Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Vol. 2
Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
1
Endorsements
“Many people are worried about climate change, concerned that there is
no serious leadership from government, instead a dangerous silence.
They are also looking for real, practical solutions, rather than smoke and
mirrors theories about reducing global warming with Big Technology.
There are many tried and tested solutions that can be found all over the
world in different climates and nations but where do we start at home? It
is exciting to discover a Welsh community that has already done so much
to pioneer these practical solutions using permaculture design and the
power of the Transition Movement: influencing school curriculum,
creating local community orchards and gardens, establishing a housing
co-op and associated enterprises, storytelling, offering cutting edge
training to spread this knowledge far and wide, and grounding all of this
with an understanding of our deep interconnection with all species as
humans alive at this critical time in our history. Reaching out, the One
School One Planet project has gathered stories about their approach and
shared them in this book. Prepare to be inspired.”
“The One School One Planet project (which embodies both pragmatic daily
wisdom, and myth inspired storytelling), is a vitally important means to
invite our participation in the task of eliminating the variety of eco-crises
threatening all life on planet Earth. I encourage all of us to support this
project and read this book.”
ISBN: 978-0-244-46066-2
www.psychoidbooks.co.uk
www.llanfyllin.sector39.co.uk
3
Chapter Contents pp.
Foreword: 7
Participating in Change
Part 1:
Change. Opportunities. Connections.
1 Change is Opportunity 11
2 Llanfyllin International 15
4 Community Conversations 23
Part 2:
Permaculture, Teaching and Outdoor
Education
5 Can We Change Fast Enough? 29
Part 4:
The Revolution is Coming
17 What does declaring ‘Climate Emergency’ mean? 125
Appendix
5
Useful Resources 145
Biographies 148
One School One Planet
6
Foreword:
Participating in Change
Steven Jones and Jack Hunter
The One School One Planet project has been active since
September 2016. It is no coincidence that our three year
project comes to an end in 2019, and that the Paris Climate
Agreement comes into force in 2020. Neither is it a
coincidence that at the time of putting this small book
together thousands of young people across the world are
waking up to the threats posed to our planet, and are calling
for immediate action from those in power. Big changes are
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One School One Planet
afoot, and these are what we have been working to prepare
our community for.
Since 2016 we have been working closely with Llanfyllin
High School and community on habitat restoration, carbon
sequestration, community building and promoting ecological
awareness. We have been offering practical responses to the
challenges of our changing climate. In addition to this, we
have been developing a permaculture programme tailored
for use in Secondary Schools to communicate the importance
of long-range ecological thinking to the next generation.
What we are really talking about is a paradigm shift in
conceptualising our relationship with the planet that
supports our existence.
The outputs from our work with students at Llanfyllin
High School have been incredible, and the work we have
completed with them over the first year and a half of the
project is documented in One School One Planet Vol. 1:
Climate. Education Innovation (2018). This volume focusses on
the work we have done in the last year and a half. It is our
hope that through presenting the work in this way we can
encourage other schools and communities to take seriously
the issues that are currently facing us, and to develop ethical
and regenerative community-led responses to them.
8
Part 1:
Change.
Opportunities.
Connections.
9
Image taken from the first One School One Planet flyer, released in
2017. It sees the necessary reduction of CO2 levels as an opportunity
for creative thinking.
1.
Change is Opportunity
Steven Jones
Where are the jobs going to come from for the next
generation? It is a fair question to ask in a world of zero
hours contracts, rising prices, accelerating climate change
and wall to wall debt. If I was leaving school right now I
really don't think I would know what to do, or in which
direction to head. Maybe this is a wider conversation we
need to be having – how can we as parents, employers,
employees, and as a community, better prepare for the many
changes of our day? This is the area the One School One Planet
project has been exploring since it officially commenced in
2016.
In the US right now there is a growing movement of
highly educated, ex-urban, first-time farmers who are
capitalizing on booming consumer demand for local and
organic foods. This phenomenon, experts say, could have a
broad impact on the food system. In fact, for the first time in
a century, the number of farmers under 35 is actually
growing! What could this mean?
There are many factors at play. One is the increasing
rejection of the industrial food system, not just by consumers
but by economics and demographics. The underlying trend
might give an insight into what the future could be like, and
where new opportunities may lie.
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One School One Planet
What we have found from our collective research boils
down to this: we have no chance of being sustainable; the
sustainability vision is just as much a myth as the idea that
climate change doesn't mean the end of the consumer
economy. The throw-away, oil powered, plastic wrapped
economy is never going to sustain us, or the planet, and
we're never going to be able to create a wind powered
biodegradable alternative to it.
The reality is that the planet is so badly damaged that we
will have to actively fix it. We will have to physically pick the
plastic out of the oceans if we want our ecosystems to
survive and recover. It won't be market forces that restore the
forests and streams and regenerate biodiversity. It will be a
renewed and sustained period of human innovation that finds
new and better ways to meet human needs. The race is on to
create a circular, waste-free and super efficient economy that
is actively good for the environment, wildlife and
biodiversity. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose!
We are calling this the 'regenerative economy' and this is
where we believe all the significant new opportunities will
lie.
Building the social and physical infrastructure for this step
change will keep us all busy for the next thirty years. There
will be no unemployment, it will be all hands to the pumps!
The economic collapse we are feeling is underpinned by a
very real ecological collapse. From renewable energy to
localisation of services and more, the scope for re-invention
is almost unlimited.
The generation of children leaving school today will be
entering a changed world, wholly different from the one we
grew up in. This is the beginning of something new and it
could be really exciting to be a part of. The One School One
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
Planet project has been working to envisage what this new
world might look like, and how we can get there.
13
Site of the Cae Bodfach Community Garden in Llanfyllin.
2.
Llanfyllin International
Steven Jones
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One School One Planet
18
3.
21
Poster for Community Conversation Podcast recording
sessions at The Cross Keys.
4.
Community Conversations
Education
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One School One Planet
✦ The current education system is set up to produce
workers for a job market that will no longer exist.
✦ Head Teachers should challenge the Government.
✦ Permaculture should be included in the school
curriculum.
✦ Schools should be talking about the climate
emergency.
Farming
Food
Land
✦ Church land.
✦ D e v e l o p i n g g re e n s p a c e s i n t o p ro d u c t i v e
ecosystems.
✦ Build connections - gardening for people.
✦ Nominate and train suitable people to petition for
access to land from local land owners.
Transport
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One School One Planet
From these responses alone it is clear to see just how fruitful
such community conversations can be. Even if just one of the
many ideas put forward at this meeting was developed to
fruition it would be a step towards a more resilient
community. Once the idea has formed, the next step is to
make it a reality.
26
Steve and Jack with Ellie, a Welsh Baccalaureate
student from Llanfyllin High School, who won our logo
design competition. Her prize was the planting of a fruit
tree guild at the High School.
27
27
Students from Llanfyllin High School protecting delicate
saplings at Cae Bodfach Community Garden.
5.
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
As for the climate catastrophe being a way off, well it is
already here. Fires have been burning in Calfornia, North
Carolina and Puerto Rico, and Miami is going under water.
Bird and fish migrations are changing. Whole weather
systems are shifting. We must not forget that whatever we do
now, things will continue to get worse for at least another
thirty years owing to the time lag between today's emissions
and their full impact on the global climate.
Permaculture design is a system created to enable us to re-
tune ourselves back into the pulse of our living planet. It is
based on twelve key principles, which, like the hours of the
clock, have no beginning or end, but represent an on-going
cycle. Principle Twelve tells us that change is inevitable and
that change always brings new opportunities - 'Don't see
things as they are, but as they will be.'
Do you stand with Greta Thunberg? Can you see how
things can be - how we could avert the worst of the crisis?
Help us visualise hope for a future free from the destruction
and devastation of the post-war economic model, which has
surely run its destructive course. It's time for new ideas!
31
Building the soil and planting a fruit tree guild with
students at Llanfyllin High School.
6.
***
Jack: This week we're joined by Lusi Alderslowe, who co-
ordinates the Permaculture Association's Children in
Permaculture project. We are going to talk a little bit about the
project, and hopefully get the inside story on what's been
going on there. I think the best way for us to start would be
for you to give us a little of your background story, and how
you came to be involved in the children in permaculture
project.
Lusi: Yeah, thanks for inviting me onto the show Jack, it's
really exciting! I first heard about permaculture back in 2000
when I had just come back from traveling in Africa. I studied
a Masters in Human Ecology and then I did my
Permaculture Design Certificate in 2005, with my little baby
son in arms. He was a couple of months old when I started,
so for me permaculture started with children! I did my
Permaculture Diploma over a few years after my design
course, and then I started teaching permaculture. One of my
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One School One Planet
big permaculture designs, for my diploma, was something
called Nurture in Nature, which is an outdoor playgroup in
Glasgow. I lived in the city, an inner city location, and I really
wanted to spend time in nature and really focus on the
'Observe and Interact' aspect of the importance for children
to spend time in nature. So, we spent two days a week in
different parks around Glasgow. I think that was the
foundation for me doing permaculture with children. It
included a lot of time on my allotment as well. Nurture in
Nature was a group that I ran for about seven years, one or
two days a week. We did all sorts of nature connection
activities. The children were from age zero to seven,
approximately, and parents were there with their children as
well. We did gardening, but also just playing in trees,
pretending you're something else, and so on – the thousand
things you can do with a stick! Children, humans, are
naturally in nature. We are embedded in, and part of, nature,
so all of the benefits of nature connection are the same for
adults and children, but it's so important for you to have it
from an early age. So, just becoming familiar with what you
can eat and what you can't eat in the woods, you know,
brambles, nettles, foraging in inner city parks. That
connection to nature – you can't beat it! In terms of physical
connection – you're putting it inside your body, so you're
getting a real sense of connection.
Lusi: So, as I say, I've worked with children from age zero to
twelve and, yeah, it does vary, and where you are working
also has an impact. I was working in an area of multiple
deprivation in Glasgow, and I took the children to the woods
and asked them what they could see, and they just point out
the washing machines. They're very innocent, about three to
four years old, picking up on the litter that I hadn't even
noticed. I was just focusing on the trees. It's just getting those
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One School One Planet
little sparks from that early age, so they can learn that it's OK
and safe to go to the woods. The sooner they learn that the
easier it is. I have also worked with teenagers a few times,
you know from the High School, and was amazed when one
lad, maybe fourteen or fifteen, was like “Och, I'm not going
there across the grass, because my Dad'll kill me if I get my
shoes muddy!,” you know.
Jack: Yeah!
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
Lusi: That's right, yeah. It's an international project. I first
heard about it when two people got in touch. They were just
putting a shout-out, but lots of people channeled it to me,
saying “You must get involved to try to get people involved
in this European project.” Through a selection process we
found seven partner organisations. So, as you said, one is the
Permaculture Association in Britain. Another is Gatehouse
School (which is a small rural school where I live in Dumfries
and Galloway in Scotland), and there are other partners like
Romanian Transition, Paradiso Ritrovato in Italy, and
Kasiopea in the Czech Republic, as well as a Neo-Humanist
organisation that runs a kindergarten and an after school
project in Romania. So it's quite a diverse group.
Jack: Amazing.
Lusi: Yeah, it's like a guidebook for teachers. It has a lot in it,
it's really impressive! We started by exploring the
introduction of the discourse, if you like. We introduce the
permaculture principles and how they would relate to the
pedagogy, or how you are with children. A lot of what
children observe and emulate is what you are like when you are
with them, as much as what you're actually trying to teach
them cognitively. I think that's something that we really have
to remember as educators. When I say educators I mean
everyone – like parents, school teachers, nursery teachers,
maybe forest school leaders. So you know, formal and
informal education. The book is aimed at all of those
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
different people, but it's primarily aimed at adults. It's also
got hundreds of inspirations for activities that are mostly one
sentence in length, but sometimes we couldn't condense it.
They consist of descriptions and inspirations that can be
used as springboards for lessons or activities. Sometimes you
just need a quick sentence and you're like “Oh, great idea! I'll
go and explore that!” Then you can explore it further with
the children and do child-led and child-centred education,
which enables the children to take the lead. You know, say
we're going to look at soil, and then you have a plan and the
kids take it in a completely different direction, but it works
out because they're really learning at their own level. It's a
case of them formulating knowledge, rather than us
preaching knowledge. It's a very different way of learning,
and it's really effective at getting the eyes, hands, heart and
head engaged.
Jack: Yeah!
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One School One Planet
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
7.
***
Emyr: Well, we've been here over four or five years now. We
started with the planting of the trees and then we put fruit
tree guilds in, which is very useful on the course we do
because we have to do habitat sustainability and habitat
management and so on, so it fits ideally into what we do.
Most of these students are agriculture based, but, you know,
as the agricultural industry is moving on there's more and
more emphasis on habitat management and maintenance,
and things like that.
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One School One Planet
Emyr: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, payments will be there
for planting new trees and looking after the hedges and
everything else.
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One School One Planet
38
Cae Bodfach:
Creating a Community Food Forest for Llanfyllin
Steven Jones
46
9.
New Year
(Jan 2018)
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
51
One School One Planet
52structure.
Erecting the
Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
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Mulching, Planting Herbs and Apple Trees
(April 2018)
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One School One Planet
Jack planting woad in the medicinal herb and dye plant garden.
Creating Signage
(July 2018)
Foraged Foods
(September 2018)
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
Rose hips have many medicinal properties and health
benefits, most famously fresh rose hips contain high values
of vitamin C, making them a very good native and natural
source of vitamin C. Their benefits can be obtained in many
ways including oils, teas, syrups, ketchups and jellies.
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One School One Planet
As the rose hips were so abundant at Cae Bodfach,
Stefanie and I decided we would gather some up and make a
fresh batch of Rose hip syrup.
Creating Connections
(September 2018)
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
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One School One Planet
As the mulch gets broken
down by soil micro-organisms
it slowly changes the soil
composition from a grassland
soil, which is dominated by
bacteria to one dominated by
fungi, which is what a
woodland ecosystem prefers.
The fungi (known as
Mycelium) create a strong
interconnected network
underground and form
mutually beneficial relationships
with the trees and plants in the
woodland system. Mycelium
networks connect to the plant roots and increase the root
length and surface area making otherwise unobtainable
water and nutrients available to the plant, while the plants
convert sunlight into sugars (photosynthesise) and make
these sugars available to the mycelium, which cannot
photosynthesise. This exchange is known as a symbiotic
relationship. This special relationship helps strengthen and
create a more resilient ecosystem.
Natural Play:
Observe and Interact
(October 2018)
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Obtain a Yield
(October 2018)
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
Willow Coppicing
(November 2018)
Everything is Connected
(November 2018)
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
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One School One Planet
biodiversity friendly and enhancing techniques such as this
ensures the health of the river and the wildlife within it.
As Salmon are a keystone species, they play a critical role
in maintaining the heath and structure of the river ecosystem
by supporting the life of many other living things. The effect
the salmon run has on the ecosystem is enormous as they
have a positive impact for plants, animals and humans in
both coastal and freshwater habitats.
Today’s work with the river and its inhabitants reminds
me that small events can have large, widespread
consequences, both positive or negative.
I am also strongly reminded of how important it is to
remember that ‘everything is connected’ and to consider what
our impact will be on the local and global earth community.
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10.
One of the main outputs of the One School One Planet project
is the creation of a cross-curricular textbook that draws on
the principles of permaculture to promote ecoliteracy and
climate awareness in the secondary school context. Above all,
the aim of the textbook is to facilitate a new way of thinking
amongst the emerging generation and to encourage a re-
evaluation of their responsibilities as global citizens in a
changing world. To this end we are producing twelve core
units, each of which covers one of David Holmgren’s twelve
principles of permaculture, adapted to a range of different
subject areas in the mainstream curriculum.
To overcome the tension between permaculture’s cross
disciplinary nature and the compartmentalisation of the
mainstream secondary education curriculum (for example,
how the day is split into discrete lessons on separate subjects
with limited overlap), the textbook contains activities to
support deeper understanding of ecological systems and
processes from across the sciences, humanities and arts. The
idea is that the textbook will serve as a useful tool for both
students and teachers in demonstrating how the ecological
health of the Earth underpins everything that we do and take
for granted, regardless of the particular subject being
studied.
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One School One Planet
The textbook will be split into two parts, the first of which
deals with the first six principles of permaculture design:
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
The units in the second volume of the textbook increasingly
highlight the practical application of these key ideas through
design, innovation and community action. They encourage a
different way of thinking about our role in the Earth’s
dynamic system - as participant - and how we can
incorporate this new way of thinking into our daily lives
through practices that help to regenerate.
This is an ongoing project, which is being reflexively
written as we work with students at Llanfyllin High School,
incorporating their ideas and insights into the programme as
we write it. We will be merging traditional textbook
materials with images and content produced by students
from the High School, as well as making use of the
photographic records we have of students participating in
community projects and practical fieldwork. When finished,
the programme will be central to the replication of this
project in other schools in Wales, and further afield,
providing a combination of theoretical and practical
information for developing community responses to climate
change.
We have included examples of content from the first
volume of the programme in the following pages. We would
welcome any feedback or comments on what we have so far
produced. We expect the second volume to be finished by the
end of the project’s funding in the summer of 2019.
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11.
***
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One School One Planet
of deciduous woodland is being chainsawed down there,
poor tree management, and so on.
I have been slowly coming into my voice as the
environmental officer. In about 2014 I was invited by a
couple of buddies to participate in this garden. I knew it
existed, and that it was part of a very old building on the
campus – an old Oast House – that had its own garden going
back many years, and there used to be a member of the
grounds staff who would look after it like his own little
private allotment, which was very nice. Then we managed to
get a little bit of money from the Conservation and Ecology
department, and with that money we secured the use of a
shed and bought some tools. A few of us would go over there
from time to time and do a bit of digging, and it was
absolutely beautiful. So that's how it has been – very low key.
Jack: Nice.
Steve: Wow.
Steve: Oh yes!
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
anyone's toes in that regard. So, there you are, that's my little
synopsis!
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
social fabric and how we come together and feel a
commonality and common cause.
All of this was achieved very well in Havana, and the
documentary film The Power of Community is a great record of
that process. So, what you have initiated, and what you have
going on, in your campus in Kent is a stepping stone, or a
little window, into that process, which needs to be rolled out
and accelerated. As you say, we've managed to separates
ourselves off from the outside world. We're sitting here
worried about deforestation in Indonesia and the Amazon,
whilst actually the United Kingdom is a burned out shell of
an ecosystem that we destroyed over many millennia.
There's just about nothing left. We would learn a lot by
applying our ingenuity and creativity to our own homes, to
our own working environments and doing what we can to
roll back that ecological destruction that we've caused.
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One School One Planet
have a direction and a vision. It's a shorthand really, it gets
you right to the point.
Permaculture says 'start small.' Just because we have a
really big problem doesn't mean that we need a really big
solution. What we need to do is initiate a great many small
solutions! If you have a small initiative that doesn't quite
work then you don't cause a huge problem, you create a
learning opportunity. So, you run your garden, you learn and
you get the positives from it, and it grows to whatever size is
suitable, and in the process it inspires other people to do the
same, so they replicate it. It sounds great what you are doing,
but what I'm trying to do is give it a bigger context to hang it
in, so I hope that's helpful.
Jack: This is one of the big issues that we've been trying to
work out on the project.
William: Yeah.
Steve: So the areas where we have had the most success are
where we have been able to understand where our objectives
overlap with their objectives, and this has taken some proper
time and thought. In our particular instance of working in a
secondary school we found that Welsh Baccalaureate and the
Land Based Studies GCSE were our key ways in.
Jack: But we've also worked with the Art and Photography
departments, and we're planning to work with the Welsh
department too, on a translation of a permaculture textbook.
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
Steve: Exactly, and the reality of that is that it is time based.
You have to be there on the right day, and the right day isn't
a calendar day, it's the first sunny day in May, or something
like that. It could be any day. So to grow vegetables and
annual crops is great, a wonderful thing to do, and is very
rewarding, but it's very hard to do as an institution.
Scheduling a day on a calendar doesn't always work. It could
be that the ground is frozen solid on that day, so it never
happens and the crop fails, for example. For it to be effective
you really need a grower at the heart of it all, and you need
flexibility to work according to weather appropriate days,
rather than calendar appropriate days. That kind of
gardening is very difficult to timetable. The kind of
gardening that we've had more success doing is called 'Forest
Gardening,' which is basically growing perennial plants –
plants that will live for many years – like fruit trees. It's much
more flexible, and if you forget about it for a couple of years
it remains. With our Community Garden, when it first
started, we probably had a couple of very good years on it,
and then we had a couple of years where we didn't do
anything, then we came back and it was all still there. It was
very easy to keep it going.
Jack: And the good thing about leaving the trees to do their
own thing is that it automatically gives you a driving
impulse to get back out there with students. There will
automatically be an activity to do with students, like pruning
tasks, or harvesting tasks that you can build workshops or
teaching sessions around.
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Part 3:
Expanding Horizons:
Permaculture, Religion
and Socio-Cultural
Change.
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Steve and Jack teaching permaculture at Chester Cathedral.
12.
References
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
efforts to eradicate poverty.' Available Online: http://
www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/ [Accessed 08/11/2018].
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Envisioning timelines to a carbon negative future at St. Asaph Cathedral.
13.
Building Partnerships
Steven Jones
14.
***
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One School One Planet
alternative education. So it was a natural place for this
college to be part of the Dartington experiment.
The college has a reputation for teaching ecology, green
approaches to business and economics, to philosophy. It runs
a whole load of short courses, and is run along the same
principles as an Ashram, so that everyone who is here works
to help the place function – and that involves cooking food,
cleaning toilets, doing all that kind of stuff. We also run a
series of Masters programmes, one of which, and the most
recent addition, is the MA in Ecology and Spirituality. People
have the option of coming here for six months and really
diving into the debate on where ecology and spirituality
meet and what the relationship between these two things
might be.
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One School One Planet
to affect change in the world, because of the inevitable
shadows we cast whenever we try to do anything?
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
Andy: Well, I mean, we have the same problem. We are an
MA, you know, we offer certification. You come out with a
qualification, and that means we are beholden to all the
systems and checks and balances that you would expect of a
higher education establishment, alternative as we are. We
have to come up with learning outcomes and module
descriptions, and we have assessments that are moderated,
and it's like we have to set out in advance what people are
going to learn. But of course, as any teacher knows, what
people learn – I don't think it can be measured, actually! I
think this is a fundamental problem of the Western education
system. It is the emergent quality of what happens in the
classroom, when you allow it, that is what makes it exciting,
and I couldn't possibly have predicted what I've learnt by
being here before I came. This fault-line runs right through
the heart of our MA. We are using the Western intellectual
academic tradition – going all the way back to Socrates – to
try to investigate this subject area of ecology and spirituality,
and yet it may be that that whole way of looking at the world
is the problem.
Jack: Yeah.
Jack: It's really interesting stuff! I've got one more question
that we can use to round off our discussion, and that is: how
can focusing on spirituality lead to practical, real world,
solutions to problems?
Jack: Yes.
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
mean human people, I mean tree-people, I mean weather-
people, I mean plant-people.
Jack: Yeah.
Andy: It's a subtle shift, but if you start to try and think like
an animist (and to be honest it has been the predominant
worldview – the scientific worldview is a bit of an anomaly),
then you are constantly in relationship with people, you are
constantly in relationship with a community of people.
Agency is no longer something that I possess, it is something
we possess. The apple tree possesses agency when it tempts
me to take its fruit and scatter its seeds. It is a subtle thing,
but I think it starts to change the way we interact with the
world by seeing it as radically alive, radically full of agency,
and there's a possibility there for the emergence of new ways
of being, which emerge kind of like a murmuration. If you
watch a murmuration of starlings, these big flocks of
starlings that you see on a winter's evening, there's no-one in
control, and yet somehow this great flock of birds weaves
these great complex shapes in the sky. Or maybe, if we
started to behave as though the world is full of agency, we
can find new ways of being in the world that we couldn't
possibly have conceive of before.
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Jack: Yeah. Well, one of the things we do on our project is
taking kids down to work in the community orchard and
herb garden, getting them to feel the soil and to work with
the trees, and build up a physical (and later maybe emotional
and spiritual) relationship in that way.
Andy: Well, I think that's vital. There's a book that came out
many years ago now called Loving Nature by an
anthropologist Kay Milton, who was interested in why some
people are motivated to become environmental activists.
They generally say that they do so out of love, you know,
they love nature, they love the outdoors and the wild. So
she's interested in why some people express that love and
other people don't, and her answer was that it is to do with
exposure during childhood. So I think the difficulty is that
we live in increasingly abstracted worlds. We live in urban
worlds, but abstracted because everything is mediated
through screens and devices. I think what you're doing is
absolutely vital – sharing that passion for the soil, for trees,
for the return of the chiff-chaff in spring, or the first fruiting
in the autumn. But how we affect that change in a large way,
I'm still looking for the answer. All we can do is what we can
do, and I think that what you're doing is part of the answer.
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Claire: Well that bit hasn't been so hard, because one of the
things I started in my residency here is a monthly public
workshop series. My vision for that was the idea of drawing
people together who weren't necessarily just interested in
going to services but who had a deep interest in social justice
issues, on issues of the environment and human flourishing. I
started off doing that, and one of the workshops was run by
Steve Jones, who came to talk about permaculture and was
extremely inspiring, so people wanted to carry on. So,
through the structure of the public workshop series I was
able to launch a Permaculture Design Course here. I think
what's been more difficult, though, is getting the existing
cathedral community to - in any way - engage with that. On
the first PDC there was only one person on the course who
was from the cathedral, and on the second one (which is
currently running) there is nobody. So I think it is happening
quite separately, which is sad because I feel like it has a huge
amount to offer and could be a real vehicle of transformation
within the church. So, it's like we're offering the course here
on these premises, but what that has to do with the life of the
cathedral – integrating that in some way – that's much more
challenging.
Jack: Yeah. It's like they're happy to run the courses, but then
when we come up with ideas for things to actually put into
practice they start to put up their defences. Very similar to
what happens out in wider society.
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Claire: Well, I think that the Christian tradition is deeply out
of balance, which is partly why it's in such a profound state
of crisis. You know, people don't look to the church for
offering them a path to human flourishing anymore. Many
are much more attracted to other kinds of practices, or other
religions. On the other hand, there are people who have a
more evangelical vision, who are looking for a kind of
certainty in the tradition, which is absolutely not where I'm
coming from. I think this lack of balance has to do with the
huge focus on the masculine, and I don't mean just men. I
mean, you know, if you think in a Jungian sense...
Claire: ...yeah, and so of the word over and against the body.
I used to tutor on this undergraduate course in Cambridge
on 'Theology of God in Love and Desire,' and I came across
this text. The idea that until fairly recently it wasn't known
that men and women had an equal part in reproduction, and
the role of DNA wasn't really understood. So I think the
whole symbolic language of Christianity is profoundly
masculine in a way that is also simply biologically incorrect.
The idea that, you know, the feminine is, in a sense, the
empty vessel, and the divine as the word penetrates the
feminine, so it's only the masculine principle that's creative
and life giving. I think this has led to a profoundly
dysfunctional relationship between masculine and feminine.
Not just men and women, but word and body and this has
had an impact, of course, on the role of women in the
tradition, of the body and of sex and sexuality.
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The Bishop of Salford comes the Llanfyllin.
16.
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Part 4:
The Revolution is
Coming
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Steve teaching Welsh Baccalaureate students about the carbon cycle.
17.
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The Revolution is coming!
18.
March 15th 2019 is set for a Global School Strike for Climate,
inspired by the activities of Swedish student Great Thunberg, and
similar strikes happening throughout Europe. We see this as a
great opportunity to invigorate education and awareness of the
climate crisis, and to frame possibilities for the best possible
outcomes.
Things have really started moving in the last few months. This small
selection of recent newspaper headlines demonstrates just how
prescient One School One Planet has been. The ideas we have been
exploring over the last three years are going mainstream.
19.
Waking Up to Emergency
Steven Jones
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air pollution, are in themselves useful but they fail to address
the causes and therefore do not represent a solution. We
actually have to change our behaviour, and that is much
more complicated.
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Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
processes that have bought us to this precarious point in
human history.
Climate Disobedience
Imagine being told at the age of 15 that the world has a mere
dozen years to halve emission and set the course for a zero
carbon future. Twelve short years and beyond that point it is
already too late for meaningful action. To the mind of Greta
Thunberg attending school to learn the very same science
and reasoning that our politicians are currently ignoring
wholesale seemed pointless and she went on strike. Alone.
One child standing outside the Swedish parliament each
Friday trying to confront those guilty of inaction. A few short
weeks later and Greta has become a world leader,
commanding legions of school children around the world
and inspiring a great many more of all ages to action. The era
of climate disobedience is here and we should applaud it.
Sounding the alarm is one thing, but knowing how to
respond is another. We urge people of conscience around the
world to begin the process of observation - to understand
better the problem, the resources and actions open to us and
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to identify your allies and colleagues. Catch and store those
things you know you will need, even if you don't know
exactly how to use them. Make compost, trap water, build
links and networks. Start to arrange your resources in a way
that produces useful yields, whether it is food or information,
money or community action. Accept feedback, understand the
need to make changes and evolve your action, work with local
and natural resources, and understand that nature produces no
waste so many of the easiest to reach resources are currently
in the waste stream.
Permaculture design works from big over-arching patterns
before drilling down to the details. This helps the designer to
navigate unfamiliar territory and keeps you on the right
track. Designed solutions informed by nature are always
interconnected. Permaculture urges us to start small and
slowly grow whilst drawing on the edges, the marginal and the
diversity of things (people, species, ideas). The world has one
constant - change - and permaculture challenges us to see
change as an opportunity to improve, evolve and respond to
new circumstances
Greta Thunberg and the school rebellion is drawing
heavily on this final principle - change as an opportunity -
please don't let them down!
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Appendix
Artwork created by GCSE photography students at Llanfyllin High
School, in response to learning about climate change.
Photography Students Turn Focus on Project
The Advertizer, April 2018
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Students from Llanfyllin planting apple trees at Cae Bodfach
Community Garden.
One School One Planet
Jack Hunter, Regenerator Magazine, 2018
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‘2050’ Vision Book Launch
Mike Sheridan, County Times, 23rd March 2018
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Useful Resources
Arwain:
http://www.arwain.wales
Dragons Co-Operative:
http://www.dragons.cymru
Paramaethu Cymru:
https://wales.permaculture.org.uk
Permaculture Association:
https://www.permaculture.org.uk
Permaculture Magazine:
https://www.permaculture.co.uk
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Sector39:
http://www.sector39.co.uk
Skeptical Science:
https://skepticalscience.com
Sustainability Exchange
https://www.sustainabilityexchange.ac.uk
Transition Network:
http://transitionnetwork.org
Biographies
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One School One Planet
Vol. 2
Permaculture, Education and Cultural Change
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