Simha’s curriculum for i.s. leadership training
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This document outlines a permaculture and ecovillage design course consisting of 16 activities aimed at introducing participants to permaculture principles and designing systems. The activities include defining permaculture, conducting personal niche analyses, learning about system interdependence through interactive exercises, discussing ethics, visioning techniques, landscape analysis tools, and culminating in group design projects and presentations. The goal is for participants to understand permaculture concepts and work collaboratively to design resilient, sustainable systems for ecovillages.
Simha’s curriculum for i.s. leadership training
- 1. Simha’s Curriculum Permaculture and Ecovillage Design course - Leadership training ! ! 1. Introduction to Permaculture: History, Principles, and Ethics! !• What is permaculture? group brainstorm (flip chart example)! ! Objective: To get people actively engaged in defining Permaculture as a group! Materials needed: Large pad of paper and markers! Activity Directions: Participants popcorn their ideas of what permaculture is teacher writes what they say on large pad. Once the popcorn is exhausted the teacher give definition: “Permaculture is an ethically based design system that aims to provide human needs while increasing ecosystem health.” then teacher goes to each definition given and probes a little deeper (ex. how is it sustainable? What are we trying to sustain?) etc. connecting them all back to principles and ethics! ! Mentionable: Permaculture is a compound word bringing together: Permanent - Culture and Permanent - Agriculture. Focusing on Perennial food-system security - Resilient & Redundant adaptive systems.! ! 2. Personal Niche Analysis! ! Objectives: ! • To get each individual to make a niche analysis (starting process of finding personal niche) - This will be used when they break into groups to know each others strengths ! • To understand what a niche analysis is and how it is used in designing! • To understand individual inputs and outputs of a system (social and physical) (Needs, yields, allies, enemies, defining behaviors (habits), tolerances, preferences, skills, joys and nuisances)! ! Materials needed: Large pad and markers to draw an example personal niche analysis, sheets of paper and markers for participants.! Teaching Site Set-Up: Give handout of the chicken niche analysis - http:// permaculturesource.wikispaces.com/file/view/Species%20Niche%20Analysis.pdf/289968783/ Species%20Niche%20Analysis.pdf! Activity Directions: ! ! 3. Understanding how systems work: interactive equilateral triangle activity - adapted from Aranya - Permaculture Design - A step-by-step guide! ! Objectives:! !1 . To show how systems are interdependent components which make an integrated whole (change one thing and everything else changes).! 2. Show how systems can be adaptive or fail (adaptive or static)! ! Teaching Site Set-Up: Open field!
- 2. Activity Directions: Get participants to form a large circle. Tell participants look around and silently pick out two people in the circle. Once everyone has chosen two people mill about. (form the system) each person now must maintain an equilateral (equi-distant) triangle with these two people (everyone moves about trying to achieve this). Eventually everyone stops because they have all formed equilateral triangles. Now demonstrate a static system (system failure) make one person sit down - Who ever is connected to this person sits down and who ever is connected to those who have sat also must sit. Now demonstrate a adaptive system (get everyone standing again). Mix it up by moving people and then have their triangle counterparts move to maintain appropriate distance. Talk about how everything is interconnected.! !! 4. Permaculture Ethics! ! Objective: To get everyone thinking about their own ethics and introduce the 3 permaculture ethics! ! Activity Directions: Get participants to pair off (or in small groups) to discuss their own ethics - give a definition of ethics - (moral principle which governs a person’s or group’s behavior). Keep it short - once people seem to be wrapping it up ask them to finish their thoughts. Do a harvest of peoples experience - Now discuss the three permaculture ethics People Care, Earth Care, Resource Share (talk about the different versions of the third Ethic - “Fair share” - “reinvestment of surplus”) - investing for unborn future generations. Ask the question which ethic is the most important and get participants to create a line standing on one end for one principle the middle for another and the other end for the other. Ask people why they are standing where they are, everyone is right we can’t have one without the other they are all important. “People care” closing - make a shoulder-massage line. ! ! 5. Right brain visioning Activity! ! Objective: To get participants to drop into an objective state of mind. This is a tool for site analysis. Objectivity without judgment.! ! Activity Directions: Begin milling about, stop, find a partner. Each participant stands lining up left side of body to left side of body, softly gazing into each other’s left eye (not closing the right eye). One participant puts left hand out, other partner cups that hand from underneath and then draws circles on that persons palm. Participants focus on gazing and tuning into senses without judgment. Tune into sensations around them the feel of the ground, sun and wind on skin, sounds of birds). Switch after 5 minutes or so. (this can also be done sitting on the ground - sun in the eyes seemed to be an issue)! ! 6. Blindfold landscape walking activity! ! Objective: To get participants to know the landscape using different senses than site. To become aware of all the senses it takes to understand a landscape fully.! ! Materials needed: Bell! ! Activity Directions: Get participants to pair off- One gets blindfolded the other acts as a guide - Guide them if they walk towards anything dangerous yet let them explore. Instruct participants
- 3. to use all of their senses while walking around to get to know the landscape. ring the bell - Have them sit down at end and see if they can sense where they are. Have them remove their blindfold and switch roles. Harvest experiences at the end by especially tuning into what was noticed, senses used, etc.! ! Debrief topics: Important to tune into what is already there on a landscape. This is an important tool for us to be able to use to tune-in on a deeper level (our sense of sight can overpower our other senses which are giving us pertinent information.) ! ! 7. Group Design Niche Analysis! ! Objective: Begin forming group - knowing what group members need, skills they bring, and then form agreements.! ! Activity Directions: Break into newly formed design group & discuss your personal niche analysis with group. Talk about your social and physical outputs (strengths & what you can bring to this group) as well as what you need (social and physical)! ! Social Permaculture note to share before groups split up: Society tells us we can be anything we want. Everyone has special strengths “personal niche”. Exploring this niche and sharing it with others during these times of environmental and social crises is part of our task. Make sure when you meet with your group to share the strengths you already know you have. Live in your light!! ! Handouts: The Permaculture Design Process by Cascadia Permaculture Institute, Scale of Permanence Checklist adapted by P.A. Yeomans by Dave Jacke, & Holistic Site Analysis by TreeYo! ! 8. Building and Using an A-Frame Level! ! Objective: Show how to determine contours of the land using an A-Frame and stakes.! ! Materials needed: an A frame, stakes (or material for marking - three sticks, string and weight)! ! Teaching Site Set-Up: choosing a site with slight variation in contour (plum grove to oven was used) can show how it is difficult to see with your eyes.! ! Introduction: Explain what contour is (lines on a topo map showing land of the same level) and why it is important to be able to find it when doing a land-based permaculture design (see link below for details).! ! Calibration of the A frame: Find two un-level points. Place each foot of the A-Frame on these points. Mark where string comes into contact with the wood crossbar. Rotate the A frame to put the feet of the A-frame on the opposite points. Make second marking where the line falls. To find the mid-point between these two marks you can hold a string between the two marks and fold it in half and mark.! !
- 4. Activity Directions: Get all participants to work together to mark out a contour on the land using the A frame and stakes. Now review the calibration process and get a participant to demonstrate it while explaining to everyone.! Resource page - (good explanation of the reason to know how to use the A Frame) http:// en.hesperian.org/hhg/A_Community_Guide_to_Environmental_Health:Contour_Barriers (their calibration method uses flat land which I don’t recommend)! ! 9. Triangulation! ! Objective: plotting the relative location of elements in a landscape for base mapping! ! Materials needed: One long rope (15-20+ yards - depending the distance between elements where you demonstrate it) using either knots or tape to make marks every yard on the rope.! ! Teaching Site Set-Up: Choose a location with two points a good distance apart with several elements such as trees to locate for plotting (we used the yoga room corners and plum trees)! ! Introduction: Explain the purpose of base mapping and how having the ability to create accurate to-scale base maps is a practical skill for land based design.! ! Activity Directions: Find two points that are easy to measure the distance between and plot them on a piece of paper (two corners of a building work good) This is called your baseline. Now using your rope (or paces) measure out to a tree from both of those corners, write the distances and plot the tree on the map. Do it for another tree (or other! element). Now use one of those trees as a new known point to plot out an element in a different direction.! ! Resource - Page 39 in Permaculture Design A step-by-step guide by Aranya has detailed instructions and drawings explaining it.! ! 10. Garden Teaching Walk: - Participants did a silent walk around garden to find something that sparked their interest. As a group we walked around to a few places and Spoke about what we were seeing - stacking functions of: weed control, soil improvement and multiple yields. Alternatives to plowing. Considerations of scale and sequence (scale of permanence)! ! 11. Swale and berm creation: (polyculture mound)! ! Objective: to create a multipurpose polyculture swale and burm ! ! Materials needed: sythe, shovels, broadfork, cardboard, wool, wood chips, brush, minerals, compost, plants: sea berry (Hippophae), currants (Ribes), King stropharia (Stropharia rugosoannulata) we used oats. Would have liked to have white clover, comfrey and borage ! ! Teaching Site Set-Up: Design the system spacing and location of plants (order of operations) bring materials/tools on site.! ! Activity Directions: Speak about and demonstrate using the broadfork - a human-scale alternative to de-compacting the soil. Introduce sheet mulching (would be good to have it ready to go (we had to rip off tape). we mounded up brush in between two old potato rows (in the
- 5. path) to create the middle of the burm. Broad fork the two beds where plants go on the burm. Remove sod from the back of the swale to widen it shaking off topsoil, lay the sod on top of the brush grass-side down. Plant the perennial berry bushes. Wet the entire burm and cardboard, lay down the cardboard - south side of burm (overlapping several inches) and wool north side of burm, cover cardboard with topsoil from sod, sow ground cover (oats - annual or white clover - perennial). Mix King Stropharia spawn with woodchips (1 yr old mixed hardwood) spread over wool moisten and cover with fresh chips or soil. Plant comfrey (dynamic accumulator) and Borage (Nectar)! ! Swale Completion & Design Group Work - needed second session to complete! !( Simha’s note - I have compiled the entire project into one text block as I am sure this will change year to year, yet its good to have the process of this year scribed - This project required me to put in 3+ hours to finish where participants had to leave off because of time constraints)! ! 12. Design Group Work- Sector & Analysis Overlay! ! Objective: Landscape analysis maps - learning zones of use and sector analysis! Materials needed: Small base map, roll of tracing paper, large pad and markers to demonstrate! ! Activity Directions: Draw an example Sector analysis and Zones of use map explaining their purpose. Have participants go over their scale of permanence checklist in their Design Groups, each person taking responsibility to collect info on several of the categories until their group has someone responsible for each category. Their goal is to create tracing-paper overlays showing: water flow, traffic flow, wildlife etc. Use arrows of different colors and thickness to delineate energy flow and its intensity. Delineate microclimates, soils, plant guilds, land features or other unique characteristics using words and bubbles. Make a key. (note: they will have several days to accomplish this)! ! ! 13. Initial Visioning/Design phase ! !( note there was a misunderstanding of this being a “vision quest” yet it was a visioning session)! ! Objective: Assessment Brainstorming: Design groups begin to use the information of their analysis maps to alter flows, deal with sectors and create functional interconnections. Applications of the permaculture ethics, principles and tools are overarching goals.! ! Materials needed: scraps of paper to write elements on (can use large base map to start thinking about design) ! ! Activity Directions: Make a SWOC Analysis for you site/project - list of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Challenges of the site/project. Make a mindmap starting with your goals and visions and branching out into needs to reach those goals, then branching into the elements (stay general - nut forest, food forest, wetland, annual gardens) you would like to have and the functions they serve. This is a rough patterns level brainstorm NOT final design work think broad strokes. Write the elements you want to include on a scrap of paper. These elements can be moved around on your base-map. If you haven’t found several elements to
- 6. support each of your needs make note of that. Use your SWOC Analysis and be creative when assessing possible solutions to the challenges of social, environmental, and financial factors of your design.! ! 14. Bio-system Design (laid out by co-teacher - see note below)! ! Objective: Have students review & incorporate into design bio-system elements ! Materials needed: Bio-system brainstorm from day prior ,group design materials! ! Activity Directions: Review Bio-system elements & clarify any questions about specific concepts. Explain fully how bio-system fits into final design- as an ecovillage and permaculture design. Explain what is expected of them that day, and how to draw it on map at this time. Point to it in Design Layout Handout (given at beginning of Design Group Project Formation) and where it fits into that process as students continue to work towards completion.! !( Simha’s note - By limiting this design session to bio-systems you are not encouraging them to see that all systems are interconnected. When designing, all systems need to be analyzed and assessed together as each one will affect and hopefully be integrated into others.)! ! 15. Design Group Final design (2 hour window)! ! Objective: To put all designs onto large, final map. Built infrastructure, earthworks, plantings, concepts etc. Have them think about how they are integrating Permaculture and Ecovillage design principles. As they bring new elements, have them consider how the zones of use and sectors change.! ! Materials needed: All design materials produced so far- Scale of Permanence, Sector analysis, A&A overlay maps, Core Values, Covenants, etc.! ! Teaching Site Set-Up: Providing initial directions, then consulting as needed, make sure students are on track. Jon Turner helps as guest consultant. ! Activity Directions: Have students envision how they will get to where they need to be by the end of this process. Encourage them to use their communication tools and include everyone using their niches.! ! 16. Design Group Presentations! ! Objective: To share final design and get 15 minutes of Feedback - would be great to invite parents and friends. ! Materials needed: Designs and tape ! Teaching Site Set-Up: Set up for audience to sit! ! Activity Directions: Give students 45 minutes to present & 15 minutes for feedback. Break in between groups to give them the opportunity to sustain focus.