for me, the frustrations that I have with it, with the permaculture movement, why is it that after 40 whatever years is a permaculture, maybe there is in Australia now, but there’s not a year. You know, why do we not have really professional design consultancies who are tendering for bids for big parks and who are tendering for the Olympics and who are tendering to, to do edible landscapes around business parks and who are upping the game to that extent, you know, who are going to big football clubs and saying, you know, can we put in, can we grow hops all over the outside of the building? Can we, uh, um, you know, if this is a climate emergency, it’s not enough just for us to say oh these people need to up their game. You know, for me, there’s something about saying we have to be creating, we have to be creating new businesses. We need to be thinking and working in the way that the people, uh, when I spend time with entrepreneurs, their brain works in a completely different way. I talked about how permaculture rewired my brain. You know, I spend time with people who are really brilliant entrepreneurs, and I think your brain is wired in a completely different way to mine that ability thing. Okay, so we can start with this and then move out over there. And then we use that to do that. And then, and then that’s how we create the scale. For me now, the question is about scale. How do we scale this stuff? And the beautiful thing about imagination for me is that imagination, flourishes, when it has limits. If I said, tell me a story, you’d be like, uh, uh, if I said, okay, tell me that, tell me a story about a mouse that is under the table in a Giant’s house. It’d be okay. So, you know, so Dr. Seuss writing a book with 50 words or haikus or hip hop in a way you have a form that inspires that creativity, someone, a climate emergency is totally that, you know, and it gives us. And so for me, I think we need to be thinking about how do we embrace the possibilities of climate emergency to completely scale up what we’re talking about in permaculture, permaculture should be completely mainstream and it should be like every TV soap opera should have permaculture gardens and somebody who’s in the, you know, wherever that, where was a great transition story, the script writers who are writing those films and those stories, you know, where, where are the TV producers who has done the permaculture training? Do you know what I mean? It’s like, for me, this is the time where, you know, there’s an amazing in London there’s a guy who created the increase, transition time, crystal palace started a new food market, amazing. And they’ve won all the best market and London awards. And it’s fantastic. And I said to them, why you do this? And they said, because we want our children to grow up thinking that this is normal. And there’s something for me about how we make this normal. And, uh, and I think I, you know, and there are more people within the kind of permaculture world who, who, and it’s, it’s, it’s less like this than it was 10 years ago, but it’s still to a degree that thing of wanting to change the world, but not really wanting to engage with the world. It’s like wanting to opt out of the world, but somehow get it to change at the same time. If you want to get the world to change, you have to roll your sleeves up. You have to speak their language. You have to wear a shirt sometimes, and be able to speak in their language and put together for, for a landscaping project and the construction project. And we need to have natural building companies who can tend to for housing developments and who know where the cold weather clay is, and then have teams of trained up professional plate masters who can come in, do you know, we need to scale the ship out really fast. And that requires a kind of a, um, climate emergency thinking is the perfect kind of narrative to frame that around.

Morag Gamble: That.. I’d like to say that you so much. It’s perfect. It is. We do, we have the skills, we have this global network that communicates together and having the motivation to, I should say, scale it up and really get it out there.

Rob Hopkins: I bet that’s totally in our hands. It’s like, it’s not that we can no longer sit and say, they need to do this. They need to do that. We’ve got all this stuff we have to. I remember I interviewed Michael Schuman who wrote all the go local stuff. And I said, what advice would you have for people? And he said, go to business school. You know, in terms of, you know, we need to be thinking in that kind of a way of making jobs for people. Because, because as long as we are creating livelihoods for people, then we’re relying on volunteers. And if we’re relying on volunteers, then it will always remain a mostly white middle class movement. It’s when we can start, like you see in Jackson and in Detroit and in Richmond, California, where people have got nothing and they’re using permaculture and cooperative principles to rebuild the economy. You know, that’s what we need.

Morag Gamble: 
I met up with Davidson recently who runs the food lab in Detroit. And she was saying exactly that all that vacant land it’s shrunk from about 2.5 million people down to six or 700,000 and all this vacant land pretty much left. And now they start to turn that around with permaculture gardens and food enterprises. And it is about, it is about creating sustainable or regenerative for people doing community gardens. And I think it was, you know, people spend two years doing that. It’s that the livelihood at the end of things, I think as a permaculture educator, there’s a livelihood in that. So many different ways, in doing permaculture and embracing that sounds like the way to go.

Rob Hopkins: There’s a woman in Richmond who’s one of my total heroes teaching young people to become urban food growers. And we did a talk together and, and I talked about this and said, you know, if we, if we imagine we’re going to do everything with volunteers, we’re not going to get anywhere. She said, yes, if this is a revolution that depends on volunteers. I can’t be part of it. People are working six days a week four jobs to keep a roof over their heads. We can’t be part of this if that’s the idea you know.

Morag Gamble: Thank you so much.

Rob Hopkins: My pleasure.

Morag Gamble: So thanks for tuning in to the sense-making in a changing world podcast today, it’s been a real pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe and receive notification of each new weekly episode with more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. And core positive permaculture thinking of design interaction in this changing world. I’m including a transcript below and a link also to my four-part permaculture series, really looking at what is permaculture and how to make it your livelihood too. So join me again in the next episode where we talk with another fascinating guest, I look forward to seeing you there!

Subscribe & Share
Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.

Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design, and action are so needed in this changing world.

What is permaculture?
Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-16yos).

Warm regards,
Morag Gamble
Founder, Permaculture Education Institute

I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing – a challenging task this week with poor connection

Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.

The post Episode 13: Collective Imagination with Rob Hopkins and Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

For 10 years, Nat has been inspiring and engaging a movement of women and girls around the world to act on climate. No more than every this is so important. 1 Million Women lead programs on all kinds of things from food waste, plastics, fashion, consumerism, carbon footprint, and show how to lead a low-carbon life everyday. She advocates taking on the climate emergency through the way we live – because it is empowering, it is something we can all do and launch us in to being active

Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

Just this week, 1 Million Women is launching a new campaign asking us all to divest from the fossil fuel industry. The way we live and what we do with out money matters!

Natalie is also the author of Every Woman’s Guide to Saving the Planet – a book that is packed full of practical how-to’s and shares the story of how she transformed her life from being a climate bystander to an international campaigner. Being re-released in a global version this month.

Read the Full Transcript

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 worthwile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

Morag Gamble: 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 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.

Morag Gamble: 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 our 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 on which I meet and speak with you today.. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Morag Gamble: It’s my pleasure today to welcome Natalie Isaacs to the show founder of 1 Million Women. For 10 years Nat has been inspiring a movement of women and girls around the world to act on climate. Now more than ever, this is so important, Nat runs programs and all kinds of things from food waste to plastic, to carbon footprints and, and how to, how to live a low carbon life every day, taking on climate advocacy through the way that we live. Natalie’s also the author of the book Every Woman’s Guide to Saving the Planet which is packed full of how tos and, and really talking about her story too, from becoming, uh, moving from being a bystander to an international campaigner. Just today, as I was speaking to Natalie, she launched a new campaign on divesting. So really looking at what we’re doing with our money and how our money is or isn’t actually contributing to the climate emergency. So it’s with great pleasure that I share with you this wonderful conversation with Nat and thank her for the time she spent with me today.

Morag Gamble: So thanks so much Nat for joining me on sense-making the changing world. It’s an absolute delight to have you on the show. I was just talking to one of the young girls, who’s part of the permanent youth that I work with the other day. What’s your favorite book that you’re reading at the moment? And she said it was yours and she was so excited that I was having you on the show. So I’m so glad to have you here. Um, it’s, you’ve been running or inspiring this movement, 1 Million Women for about 10 years now. And I, and I know you’re so close. It’s amazing. Just a couple of hundred. How many, how, what are you at…

Natalie Isaacs: Yes! So close…Well, at about 970,000?

Morag Gamble: Oh my gosh. So what happens when you get 1 million? Does it become 2 million women? or…

Natalie Isaacs: I don’t know, because we are nearly at a million women now, but I, when I started the moment, I honestly thought that we would be at **[inaudible]** women in six months because I didn’t, I really, I thought that because for a number of reasons, um, but really because I, I didn’t fully understand how hard it is to change profoundly change how you live. And I thought that, you know, because I had just changed my entire life, I thought, Oh my goodness, how hard can this be? Everybody will want to jump on board. And so it took me by surprise that we wanted a million women in six months.

Morag Gamble: What inspired you to change because you were making cosmetics before, was that, is that right?

Natalie Isaacs: Yeah.

Morag Gamble: So from cosmetics to climate change activist and movement leader?

Natalie Isaacs: Yeah, I know. Huh. Um, so I was a cosmetics manufacturer for 24 years. That is, I’ve only done two roles in my life. One is start my own cosmetics company and the other is start the movement. As a cosmetics manufacturer, I, um, you know, my life is so different to what it is now. It was really all about over-packaging. I had microbeads in my products. I, I really was disconnected to the whole issue of climate change. Um, and I, I actually also thought that, who am I anyway? I’m just this one person. So you can’t, how can one person make a difference? And so, um, so it’s a very different world, but the short story is in somewhere around 2006, I think the world got the point on climate change. Um, the, the, the inconvenient truth came out in Australia. There were ferocious Bush fires happening at the time. Um, and I was doing, you know, without going into too deep, because it will make the story way too long. I was doing things that year that I was getting engaged on the, the, the issue of climate change. And, um, and so all these things were happening, but, but I think the thing that actually changed my life forever, and, and, and I, I say this a lot, but it wasn’t. I gave myself this challenge to get out household electricity consumption down by 20% and really easy stuff, low hanging fruit, anyone can do it. And when I saw the bill and I saw that I actually had saved, I actually did it, and I did it. I was still having a good time and I did it, and it didn’t cost me anything. And there, I just saved money and pollution at the same time, actually, that was what it was that it was that action where I did something and saw this result that changed my life forever. And I realized I was powerful. And what if millions of us did just that? And the kind of led me on my journey, cause I then got the household food waste down and then I got out and then I stopped over consuming. And then as you do, you know, I started a women’s movement, but, um..

Morag Gamble: That’s kind of the point where most people stop though, isn’t it, you know, actually going into the movement side of things is massive. But before, before we get into that, I was, I was wanting to just pick up on what you were saying that it is not just an all at once kind of thing is that it’s, there’s sort of like, there’s a, there’s a revealing of a change that can happen and you go, Oh, and then you sort of take up another layer and then another layer and you can keep moving through it. It’s not like an all at once have to change your whole life all at one time. Although there is this sense of urgency. And I guess by having a movement of people who are supportive, who’ve got information who you can tap into, who can kind of motivate you along the route of making the change. That’s kind of a really important part. I think of what it is that you’re doing with 1 million women. It’s creating that community of change rather than feeling that you are by yourself.

Natalie Isaacs: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that picking up on those points. It is a journey, you know, and, and, and I think that, um, it depends on where you’re at on the genuine, like if you were just, just starting this and you don’t know, you really don’t know what to do to make a difference. Um, it really, it really is this just do one thing. Don’t worry about anything else, just do one thing and see that difference because I promise you that one thing will pull you onto the next and then the next, and then the next, and then you’ll be wanting to know what the next is. And, and that’s this beautiful journey of empowerment. And, um, and I witnessed that all the time at one million women where you were, and that, that was absolutely my story. And maybe my story a bit quicker than others, because I rapidly went from one thing to another. But I think that, um, I think that profound change, um, it sometimes can’t just happen all at once and it is different everybody’s story is different. And the most important thing is that you’re on the journey just as long as you’re on it and you’re moving forward all the time. And I think that’s the, that’s the that’s that goes to the philosophy of one million women.

Morag Gamble: Yeah. I think, you know, being that’s exactly what I’m being on a journey and being, feeling part of something and connected to it. And, but there was something about what’s happening this year, which is, has made everything quite a bit different. I mean, what the last, the latest figures that I saw was that we’ve actually reduced a footprint by something like 14 or 14 and a half percent. Yeah. Well, it could be way more than that and that the ecological overshoot, the Earth overshoot day, which is coming up soon on August the 22nd, it’s the first time ever that it’s gone backwards since when I was born in 1969, that was the last time we moved on a sort of in a one planet way of life ever since then, we’ve been working towards with now what a full planet, where I live here in Australia and, uh, overshoot day, um, globally last year was, uh, July 29th. This year, it’s pegged to be August 24th. So we’ve gone backwards. So all of these things that COVID has forced us to do, like stop buying, to be more localized, to grow more food. There’s a lot of the things that actually were part of the message about consuming list, growing more, you know, being more aware of our carbon footprint, all of a sudden COVID has just kind of made us do that and shown that the impact on the planet is extraordinary. You know, look at the, um, uh, Venice canals and all those sorts of stories we’re hearing. How does that then change our messaging around what we’re doing with things like 1 million women and what I do in permaculture, because all these things we’re saying and kind of they’re here, then now we realize it. What change have you seen in how you communicate?

Natalie Isaacs: I think that, um, yeah, it’s, it’s a big question. It’s a really big, because we are very mindful of the way that we communicate at this point in time for a number of reasons. Um, and, um, and number one that, um, you know, like I can list them all, but number one, because of COVID, um, uh, and, and, you know, understandably climate change is sitting in the background, not a lots out there at the moment. And, um, and people are very focused on surviving and locked down laws and this crazy year of COVID. And so, but, but climate change sits there ever present, and we do need to get that back on the agenda, but I think that, um, it’s something that, o one thing is, is literally doing everything possible to keep it there, to keep it current and relevant. And the second thing is that, um, that in COVID I feel, and this is the way that we feel at one million women. There’s almost a sense of opportunity, which I know seems like the wrong word, but almost like there’s more like climate change is the good story that could come out of this. That COVID is such a, you know, such a tragic, sad thing where all living and then action on climate change. We could emerge from this, with this opportunity to live differently. And because, and I know that emissions are down by, you know, as, as somewhere between 14 and 20% and because of COVID, but we need those emissions down by that level because of the way that we’ve changed, how we lived.. We need, to learn from what we’re seeing with COVID and find this new path forward. And I see that that is a really new opportunity. And one million women is very focused on these, on that, on this new way forward on this gritty determination that we all need and that the window is getting smaller. And, um, and so that we need to, um, that whole nice journey and go at your own pace, which is what I just said before, which is really how we started One Million Women is now you need to run and you need to run fast and you need to be doing, changing our lives with this a lot faster.

Natalie Isaacs: One other thing that, so we’re doing a lot with that. But, um, and the other thing is that we’re really mindful of is the way that we are all feeling, you know, in our community one million women, as with, with, with everybody, um, anxiety and stress and depression and all those, you know, all those things that we, that are always there. But when you’re talking about climate change, it’s, you know, we have to be careful that you don’t take someone right through the despair, but COVID is now added another layer on that. And it’s important that, that we are mindful of how we tell a story so that we tell a story when we bring people in at a level of empowerment. And if we’d have to tell a story that is taking someone down to the depths of, you know, whatever the story is, um, like the other day we’re talking about plastics and how plastics are affecting our health.And so it’s, it’s, it’s a climate issue, it’s a health issue. And, um, and we really had to redo the storyboarding of telling this story. It was like 10 slides that we were showing. And we really re did the big starting point because we came, we came out of that, you know, plastics are bad for your health. So we, sorry, I’m probably talking to too much, but it’s, it’s an important piece when you’re storytellers, when you’re trying to change people’s behavior through emotionally connecting. So if we bring people in here, okay, this is bad. And then we’re going to try to, you know, take you along the bad story and then lift you up at the end. Um, it’s a, it’s a lot on, on someone’s shoulders already.

Morag Gamble: I think your storytelling part of it is such a critical way of engagement. And like your 10 years of being involved in this and reaching so many people saying, you know, like these are the lessons that you’ve learned about how we need to communicate, how we need to share the story, how we need to engage more people, because the urgency is only becoming ever more present. And so, so where do you stop? Where’s the, where do you start this story? Where do you..

Natalie Isaacs: You start on empowerment. And so we are doing a lot more of that now, so that we start the messaging that you are powerful. You are powerful. Powerful in everything you do. Okay. Come with me now on this journey, I’m going to take you down. I’m going to take you down. You might hit the bottom. I’m going to tell you the story, but I am going to bring you back out. I’m going to bring you back up and I’m going to end off with your solution. And so that you starting pointing your end point is up here and empowerment. And we’re very mindful of making sure that our stories do that. And, you know, whereas maybe we were, and that doesn’t mean we’re sugarcoating anything. It’s just telling that story. Um, instead of saying, did you know it’s bad for your health and men drop you down? Do you know that when you say no, the plastic, it’s a powerful thing. And here’s why it’s just the way that we tell stories. And we bring people along this journey. We’re very mindful of the way all our mental state at the moment.

Morag Gamble: I think it’s really important to, to, to have that depth of knowledge and understanding so that, that you do stick with it and that you do, you have the information to then be able to share with someone else as to why it’s not just, Oh, we should make change where our plastic. Oh yeah, sure. Why, you know, someone, when you pass that information on that story can ripple and ripple and ripple, then it goes further. And I also think that when you get touched deeply like that with, with the knowledge and with the heart of it, that you can’t unsee it once you kind of get drawn into that world, it’s, it’s, it’s in you.

Natalie Isaacs: And it’s this thing of, um, you know, and we, we do a lot of research. We’ve been doing this for 10 years. So we do a lot of research into, into behavior change. And how the, how does, how do you make it profoundly stick so it’s just part of you and how do you make someone go from inaction to acting in their lives, to using their voice and their influence and their vote, and they’re doing it all. How do you take someone along that journey? And, and I think that, you know, a lot of it is that, um, when you, um, and this was very much the case when I started one million women, it was like, um, he, this is us. This is how we live with this. This is who I am. Oh. And over here, I, um, I do all these things to look after the planet. I do this, this, this, and this. And I noticed that I’m very much at the beginning of one million women, where I was introducing the concept of people. And, um, and some people would say, Oh, how do I fit all this in? I already have a busy life. How are you asking me now to fit all these new things in? And it’s like, so profound behavior change. And when, you know, you’re, there is when you’re not thinking that looking after the planet is an adjunct to who I am. It is just part of how I am. And it’s not about trying to fit things in it’s literally I lived this way.

Morag Gamble: Yeah. This is, this is my way. What are some of the key things that you invite people to join you in doing? Have you got kind of like your top five or something like that, that you invite people to do?

Natalie Isaacs: Well? So one million women is this multilayered kind of movement. We, um, we have a website, we have an app. We have, um, you know, social media, we do campaigns. We do physical events, um, up until now, it’s a lot of zoom events we’re a movement and the whole focus is about empowering you to change how you live. And so we, um, there’s like, I think as we speak, we’re about to launch a campaign around divestment and which is a big theme for us for the next few years, and really understanding where your money is in educating our community about making sure our money is invested in banks and institutions that don’t invest in fossil fuels. And that’s a big theme, or next month, we’re doing a big food waste challenge. And food waste is another big thing for us. And we’re doing food waste free October, which is about the whole month of October um, reducing our food waste to zero. And, um, and all we’ll do campaigns around leaving plastic things on the shelf or out at shows, um, you know, 300 actions that you can do on a daily basis. And so we’ve got these different touch points, um, and we don’t care how you get involved with one million women, how you find your way there. We just focus on once. We’ve got you, we move you along this journey that you are changing how you live and you’re influencing others to do the same.

Morag Gamble: Great. And so how, how can people get involved or more involved if they can be touching base with the app or the website, but if they want to be like a real activist within the movement, how do people do that? Cause I’m, I’m asking this question because this group of permayouth, I work with this. So keen to be sort of more collaborators with movements that are happening and have, have a power and well, the size of the movement to that 1 million women is it’s, it’s really empowering for them to feel that they could be part of something much larger than themselves as well.

Natalie Isaacs: Um, yeah. And it’s a, it’s a really good question because, um, I used to think up until, you know, just recently that once you join one million women you’ll read, you know, and you’re part of it. And we, and it’s a very interactive and engaging community. Um, and we grow together. Um, but the last couple of years I have been thinking, how do we make one million women far more grassroots? How do we create communities everywhere, instead of being one big community, we’re about 970,000 women at the moment, but we are just spread out across the globe as one movement, which is wonderful. But I think that is the next chapter of 1 million women is, is creating small a one million women groups around, around the world. So I would love to talk your permaculture young about this because it would be, it really is. Collaboration is the most important thing from when I started 1 million women, it was a new concept to me, collaboration because as a cosmetics, it was all about secrecy competitiveness. I mean, I spent most of my day trying to figure out how to get somebody’s product off the shelf. And you never collaborated. You never collaborated. It’s cutthroat you, you want people out, you want people to companies to close up. So you had more space. And when I started one which is a completely different approach, it was about sharing and collaborating and, um, inclusiveness. And it took me the best part of three years to unpack what I had learned as sadly as a, you know, as a, uh, a business woman. Um, and, um, and I’m sure that all those, um, ethics, uh, I would be much better at it today if I still had my cosmetics company, but it’s just not the way that I worked. And so, um, so it was a hard thing to learn, which I needed to do because I was building a movement. But today, and in today’s, you know, as we try to navigate this crazy world, joining forces and collaborating, and, you know, we’ve all got one goal..

Morag Gamble: You know, really what we’re all needing to be doing is to be creating the conditions for the change that we need to see in the world and whatever those conditions are, wherever we are. And, um, and yeah, joining forces with different movements, um, you know, the Permayouth, for example, uh, uh, talking with earth guardians movement, which is, you know, across North America and one million women speaks to them a lot because they’re mostly young women and really just finding that way. And they’re just beginning. And so what advice would you give to a group of people who are just starting a movement? So these young women are looking at really starting this movement. How did you get from going, I’m going to start a movement to actually start. I mean, it’s quite a jump.

Natalie Isaacs: Yeah. It was quite a jump. And, um, I think you don’t think too deeply. It’s just that if you, like, when I started, when I, I didn’t know who the environment minister was at the time, I didn’t know any climate pulse. I didn’t know much about climate change science at all. I didn’t know. I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t even know who WWF were. Like, honestly, I didn’t, I was very disconnected to all of this. I really was. All I knew is I had just done something profound. I got my electricity consumption down, and then I got the food waste in hardly any food wasn’t it, but something like 80%. And I thought this, this is an incredible thing. And, um, and, and instead of worrying about what, I didn’t know, I just grabbed hold of the passion of what I felt I could share with others about what I just did. And, um, and so I think if you think too hard on the negatives, you, you never get something up now getting something up, you, you may succeed and you may fail that. That is what, that is one of the, you know, that is it, but, um, but just go for it.

Morag Gamble: There’s something about what you’re doing, I think, and maybe this is part of it. It feels like a celebration. Yeah. Like it’s not just, it’s not just the education about it, which is, you know, it’s key part of it, but just celebrating the change that you made is celebrating the change that is possible. You celebrating people coming together and it feels lively. It’s this, it’s the difference between, you know, telling, telling people what’s wrong all the time to celebrating what we can do right. And do together. And it has an attractive force rather than repelling force. And there’s something in that that I think that you’ve just absolutely nailed.

Natalie Isaacs: Aww… Thank you Morag. That’s really beautiful to say. I mean, we, we focus on what you can do and not on what you can’t, we don’t, we, we focus on, um, uplifting and inspiring people instead of, um, you know, filling them with guilt and because there’s no point and, um, you know, we all need to act and, and it is. So I think I might’ve said this earlier, but it is so it’s so easy to slip from either denial or right across to despair and to wallow in despair and to sit there and, um, and, and feel that you can’t do anything. It is, it’s not a hard thing to just bypass this piece in the middle, which is about action. And I know for me, I would rather much rather be sitting here in, in this piece of action, because it’s filled with energy, it’s filled with optimism. Um, it’s filled with hope and it’s filled with this, this determination to change the world. And so, you know, but the climate change is a very big concept and it’s overwhelming. And so it’s a matter of breaking it down so you can really grasp hold of it and go, okay, I understand, I understand that. And I, can I do this? This is the outcome. And so it’s breaking it down into what you can do as an individual and what that means, if we’re all doing it as a collective. And the beautiful thing, the beautiful thing about empowerment is that it helps you find your confidence in your voice. Absolutely others accountable. So they’re in action.

Morag Gamble: And so if you were so the bigger picture of what you want to achieve with 1 million women apart from gathering 1 million women or more to be positive activists, what’s that bigger picture goal. Do you have, you know, what, what do you want all of those women to be doing together? Is there something I think that, um, the bigger picture, Oh my goodness. I don’t know. I just think that the vision of one million women is that, that we are millions of women. Like, you know, it’s, we, we want to go past a million, but the vision is that, that we are women of the world living with the least impact on the planet and influencing others to do the same and using our voice now and, um, and our everyday actions. And, and that is it. That is that’s the vision. Yeah. There was more and more of us, you know, joining forces and doing that because when we’re all doing that, you know, and influencing others, the world changes and..

Morag Gamble: Raising the children who [inaudible] thinking from the beginning is they, if you, if you’re being raised in an environment that that is just normal, you don’t have to learn about it. It just is. And there’s something [inaudible] I’m going back to her again cause I’m working her a lot lately that she’s saying I’m part of the shift that’s happening is more, that needs to happen is actually a shift in perception. Because when we shift our way of thinking about things, then everything changes and it shifts the way that we make our decisions. It shifts the way that we relate to one another. It shifts the way that we make, we do our everyday life. And so also not, not often, we kind of look just for the action, but action is actually the shift in understanding and perception and relationships and all of that as well. And so I think we, you know, part of all of this is valuing that and how we communicate with our children and all of those things that makes this really important.

Natalie Isaacs: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. It is. It’s um, that’s absolutely right. And that’s where we, you know, a big theme for one million women is the love of the, and the love of community and, and a big part of the way that we communicate is making sure that we are emotionally connecting with people. And because if it sits all up here in your head and you understand that you can articulate it and you can, you can really, you know, you can really discuss it around the dinner table. That’s all well, and good. And that’s, that’s one process it’s gotta travel to your heart because once you, once you feel this in your heart and you know that, you know what, what I do matters and what I do shapes the world, once you feel that actually changing how you live does become an easier and easier conflict.

Morag Gamble: 
Yeah. They come in contact with you feel that too, and it kind of, it almost emanates out of you and then it just, it becomes contagious. There’s positive contagiousness of good action in the world. Oh, that’s really lovely. Thank you. Well, it’s been so fantastic speaking with you today, and I really do hope that at some point, you’ll be able to chat with the permayouth and find a way that we can, you know, a local of one million women.

Natalie Isaacs: I’d love it. Well, let’s make that happen.

Morag Gamble: Okay. Let’s do that. Thank you so much for joining me. I know that you’re, um, you’ve, um, crashed someone else’s places…

Natalie Isaacs:
My, my, my son and daughter in law. And they’re just about to have a baby in our household at the moment. That’s exciting.

Morag Gamble: 
Well, thank you so much for joining me and sharing that with us. And, and, um, I really do look forward to, to, um, connecting up our movement with one million women. It sounds absolutely fantastic. So I’ll put all the links to all of, um, to your book and also to those different campaigns down below. So people can access that and follow that up as well.

Natalie Isaacs: 
That’d be lovely. Thank you. Thanks so much for your support Morag. Bye bye everyone.

Morag Gamble: So thanks for tuning in to the sense-making in a changing world podcast today, it’s been a real pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe and receive notification of each new weekly episode with more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. And core positive permaculture thinking of design interaction in this changing world. I’m including a transcript below and a link also to my four-part permaculture series, really looking at what is permaculture and how to make it your livelihood too. So join me again in the next episode where we talk with another fascinating guest, I look forward to seeing you there!

Subscribe & Share
Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.

Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design, and action are so needed in this changing world.

What is permaculture?
Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-16yos).

Warm regards,
Morag Gamble
Founder, Permaculture Education Institute

I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing – a challenging task this week with poor connection

Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.

The post Episode 11: 1 Million Women with Natalie Isaacs and Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Sierra is also a Regional Crew Director for Earth Guardians – a global youth organisation run by and for young people. She’s an aspiring filmmaker and when we spoke to her, she had just finished her homeschooling.

Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

Sierra has been around permaculture for 10 years and completed her first permaculture design course when she was only 12yo. She is now reaching so many people with her knowledge, skills and passion and sharing permaculture through the Earth Guardians.

Come and listen in to this conversation with Sierra, me and Permayouth representative, Maia Raymond (my daughter – 13yo at the time) and gain a glimpse of the amazing wisdom Sierra already embodies. Hear a little of her story and her work in the world.

Note: This interview was recorded just days after tragic killing of George Floyd and riots were erupting around North America and the world. Sierra’s friends were on the frontlines and her phone was pinging persistently (I’ve cut most of them!). In respect, we kept the call short and will continue this conversation with Sierra and the Permayouth another time.

Read the Full Transcript

Morag: 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 worthwile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

Morag: 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 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 our 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 on which I meet and speak with you today. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Morag: It’s my great pleasure to welcome to the show today.. Sierra Robinson. Sierra is one of the most amazing young people I know. She’s only 18, just 18. She’s a farmer, a permaculture teacher, a homeschooler, and a regional crew director for earth guardians, a global organization run by and for young people, she’s already done an incredible Ted talk in Seattle and as a seasoned and articulate speaker and aspiring filmmaker, I was introduced to Sierra by my friend, Hannah from Abundant Earth Foundation who offers her mentoring. And we joined together along with my daughter, Maia Raymond, who at that time was 13 and also co-founder of PERMAyouth. Just to note though, this recording was made just days after the tragic killing of George Floyd and riots were erupting throughout North America and around the world. Sierra’s friends were on the front lines and her phone was pinging persistently. In respect for this, we kept our call short and we’ll continue the conversation at another time. I really hope you enjoy this rich conversation with Sierra.

Morag: Thanks for your time this morning. It’s been, we’ve heard a lot about the work that you’re doing through Hannah. And so it’s an absolute delight to meet you. It’s so nice. It’s been lovely to connect with her. So welcome to welcome to our podcast. And also to our Youtube channel and this interview. We’re hoping to share out with permanent youth network, which is a global network and also through the, through the Our Permaculuture life, YouTube channel that I got as well. So it’s lovely to have you on the show. So Maia and I has got some a bit of the questions. My first question really is about what is it that drew you to permaculture in the first place? What do you love about and how do you, well, it’s kind of a few questions wrapped in one, but sort of, how do you feel about permaculture? What does it bring to the world and how do you think it benefits the world?

Sierra: Oh my gosh. So pretty much like the big question is like, why do I love permaculture so much? And how can I spend so much of my life doing it? I found out about permaculture when I was only..so crazy.. 8 years old. I’m 18 now. So that’s been 10 and it’s amazing because I’m still as passionate about it now, as I was when I was eight and it wasn’t like the, my little pony phase or like the TV shows that I liked. And I was like, Oh, this is so cool. And then like a week later it was something I didn’t like. This has been something that has like changed my life in so many positive ways for years. Um, and yeah, I found out about permaculture when I was eight because of my parents. Like my dad was just starting to learn about it. And we bought and bought this little farm here on Vancouver Island, Canada. Um, and I had like a coupe of chickens and I kept overhearing this word Permaculture cause My mom went to this gardening course and I sat down and I was listening to this course. And I’m like, this isn’t about gardening. Like, this is so much more than gardening. This is about really like how we can create a regenerative, like regenerative cultures and like a way of living with the world that’s positive. And we can help build communities and help people. We can help other inhabitants. We can help the planet. We can also create a better future at the same time. So it was all of these, like all of these things in one package.

Sierra: I was like, so again, I was like this 8- year-old kid, but I was also kind of depressed, which is it’s sad, but it’s true. Like I had just learned about climate change. I was learning. It was, I was just learning about climate change and all of these different issues and it was upsetting and scary and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was like, I was like, I don’t know, like how to deal with this weight that I’m feeling and…. I’m trying to figure out how to stop that is a lot of my friends are doing really crazy activism work right now. And they’re all kind of like reaching out on this group chat. And I have no idea how to charge both my computer in here. Yeah. It was so I, so I realized these issues, right. And I didn’t know how to deal with them. And then I was like, my gosh, this is something like, all of these things are interconnected and permaculture is like this toolkit of solutions. It’s not only teaching us how to like take care of ourselves, feed ourselves, live in harmony with nature. It’s teaching us like, yeah, she’s really beautiful… [ping..inaudible] Uh, it’s, it’s absolutely crazy.

Maia: What are those, some of the interesting ways that you’ve been able to involve your friends and other young people like us in Permaculture?

Sierra: Um, my community, especially we, we have like a lot of climate change here as, I mean, a lot of places around the world do. Um, but our community has a lot of flooding, especially, and real lack of food security. Um, and I live on a little Island and so it’s really interesting to deal with that, like flooding and a lack of food security. And so permaculture really helped us show how we can turn this problem into a solution when we have like such bad droughts and also such bad flooding and also a lack of food security. So like, what if we just like make a bunch of swales in areas that are flooding a lot and help redirect that water and make that problem into a resource. Right. And so I talked to, I talked to some kids at school about it and, um, I’ve been homeschooled, but I’m really connected in the community through like my friends and stuff. And, um, yeah, I don’t know. I’ve always, it’s been an interesting way to connect with other youth. At first I really didn’t think there was other youth that were interested in permaculture and I was like, why am I, the only, I felt like I was the only one. And it felt like a lot of weight on my shoulders to like, be thinking about all these different issues, um, and having these solutions, but not really knowing it have some adults and they talk back and forth, but I was really like lacking that connection. And, uh, yeah, it just was really cool when it started coming together and it took a couple permaculture courses and was able to realize that there is other kids out there. Um, and I started working with the organization earth guardians and that kind of feeling for sure.

Morag: Can you talk about the Earth Guardians and how Permaculture and Earth Guardians go together.

Sierra: Um, so earth guardians is a youth led global organization based out of Boulder, Colorado right now. Um, and yeah, it’s an organization run by youth and kids for kids. Um, it’s a nonprofit and it has like, it’s doing so much. It’s kind of hard to narrow it down and talk about it really quick. Cause I’ve already had like three-hour long meetings for it today two yesterday. Like it’s a huge, huge part of my life because it’s, it’s, um, like we work on all these different projects. It’s like my friends, like my family, my activist family, the way, um, and, uh, it pretty much talks about how we can help change the world and do activism through, um, through our passions and through doing what we love like art. And if you’re an artist, paint a picture of the world you want to see. If you’re a musician, sing songs, write music about it. Um, if you’re a poet, like bring that aspect, bring whatever aspect of yourself, um, into the work that you’re doing and like how you want to try to create change in the world. Um, so it’s really, it’s really beautiful through that. And I mean, working with other youth and kids that are special too, and, um, yeah, like it’s, it’s a really big, it’s a big organization and there’s thousands of kids around the world that are part of it. And it’s really interesting. Cause right now we’re really trying to connect all the movements because there’s climate strikes. Uh, there’s all of these things and there’s all of these different projects, but there was a lack of connectivity between them. And like you think about mycelium in a forest, it weaves this net and that’s how it becomes strong and communicates with the trees. And it, it creates this living whole system. And right now our activism and our movements are a little bit fractured. And we think that like, we think that black lives matter is different than permaculture work. Or we think that maybe it’s like someone protesting about a drought in there, like trying to like create change on like a law level with politicians and stuff is different than, um, the farming work that we do. But it really isn’t like all of these things are super interconnected and once we realized that, like it makes the biggest change. And so that’s partly what is doing like education creating platform for youth and yeah, it’s just like a really cool thing.

Morag: That sounds absolutely cool. And I, and I really look forward to the Permayouth being connected with that as well, because you know, also that sense that together we’re stronger and using or thinking like nature recognizing we’re part of nature and connecting in that way. And we’re all part of thinking about how we can create a more, just more equitable and more regenerative future. And we’re all part of this together. We can’t do all of it. We can only do the bits, like you saying that where we have the passion and the drive to actually move it forward. So it sounds fantastic. It’s wonderful.

Sierra: Yeah. It’s, it’s really special in that. I’m super excited to be able to talk with all the Permayouth and where was the Permayouth when I was a kid..

Morag: There’s much interest in with all your friends that you work with, like activism talking about, you know, the change you want to see in the world, but is there also, does it ground a lot to people grounded in permaculture action as well? I can say permaculture is I call it practivism. It’s practical activism. It’s everyday activities. Is there that, do you see that connection is that awareness there?

Sierra: We’re starting to, and that’s, what’s really feeling good about this is like I, when I first got into activism stuff, I thought that being an activist meant marching the street and holding a sign and screaming for justice. But like maybe activism just looks like different design thinking and like permaculture, maybe that is just like, it is, it’s a huge part of it. And, um, at first I think a lot of the activists and young people in different organizations thought that too, and we’re all like slowly over time starting to realize that I’m not even slowly now it’s all happening at once. It feels like, but everyone was like waking up to the fact that it’s all interconnected and working with nature and finding ways to be harmonious with nature is the key to being able to create the change we want to see in the world because a lot of these issues are interconnected and we need to find interconnected ways to deal with them. Um, and yeah, like a lot of my friends are like really, really into like really working on permaculture stuff too.

Morag: Do you want to ask any more questions?

Maia: Do you have any advice for young people who are concerned about the state of the planet?

Sierra: Yes. Um, I, it’s a difficult question because there’s so much going on and, uh, yeah, you should like a couple of things I’d have to say. One is you should be [inaudible].. it’s scary and we shouldn’t settle for, for what’s happening. We need to like really work to help create the world. We want to see because we are, we are the future generation. Like we’re the ones that are going to become future business leaders and teachers and all of these things. We’re also like here right now. And we, our voices do really matter and recognizing that and using our voices and talk, speaking up about issues that matter to us, but not even just like fighting against issues, but like fighting for preserve and create more of, so like focusing less on like the hate and anger and the despair, because that’ll just take you down a deep dark hole. And I’ve been there many times. It’s not a nice place, but like if you try to focus on the hope and the excitement and some of the solutions [inaudible] different direction, you’ll see so much change starting to happen really soon.

Morag: You’re completely busy with big things going on. But last, last question chat is really about, you know, the Earth Guardians has been able to really activate a sense of cohesiveness and ripple out quite widely. So how do you think, what are the lessons from the kind of the earth guardian way that can help other young people activate and spread out their movement as well? You know, connected obviously, but you know, there’s something about how you do it in Earth Guardians that I think it really works and is really interesting. And we have a lot to learn in other movements from how you do that. So can you sort of point to any of the key things that you think might work really well..

Sierra: Okay. So there’s a couple of things and it appears to work really well to people on the outside too, but we’ve dealt with our struggles as well. And it really is a trial and error and earth guardians has been around since it was created in 1992 as like a experiential learning high school in Maui, Hawaii, and my friend’s mom. And then he picked it up and then it’s been, it’s been a thing that has been really developed and changed a lot over time, but sticking to your goals and your morals and what you, what you’re wanting to create, like get really clear on the vision of what you’re trying to create and why you’re trying to create that vision, like find the heart behind it. And once you find that heart and like the passion behind it, you’ll see the project start to like go to beautiful places, like in a lot of ways. Um, and then creating a platform is like a powerful thing to like opening the space up and allowing stories to come together. Um, because I think, uh, yeah, stories hold so much power and our voices hold so much.. [Ping] [ inaudible] Sorry. My friend’s mom, my friend’s mom is having a baby and she’s talking about on the group chat and it’s like a whole thing. And other friends are doing protests cause of like a bunch of stuff that is happening in the States. And everyone is like, some of them are being shot by rubber bullets. Other ones, their moms are having babies.

Morag: I think we could do it another time. It’s been great to chat with you now. I mean, I can see that you’re in the midst of a whole load of stuff happening.

Sierra: Usually it’s like, this has never happened to me. It’s never my never done this. I really don’t know what’s going on.

Morag: Finishing school and all sorts of things. How about that?

Sierra: It was so crazy.. I procrastinate sometimes, um, to one of my, I have a lot of things I need to work on that. So one of them being an adult is weird, like just turning 18. But I, I left it all for like the last week. Cause I was doing busy, doing other things and I really cared about in school. It’s not like I don’t do my schoolwork. It’s just, my schoolwork looks different. Cause I’ve been homeschooled. They focus on things that really mattered to me. Not like things that, um, like I had to write this English story, a, one of my last English assignments was writing this story about this like stick man named Bob. They literally, that was the prophet. They like read this short story about this stigma named Bob and like his adventures. And then like give us a write up about that story. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I wrote it. I was like, you guys just want to like watch my Ted talk instead? So, um, it just, it’s hard on my heart and.

Morag: I completely understand Maia she’s actually just in this last week, decided she wasn’t in school for a long time to go to school for while. So it’s been a few days that she’s back at homeschooling again,

Sierra: Wholeheartedly I think homeschooling is amazing, but I understand too, like the school schools are amazing cause you get to like connect with friends, but it’s like the whole system has really not been created to. It’s kind of, it’s an, that’s a whole other conversation..

Morag: I’ll let you go. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been lovely to meet you and it’s, and I’m, you know, I’m sure the start of many conversations to come.

Sierra: Let’s collaborate. Let’s do some fun projects together.

Morag: Fantastic. Yeah. When it gets opened up again, you’re very welcome to come down to this part of the world lots of Permaculture stuff happening around here.

Sierra: As soon as it opens I’m coming.

Morag: Alrighty, take care and have a good meeting for the next one. Hope that all goes well.

Sierra: I’ll talk to you guys soon.

Morag: So thanks for tuning in to the sense-making in a changing world podcast today, it’s been a real pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe and receive notification of each new weekly episode with more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. And core positive permaculture thinking of design interaction in this changing world. I’m including a transcript below and a link also to my four-part permaculture series, really looking at what is permaculture and how to make it your livelihood too. So join me again in the next episode where we talk with another fascinating guest, I look forward to seeing you there!

Subscribe & Share
Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.

Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design, and action are so needed in this changing world.

What is permaculture?
Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-16yos).

Warm regards,
Morag Gamble
Founder, Permaculture Education Institute

I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing – a challenging task this week with poor connection

Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.

The post Episode 10: Permaculture [Pr]activism with Sierra Robinson, Morag Gamble & Maia Raymond appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I would call much of what Rosemary does permaculture service work – offering permaculture education in some of the most challenging regions of the world  – because that is where it is needed most. She has worked in places like Cambodia, Bangladesh Timor Leste, Kashmir, Uganda, Afghanistan and the Middle East and she only goes where she is invited. This is the 2/3 world – the ‘edgey’ places of society where permaculture is so valued for surviving and thriving with little. Permaculture on the edge is the theme of her most recent writings to be released as new chapters in the updated version of her book.

Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

Rosemary is also the co-founder of Permaculture for Refugees.

In our conversation, Rowe and I explore permaculture education from so many angles. She sees its potential is profound and its application universal. Now, more than ever, she says we need to be teaching permaculture everywhere, and she encourages us to explore how to keep our permaculture thinking alive as we face an ever-changing world with cascading disasters like fire, COVID-19, climate change and economic collapse.

I hope you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Rowe as much as I did and are inspired to deepen your permaculture knowledge and widen your permaculture teaching reach, and support new permaculture teaching communities to grow everywhere.

Read the Full Transcript

Morag Gamble: Welcome to the sense-making in a changing world podcast, where we explore the kind of 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.

Morag Gamble: 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 worthwile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

Morag Gamble: 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 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 compot 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.

Morag Gamble: 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.

Morag Gamble: 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 our 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 on which I meet and speak with you today. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Morag Gamble: Today in sense-making in a changing world, I’m thrilled to welcome Rosemary Morrow, the teacher of permaculture teachers around the world. A highly respected elder and author of the permaculture classics, Earth Users Guide to Permaculture, and the accompanying teacher’s guide as well as Permaculture Teaching Matters. Rosemary does what you could call permaculture service work, offering permaculture education in some of the most challenging regions of the world, because it’s here that she feels it’s needed most. She’s worked in places such as Cambodia, Timor, Kashmir, Uganda, Afghanistan, the middle East. She only goes to by invitation. So Rosemary spends much of a time in the two thirds world, the majority world, the edgey places of society, where permaculture is so valued for surviving and thriving with little. Ro was awarded the 2017 advancing global Australia agriculture award. In our conversation Ro and I explore permaculture education. She says its potential is profound and it’s application universal. Now more than ever she says, we need to be teaching permaculture everywhere. And she encourages us to explore how to keep our permaculture thinking alive as we face the ever changing world with cascading disasters like fire, COVID, climate change, economic collapse. I really hope that you enjoy this conversation. This wide-ranging conversation with Rosemary Morrow, as much as I did.

Morag Gamble: Thanks for joining me today. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on this show. So for those of you who haven’t heard about Ro’s work before. Ro is an author, she’s a permaculture designer and teacher well known in the permaculture movement I suppose, as someone who is working on the edges, working with displaced people, working with refugees and just being episode pragmatic and positive all the time and I, and some of your books, but I just have to bring these out to not be the current issue. And I know you’re doing something interesting with this now, but this book that the Earth User’s Guide to Teaching Permaculture was a really important book. I think I had the early edition. This is one that I had been handing around to my students, your very first one, I know when I was first starting out learning how to be a permaculture teacher, your approach was what really kind of grounded it and made it feel possible for me. So thank you for, for the work you’ve done in that. And I know since then, you’ve done a whole lot of other work as well. Like you put on what’s it called? The Permaculture Culture Teaching Matters. It’s a really clear guide about how to teach permaculture. It’s available online for free that people can download. So what’s the, do you know what the website is I can definitely put it down below in the show notes.

Rosemary Morrow: It’s The Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute bmpi.com.au. I think in writing Morag, I’m writin not for myself, I am writing to fill a gap. So when I started to teach, after I finished my courses in 86, I realized that it was going to be really difficult for people to get started, that the course was pretty unwieldy and all over the place. And how could you get the flow of continuity that teachers could start and then deviate from it, according to their experience and understanding and wherever they were, but to get started. So I wrote the first book Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture for general readers. And then that teacher’s book, you brought up was to provide the technical information for teachers. So, you know, if you are teaching water then here are the stages to go through it, then I expect teachers to put it aside and probably never look at it again, but separate from their own course. And that’s fine. And the third one teaching permaculture methods, which I’ve just reviewed is how to teach teachers because I think the next thing is to teach teachers well. So they don’t spend years trying to get their courses and their methods and their content and their technique together. So teaching teachers based on learner centered, so all the channel, where’s the gap, where’s the gap. As I’m writing, I’m thinking, will this be useful to someone? Will it make sense to someone? Can they use it? Is there a sequencing? And it’s comfortable. I come from slightly scientific or not scientific science-oriented background. I’ve worked with the humanities. My sense of urgency about the natural environment is so pressing so strong that I keep saying, we’ll work with the earth and discover yourself as you do it. But if we keep waiting, sit down and become perfect, it’s not going to happen. So engage, engage with others and it will be a real growth thing for you.

Morag Gamble: Your key focus all the time has been amongst many things. It’s been about teaching the teachers.

Rosemary Morrow: I am profoundly interested in how people learn, because if you’re going to be a teacher, do you really just want to spend hours preparing a course and fewer than 5% take away or remember. In refugee camps, everyone wants to learn English and computers. The end of 3 month courses, three people sitting there. They wanted to learn what happened. So I think the only way to think about teaching is, are people learning is this accessible. And I think the ultimate test is to take a difficult concept and put it in a way that everyone can follow. It’s not a matter with the people literate or not. We will need special methods to do it. You can’t just joke, talk and have people understand you’ll need all sorts of creative, innovative ways to do it, but it just is such a waste to teach and not have people remember.

Morag Gamble: So what is that that actually drew you to permaculture in the first instance and why is it that you’ve thrown so much energy in your life to teaching people how to teach permaculture? What is it about the permaculture itself that you find so useful and practical, and particularly in those communities that you’ve just been talking about?

Rosemary Morrow: The couple of things, when I first did my course, I realized it could flow in such a way that you were building. They’re actually building the knowledge all the time. I look at it now as that tree, you know, you’re hoping you’re leaves grow. And I also realized you could go deeper if you taught the first place at that sector analysis, precipitation, radiation, wind that essentially what it is as what is what runs on and off the insects and the shape. But essentially it’s those major elements of planet. When you come to climate, you’ve covered a lot of it going a bit deeper and a bit broader when you come to forests and you’re looking at functions, students or with you and they end up going, wow. So of course, but you don’t want to stop in the middle of forest and say, photosynthesis is in radiation is you want to be using your vocabulary and knowledge. So you’re introducing quite small and getting them to work with the ideas themselves. And then by the time you get to the good stuff.

Morag Gamble: So it’s interesting, isn’t it. That’s why I tend to permaculture in a lot of ways is from my background in system thinking and design and not finding a way for it to be very tangible or understandable that permaculture somehow, you know, and just what you were saying then that this understanding of systems can come quite simply, regardless of your educational background, regardless of your context, you can begin to understand systems and how you can engage with them and how you can begin to transform them.

Morag Gamble: Yeah, you can keep layering, layering, connecting and connecting the people who find us most difficult or sometimes engineers. And I remember having an engineer in a class and he said, I said, we’ve done radiation in regard to climate or heaps, or, you know, um, in regard to, um, storage and black body. Now we’re doing it about soils. And then you said too many variables, too many variables can’t we hold everything constant interest, a sort of refuting of systems, processes, where everything is moving together. Really it’s all those variables are happening. And we’re looking at them first of all, one by one. And then in the next stage, it’s two, then three, then four. So the students think they knew before they did the course. That’s the idea you can get.

Morag Gamble: You’re, you’re doing some work on updating some of your material and adding in a couple of extra sections. I just want to talk a little bit about that because it sounded fascinating what you’re, what the edge that you’re…

Rosemary Morrow: So the last couple of years have told me how middle class in western permaculture is. People sitting around saying, you know, I want five acres in the country or I’m going to start a community or a meditation center enough. I want to provide something. That’s not relevant to probably two thirds of the world, you know, a huge numbers. And then we know that nearly 80% would be living in cities and very, very difficult conditions in the future. So I asked myself a couple of years ago from a culture to say to not just wonderful cities, like my land, where people have lived for centuries and they’ve worked out their spaces and their cultural life, and they need to get to the country. What about cities? What about cities that have got very crowded, enormously crowded, flat settlements, informal settlements, who’s accounting for those in permaculture. I don’t know that anyone is So I started to look at it partly through the eyes of refugee camps and what people could learn and do. And ended up with a real body, tiny taking the permaculture principles, but tiny strategies and techniques that would apply to a range of circumstance. And of course the students, they can see the application and they’ve run with it. And it’s good. It’s been very, very effective.

Morag Gamble: I was going to ask you where some of the places where you’ve seen that happen and how does it look? How does it look? We can maybe describe how that kind of permaculture looks.

Rosemary Morrow: I think there’s the classic icon model of a refugee camp or what we used to call for villages or slums, crowded, , crowded margins. People are marginal to the city in their marginal. Even if they’re holding it together, they marginal is rubbish because they’re not fully incorporated into society in life and access to resource the crowded. And that relates to our principal work on the margins. And because I didn’t want to use words like slum, you know, all that stuff. So develop own vocabulary. What word do you use for, um, just while we’re on that language? Um, global South, global North, third world, first little majority world, minority world. How do you what’s, west East know, what do you use?

Rosemary Morrow: Well, I try to refer to countries and places by name. When I’m referring to the rich and the West, I call them the rich, rich, rich. So they’re rich. If they’ve got some money in the bank rich, they’ve got three meals a day and the rich they’ve got secure, um, accommodation. And in the future, there’ll be rich, they’ve got a job, but anyway, I’m tending to do that, but there is a problem because some cities can contain both very easily, such as we realize the Singapore. Singapore has got its own slums of it’s migrant workers hidden away. And I’ve found them once I went to foster care in the back of Singapore and found these dreadful buildings, wide verandas and broken drugs stuff all behind the first out of orchard road or whatever it is. So every city has sort of got that as well. So the rich I’m represented, I’m reading told him that those were security options. I think to have choices makes you rich, extreme poverty have less or no choices. That’s a nice definition I can think of. So, um, what I found several things, it’s partly how you set up the design work. So I find a local NGO, not international, ask them if they’re interested, do quite a lot of preparation put together what I know is a PDC budget, and I’ll only teach a PDC because these people might never get another chance. And they’re likely to do a PDC. If I don’t do any intro here, they can all come back next week and do the full course. It’s not, but to offer people the full design options, I think is really important. Some people say they can’t understand everyone. They do understand that’s how you teach. Anyway. And then I include some local people. If possible, two thirds of the class has to be refugees or internally displaced people. The NGO can send their people. Then some locals and by accident type and mix works because we put enough money in the budget, not just to teach the course, but to leave the NGO with some money follow up for six months, because everyone leaves the course enthusiastic. We’re going to do this and do that. And it’s the same with refugees they’re not any different. About it’s a six months later, the unexpected person who’s emerged the person, but the opportunity, the group who’s working with something you didn’t think they would. So they said, yes, we’d like to try it. Secondly, no one knew what permaculture was, advertising was difficult. There wasn’t time to do a test and try. So people came who didn’t quite know and trusted. Um, we didn’t take more than 30 people except once where we got, we couldn’t resist. Um, I try new teachers with me as well, whose first experience or second two working camps. So there were, it was a, it was a systems approach, you know, refugees plus host plus local residents, plus some training teachers. And it proved to be very, very good indeed. Um, but the main thing was, I think that at the end of the course, we had enough people coming forward who wanted to do from the camps or settlements move on to second course And the demand was enormous. And the host people would be saying to us, you’d only have six left by now, or thought that they wouldn’t last or be really surprised. And I attribute the success of that to permaculture content, which is so beautifully flexible. It’s good for someone in a tent or a container who wants to make that plan or tent warmer or cooler in summer, they can get maybe a bamboo blind or a blanket to some, they want to do something with gray water differently from the rich backyard. Um, they know this room for shade tree that can be innovative about the roof. They can maybe get, you know, all this opens possibilities of where they are just as much as it does to somewhere in France and America.

Morag Gamble: So is this something about the possibility of reclaiming some dignity, reclaiming some power over their life. Seeing that by understanding this, it gives them an opportunity to transform the space or their life where they’re in this, it’s something to do with that. Or is it just something more simpler than that?

Rosemary Morrow: Well, a lot of people actually sit around all day and for the main, they have a great deal of anger and despair because they’ve been used to showing their skills and abilities and working. I mean, these are people like us and they arrived with all this possibility. You know, they’ve been farmers and growers and workers, French professors, and depending on where they come from, huge range of things and suddenly they stopped being needed and really. And they are hurt and wounded and they’re not, there’s no way to earn income. Cause the camps are so big very often. So they are, the food is often shocking or pretty dull. And so anything that you could just do here and now, but gives you your choice. If you want to play with gray water systems, or if you want to grow vegetables, or if we want to grow seedlings and distribute to others, you can have, you can choose where that little spark that says, I’d really like to do that. You can actually choose that if you want to. And so I think it’s been successful because permaculture is pretty comprehensive. I think it’s successful because you know, you can practice it anywhere really. The land was poor, a very difficult, you know, wandering around cities, the homeless poor. Um, but on the whole, these enormous number of people who find it relevant, some say, well, when we go home, if go home. I’ll be able to do this and others say, do you think I could own a living with this? And that is a topic I’m addressing now. So in the revision of Earth User’s Guide I’ve got a topic on work and livelihoods because if we hit the students economically and take a big downturn, not only refugees and displaced people on the margins, one book, everyone will want, so I’m trying to less employable work options for people without being clever. And just say, you could do this, or you could do that. I can do that from security but it’s not that easy. And they would have to be things put in place such as more professional courses to bring people up to a commercial applicable level, which we can’t do in PDC, but that’s getting away. I think it’s partly if you engage people in the learning, so you also get them to design for the camp or tent, you don’t get them to design for some imaginary place where I came from right here and now what could you do? And they have to come back next morning and tell you, they come back and they sit around at night apparently and discuss it in fairly crowded conditions with people. And that takes your wondering what’s happening in Yemen. What’s happening in Syria. What’s happeningin Sudan. And initial bit of freedom in your mind from being colonized by trauma.

Rosemary Morrow: So I don’t know whether it’s some.. I think it’s not one thing I think some people think I just love to do it and some think it is such a good thing to be doing this because I’m not thinking about home. Others would be interested in accumulating skills. We’re moving on. We haven’t done the work on that. The young woman from India to did her Masters on the impact of environment, natural environments, refugees, and she interviewed paperwork during the permaculture course and she’s written some really nice stuff in her masters about how people were responding differently on what they were doing. Having something to do is nice. I mean, COVID developed a lot of people, they couldn’t get out of that 80 story building or weren’t allowed out. The sense of what it might be like to be a refugee.

Morag Gamble: And so that was my next question is how do you think our experience is in this period now being too locked down with the pandemic and I know things are starting to open up now, but how do you feel about the the shift of our perception of the value of permaculture and maybe open up new potential for it in the rich countries, as well as maybe some big organizations might see more value in supporting it rippling out. Or is that not something that important? Cause you did mention about the working with the local NGOs and that’s where that kind of sweet spot is that you’ve found in really connecting and have..

Rosemary Morrow: I think for the New Zealand point of view of COVID-19 because it’s not the same in London or America and countries where it’s just starting to get first or second wave. And it’s terrifying actually. But in Australia, I think politically.. Politicians listen to scientific medical experts. Normally they wouldn’t do that. It’s all opinion and party platform. I think the second thing is realization how dependent we are in other countries to imports and exports. And some were already saying, we can’t let some of these go off shore. It’s almost by a regionalism meet needs and the things that are important, absolutely critical. So I think there’s been a coming home of what we’ve been saying for a long, long time is certainly need to look to making our own needs on that basis that we’re not caught in absolute panic when, um, when things shut off, or close down. That very, very difficult thing is whether they’ll find a medication, if they’ve done, If they don’t find a vaccine and they may not because it may take so fast, it might be like a few vaccine you have to, every week it may not be effective for all. And the third thing is if they don’t, our lives have changed. So it’s hard to really rewrite the permaculture. So I’m doing it. So if I’m trying to show that cities, when you survive about people, places, and interaction, and people being able to get fair trade shops and coffee shops and meet suddenly it’s become quite different. If you have to maintain nearly two meters distance between everyone everywhere, the city that we thought was lovely and rich and cultural and full of fabulous resources for people to grow and express themselves and be creative becomes something where people sort of doing slight amount each other down the street. And you’re trying to work with water design of a city should be because I’m having to rethink so much Permaculture it’s very hard. I think what they’re going to have to do is shut down some of the traffic streets and have more outdoor eating cubicles under trees, the strobe lines, and maybe a lot more streets have to be narrowed and changed to allow the spillover people that allows density getting closer to former densities to be in the streets. If you want a city.. Some are saying people are going to leave the cities now.. they’re going to desert.

Morag Gamble: You think that will see another wave of that kind of back to the land movement or, you know, going to the edges of the city rather than cause it we’ve had a recent wave of people coming in and the city is going up and are we going to see that sort of coming back out again because of the fear of these waves and you know, if it’s not COVID-19, whatever it might be, that’s coming, are we thinking how society can influence how, like you’re saying how we think about permaculture and how we need to keep the permaculture alive?

Rosemary Morrow: What I think is we don’t know. Therefore getting ready, preparedness speech reaction, any day scrambling to catch up and get things right. Just to expense it to heart too emotionally. And when I do disaster, this whole short course.. I know what I’m doing…I’ve got it done. Okay. I met someone in the co op two major subways. She said, I did a course with you in 2001. And the one that made the biggest impression was disasters and right to the Bush fire something fine. And I’m okay now. So I think if you want us to cure a trusting population, permaculture almost becomes a bigotry in terms of what ever their disaster or more likely cascading disasters, multiple. It wouldn’t just be famine or disease. It’s likely to be fire plus COVID plus economic breakdown, those three. And it seems to me that really forward thinking planners and governments should be advising people now how to start preparing for conditions, which may not be, which may be two or three at the same time. And I can’t think of anything other than permaculture.

Rosemary Morrow: I’m not a permaculture believer in the sense that permaculture is the answer to every question. Organic gardening and biodynamics and everything, or regenerative farming. The only thing that provides you with a coherent set of principles and ways to build for uncertainty, which is the only certainty is permaculture. Take it anyway. You know, in a way people used to say, everyone should learn, they should approach a double disaster and the government stretching and say, well, actually you said one’s going to have to teach it in schools as a priority to teach it everywhere.

Morag Gamble: It’s interesting because the farm household allowance, um, there’s a number of people who are doing the course who actually sponsored by a government to come and do this course as part of their farm hustle. Now it’s because of the droughts, there’s young girl on another program because of mental health issues has been sponsored by government. It is this recognition in pockets that actually does help to respond to I really different things. But how can you say I was going to ask you two questions? So the first one was about, um, yeah. So if permaculture is at this kind of micelium level at the moment, and it’s everywhere around the world, but it’s not being heard or recognized by those government organizations and they’re making decisions, you know, what does it, what would it take, do you think to kind of help to meet these? Or is there another way of thinking about this all together now?

Rosemary Morrow: I think there’s possibly a way through, and I hadn’t thought this before, but I’ve been in touch with Noorani. We’ve been back here in Malaysia university there and she is the SDGs officer for the university, big, amazing university. And she is dynamic and extraordinary and she is putting the SDGs through the whole university. So everything they do is held up to the litmus paper of an SDG. However, when you sit down and compare the 17 SDGs of permaculture principles, permaculture principles, give her a better overall guide. And so she was the one who got Kat Lavers and Greta Carol herself to go there and teach. And since then, she’s known how to apply the SDGs very, very strongly. And I’m not talking about techniques of making compost. It’s an approach to reaching more sustainable greener or environment, like not wasting water and local food and things. Than the SDGs give you. But as a result, when I’m talking about permaculture principles, I also in the new book you know, just the UN SDGs, sustainable development goals together with the principles, because in many cases they have got some nice distinctions to those SDGs. So I see it as if we could get married Permaculture and the SDGs would have a wonderful future and relationship because they provide the balance and carry on that neither ones has got enough. Now SDGs are being picked up by companies, governments, by universities, they have SDG offices. Now, when they put that together with permaculture, they’re nearly unstoppable. So these permaculture is gone right through this university. Now in the grains and in buying policy. We buy organic, we buy local… It’s sort of the SDGs, they’re just, you know, they love and married.

Morag Gamble: I went and did some training with GAIA education on SDGs, multiplying the SDGs. And so we have kids have these really interactive processes that we use, or that Mace who is one of the actual orphans of the SDGs I was talking with her. And she was saying that, you know, the SDGs are kind of the framework that connects and permaculture is the way to make them all happen. And she said that last year to me, and it just hit home. And I’m glad you reminded me because it’s, you know, there’s so much going on in their lives to keep those that is really the avenue, isn’t it? Because SDGs have gone right through from the very top, right through to African villages. People know these and understand them. And they’re talking about them. That marriage, I think is absolutely essential. I’m kind of like getting old tingles, thinking about the potential.

Rosemary Morrow: You know, I think they do. You can just say to people, what’s the best way for you to capture and store energy. They’ll give you their own processes and ways of doing it. And some will be glass and some will be through some stuff. They can do all that. Once you say, translate that SDG at that point, they’re able to do it to, you know, create no waste. Very good. How can you do that what are the ways? And all you need to do is fill in with anything new or special that works for people. I think I wished we could get it together. Maybe neuro’s works exceptional. It would be interesting if she was able to write a paper and feedback to you. And cause we want people who were doing it, not just us saying, we think you should actually put them together.

Morag Gamble: Well, May East and I we’re planning on writing a paper together, about SDGs and Permaculture but it sounds like we need to have a bit bigger team. Is it Noorani did you say?

Rosemary Morrow: Norani.. She’s Malaysian and she may be on Tuesday night if she can. She’s pretty busy dynamic, but quite wonderful. So she’s taught refugees employed in the permaculture and the SDGs. She chose those ahead You know, young 16, 17, they’re just pushy on. We can do this let’s so refugees got jobs from us, so not good enough. And they are now writing materials and teaching in the languages. And the, I forget which other groups, language groups that have been pushed of to the East, to the West and these other groups. Anyways. So, but I think actually COVID is really, really challenging. And the other thing that’s challenging if you want him to write permaculutre gain or materials that the average is that we were using in terms of climate and wind and predictability. The only thing that probably hasn’t changed is day length, evaporation pressure, and the reliability of water. Whether you get drenched, all is changing so fast. I think we have to pick up that word opportunistic and we have to train people to be much, much better observers so they can be opportunistic about their own environment, not the weather Bureau and see if they’re going to get the rain and the seedlings shredding or materials or whatever they need to do that opportunities about implementing permaculture practices has to be one of the perhaps newer ideas that were need against global warming disruption, because I’ve been looking at some things and I thought, gosh, 10 years to go onward. It built water harvesting on those figures in Western Australia today, the rainfall is half over the last 10, 15 years. So if I got the wrong figures and will they change again in the future and to watch.

Morag Gamble: So really keeping that clear in mind too, that the permaculutre to your design is not a fixed thing either is that, you know, you don’t just design once. It’s that constant observation and interaction and refinement and that iterative process that you are as a designer, it’s not designing a thing or a map it’s designing a constant approach to being community and the whole system. And I think that’s where it really kind of sits me, is it helps us to become more in relationship and to set on a path of enriching those consistently. And that’s kind of where I feel like, because it’s it, isn’t a way when you enter into the world of permaculture, thinking of flips and flips, how you see yourself in relation to others and to you, to the land and to, even to yourself, and once you see that that you can’t unsee it.

Rosemary Morrow: Yeah. We’re no longer people who design landscapes and put them in with people who observe and respond with their knowledge of how to design something might have to come out or something. We have to be what set, terrible words. It’s going to be a real word, like incredible. I think agile flexible enough ensure enough of the observation decisions to be able to connect those changes in time.

Morag Gamble: What would you say to young people who are in the world now thinking, gosh, what’s happening with my future? What’s happening with the future world? What would you recommend for them to, how to, you know, maybe getting involved in permaculture , how would they enter into this space? Do you think.

Rosemary Morrow: I’d say never accept a limited future. So instead of saying, I can’t do that and I can’t do that say there’s another way to do it. There’s a way around. So it’s really about seeing possibility. So just don’t accept a limited future. Even if we end up with the whole series of cascading disasters, a future that create broader in what we can do. And then it was predictable, which is actually more constrained having irregular climate, which provides you with a narrow talent compared with uncertainty, which gives you a wider spaces or responsive. I would say getting ready for changing futures, be flexible with the sorts of information that you know are pretty reliable group. You probably can’t go past permaculutre, um, and throw yourself into the future. It’s going to have lots of challenges and lots of interests. Now there’s two sorts of people who are disappointed. Those who feels that they can’t have what their parents had. That’s my generation’s children and grandchildren. I feel bad that I’m not sure what you do, but you know, they will be things for them to do things, to do never stop and being part of the solution, never stops either small or big. But the other thing to remember is once you engage in something, you’re going to feel better. You’re going to probably develop a passion, whether you’re at the teaching over somewhere and someone watches and what are you doing? Can I help monitor staff? I think when she knows that you’re on a road, even if you don’t know exactly where. So some people would be on the road and they’d be to natural building or some to ethical money and some might be to reshaping or restoring landscapes. And for a little while you tried different dead ends, but you end up on the one that you really seem to, you don’t want to do anything else with your life. You know, we’re not much not born with a symphony in our heads. We’re born finding our way, but once we’re on that road, we’ll find our way.You will find your way.

Morag Gamble: I think having the courage to also, to, to reach out and ask people, who’ve been doing it for awhile. Sometimes we sort of have this generational rift between all, you know, you don’t have to wait to be actually reaching out. I know that that has been something that has been absolutely critical to me, do my development and is following like, following my heart. So in the past and find where I feel like the work needs to be done and being drawn to that. And I’m approaching the people that I know who who’ve been doing it for a while. And just knowing that I never know everything and I never ever will know everything. And then I’ll always, I’m always a beginner and I’m always a learner. And it’s by that learning together that we can connect the key, uh, you know, keeping it relevant.

Rosemary Morrow: It’s helpful to learn from others who are very good, but it’s also good to be having those collegial conversations regardless of age and time. So there was a wonderful someone from United or something and someone from India on a Skype together. And I realized we were having the most rich, wonderful conversation on the application of permaculture on where they live now, because I had the real knowledge of where they live and they belong. They were able to eliminate and challenge. I hate to think where the same is true and applicable. So it was very rigorous to test whether you’re just raving on permaculture is great. You should just do swales sort of events or whether you have to absolutely think that that integrity of your words and applications sort of conversation, you come away from feeling terribly enriched and they’re very young! Wonderful thinkers and questioners and doers. So I don’t think it’s generational. It’s something to do with the conversation. Isn’t it.

Morag Gamble: In those last two things that you said, it’s also about going off script, you keep the essence, but it’s not about just repeating the same things over and over. And it’s like, you talk about the biggest scale system, the point before was that actually now culturally where we’re off script, COVID has pushed us off that we had. And then we’re now trying to redefine what that is and just keep rolling out the same things that we always have because the seeing the cracks in the system, we seeing that where those scripts, and that’s interesting..

Rosemary Morrow: Coming back to COVID. I think if you’ve got any money, if you’ve got any versatile system, if you’ve got any choices prepare now your home and living space to the best you possibly can thinking the worst may happen, that it may not. Getting prepared now will save you money, save you, resources, save you, just stress everything. So whether it’s a matter of simply putting in whole mass of potatoes or getting a banana growing outside your door, do it now and do it as soon as you can because, um, that’s just uncertainty again. The earlier preparing now, the easier it’s going to be for you. And it also frees you up to work with others. If you want to and be modelling something for them. Um, in some ways they were people writing about a pandemic as early as 2012 and no one listened to them. And I think we’re not saying you’re going to be unhappy and just say, life changes, let’s get ready for the change now by getting your own needs sorted as well as you can. Um, and that really means quite good permaculture principles. So I think, yeah..

Morag Gamble: Yeah. There’s I mean, there’s big changes and I think, you know, the more that we, those of us, I suppose, who are able to share it to be able to keep on rippling it out. And, but I guess the thing that’s challenging right now is that for example, the work that you’ve been doing in the world directly face to face in groups of 30 here, groups of 30 here group sets over here and that rippling out.. that’s change. So I wonder how the kind of work that you’re doing will be able to continue in the near future without being able to be there. How can you do what you do and not be there?

Rosemary Morrow: I don’t think I’ll be doing the same thing. I think it will change. So where are we starting PDCs, make sure local NGO, and some people knew about them in addition to refugees. The next step that we weren’t able to was to train refugees, to be PDC teachers, by train them. I mean, give them the skill set and not spend 10 years learning it the hard way themselves. It might be fun and interesting, but you know, it shortcuts that learning.

Morag Gamble: What are some of the easiest, or no not easiest…. shortcuts. What do you think is some of the most important shortcuts that we can take as many people as possible on this journey to be able to teachers everywhere around the world?

Rosemary Morrow: Well, I’m thinking at the moment, if we’re in touch with any NGOs, let’s try and as engineers to be permaculture teachers, they speak the local languages that probably got English and can to work directly. Or if you’ve got another language, maybe you’ve got French or Arabic or something, then you can use that. If, and I think we’ve nearly got enough message to teach a course well online. So people would have to go home that evening after a course and teach someone something tomorrow morning before they come back to the online course and they have to choose a topic and say why they chose it. And they’d have to add their materials to say why it was valuable. I think it would be a little bit rough at first, but I think we’d probably be able to emerge and that teaching teachers becomes important, but at the same token, they’re going to be huge shortages. So somehow we need to be talking to people. They’ve got entry camps to say, come on, get people growing seed..we must have the seed grows with this kind of situation. And let’s get you some money to pay those farmers to grow seed that can have a small business distributing seed or seedlings. I may be some materials sometimes. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking, how can we equip the people are there. We not be on a plane to those, those places. Some of them for years, you might be able to go New Zealand next week, but you won’t be going back to Bangladesh or possibly India, not Iran or Iraq, all those places. So, you know, how can we work with the people with whom we’ve made contact with? And very often we’ve been working with the mingling or I’m sorry, it’s Imperial language, but this now the universal and we’ve got relationship. So what we’ve been talking about are ways of teaching and offering them better teaching methods from chalk and talk or sage on the stage to more interactive. And there’s some fabulous stuff coming up, but it’s not matter of just referring into a video clip or Vimeo, or it’s a matter of getting them the other side of the screen, doing something. Yeah. Go and do something. Don’t name all the plants you can see in next 20 meters circle from your place, write them down and come back in five minutes. You know, that sort of thing that you do in the class.

Rosemary Morrow: But if people are not online, then we’ve got a couple of wonderful people who are working on illustrations and Ruth Harvey said to my brother that all I want to do is to tell a story. And they wouldn’t have language…. They would be succession, or that would be. Lovely office. She can’t wait to setting up a space to do that for this sort of situation. Um, and I think that I mentioned it to James, that we need to fund someone to look up the world’s best resources in languages, in permaculture, everything, nothing more than five minutes properly and get a research person who knows permaculture in different cultures possibly have a couple of advisory committees, two or three papers that won’t happen because of that. Or I can see that that is pig in that one was a cow is a cat in that one and that sort of thing, and be able to help people with cultural context or too fast or something.And then we also feed those through to hosts, to use in different ways, so different. I haven’t thought it through, but I have tried looking at materials as you know, and sending them to you. I’ll try again. And, um, but what I have found that what I’ve mainly got is from course materials, PDCs, but I haven’t got it. Um, [inaudible] in Arabic, these languages, um, [inaudible] And what we need is someone to do a search, you know, six or eight months we fund them. They terrific. They love it. They finding the right stuff. And to do that first, we’d probably have to have an agreed list of things you must teach the people to be. They must know about water they must know that soil, whether it’s on their roof or whether it’s in their garden, they must know about water cleaning and storage. They must know about trees… They must. So, you know, we could easily get a must know list, which is different from should or not know, or could know, and then someone could fit the research to those musts and then we could draw on them. So there might be something in French and something here and something that each of us is working in this area or other organizations could go through online and stuff, but not too big. We just want everything to be selective nationalities, certain types of things as well. What’s your response to that?

Morag Gamble: Well, it’s a huge project. What you’ve just articulated, I think, but then it can start really simply also, as you said, just with the, that must know, and it feels like if there’s a possibility to have just that ever so simple skeleton of the system, then each time it goes to a different place. I’m thinking, for example, if the group that I’m working with at the moment in the refugee camp, in Uganda, the Permayouth group.. that by providing some kind of overall structure of must know and then through conversation that we can inhabit that skeleton with things that they need to know there. And then, and then that kind of can be then spread out somewhere else and they can get real. It still feels a little bit slow and incremental, but I think that generative approach is where it’s going to become locally relevant. So just the absolute structure, because if we start to create too much, I sort of sometimes feel like you have, so if a group, another group started to ask for it and I gave them this great big compendium of information. They’ll just go on. I don’t even know where to stop. So very clear step by step. And that goes against a lot of what I sort of think about, you know, needs to be this, um, you know, rather than being sort of just prescriptive of what people need to do. But I think through, through, you know, the decades of focusing on this, there is the capacity to go, okay, well, this is the essence. This is what we need to do. And then wrapped around that we can make local sense of that and that that’s going to change as well. And then that will continue to change as well.

Rosemary Morrow: I am to start my permaculture teacher training with all the students in groups together.. The picture of the permaculture, greater coming up with a certain number of competencies that they’ve listed right at the beginning, and then how to teach them there’s different topics, different methods, different styles, and teacher behavior and everything. But the thing is they’re having their minds should have these things to be reasonably competent. And overall, I would say they need to look at a landscape, understand where it is in terms of damage and repair and be able to restore regenerate, renew, whatever the need is to make it more abundant, hold water source by diversity. You know, that would be the overall theme and then how to get there would be that person leaving your course. Now, obviously they don’t leave the course like that, but, and I only use the drawings as a means for them to concrete what they know and what they’d like to do and a feeling of it, not as an end in themselves to be able to design. It’s much more that, Oh, that’s not what that thought. And I’ll go back and look and check and it’s making it real, but it’s not in itself an absolute thing. So you’re working with people. They want to be teachers, I would mess and do 12 designs. I’d ask them to go and apprentice themselves to someone and go and work with three or four courses. And then cut that and say what you learned in something much more focused to what the outcomes are..

Morag Gamble: I think we probably need to wrap up because both of us need to be on another meeting very soon. We need a cup of tea between this, but just the very last thing, you know, I know you’ve probably been asked this a million times, but how would you define permaculture?

Rosemary Morrow: Well, I think it’s that permaculture is definitely a design system, but it’s an analytic and a design system. So in your observing and noting that trees blocking the sun and you know, she’s saying that that is going very heavy crop and you’re noticing a slope. So a lot of noticing going on. Um, so see it on some good definitions at times but I’ve forgotten one, I use, it’s not an approach either because you actually have a number of things you’ve learned in permaculture that you bring to be able to be part of restoration of earth. So I guess it’s to do with, um, working with the social and the prosperity and the environment to achieve positive outcomes through a series of, um, skills and knowledge that you build for the rest of your life. That’s a bit vague. I used to say, it’s applied science. I still think it is, but I’ve run away from that. Um, I find it because it’s so big to start a course and someone says, what’s permaculture. I don’t do that circle on the board. Right? Permaculture has to get a pin and say what they think it is. And then circle the things that it is. I asked them to link them to the course or something. So I don’t do it slightly different. So I don’t have anything. I have prepared them for big talks and things that at the moment are really people understanding the scope of it is a really important thing that..

Morag Gamble: You know, I mean, I love, I see that you’ve got no pre-prepared script to come out because the thing is that it does, you know, again, it’s the definition of the description of it is always different depending on where you are, who you’re working with, what the landscape is, you know, I’ve tried to pull out sort of an essential definition to describe, I say something very simple, like it’s designed for one planet living, something like that. Then you can take off in any different angle. Like if I have to say like a three second description of it that, you know, it is about, you know, and then you can go into the regeneration and that, you know, it’s about social justice and you can describe it in so many different ways from that. So that’s kind of the simplest essence…

Rosemary Morrow: I think it can be applied globally that’s critical. I think that it comes from ethics and principles, absolutely fundamental to understanding. It equips people to be part of things like reversing global warming land, destruction, flooring, all of these.

Morag Gamble: Thank you. These permaculture conversations. Lovely.

Morag Gamble: So thanks for tuning in to the sense-making in a changing world podcast today, it’s been a real pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe and receive notification of each new weekly episode with more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. And core positive permaculture thinking of design interaction in this changing world. I’m including a transcript below and a link also to my four-part permaculture series, really looking at what is permaculture and how to make it your livelihood too. So join me again in the next episode where we talk with another fascinating guest, I look forward to seeing you there!

Subscribe & Share
Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.

Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design, and action are so needed in this changing world.

What is permaculture?
Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-16yos).

Warm regards,
Morag Gamble
Founder, Permaculture Education Institute

I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing – a challenging task this week with poor connection

Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.

The post Episode 9: Teaching Permaculture with Rosemary Morrow and Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.