NWPCC PRESENTERS PAST/PRESENT
For 2012 Presenters list click HERE
Adelaide Nalley
The Next Step: Regenerative education beyond the garden
An exploration of the why’s and how’s of permaculture education in all school disciplines. Stepping beyond the school garden and local watershed into ALL aspects of life, this presentation aims to help educators think creatively about new, broader ways to use permaculture to inspire and excite students to change their entire paradigm of how they live and interact with the world.
Adelaide is a Sociologist by training, with a Masters from UCLA. She currently lives and works at Lost Valley Education Center near Eugene, OR.
Alice Busch
Making The Connection: Disaster Resiliency and Permaculture
Creating an awareness of the common ties between Permaculture, Energy Descent and Disaster Management using a style of instructing that focuses on speaking to a broad segment of the population, based not on what they as an instructor believes, but upon what is important to their audience. Paying attention to trigger words that both engage and shut down listeners. Students focus on creating the common outcome of twenty minute walkable communities’ –using whatever motivates their audience to do so. Covers methods of outreach and also covers the disasters likely for the Pacific Northwest and what is needed to prepare adequately.
Alice Busch has a Bachelors Degree in Communications from Northern Arizona University and has been in the fire service for 20 years. An EMT, Public Information and Education Officer, Critical Incident Stress Manager, Peer Counselor, Inspector and former Investigator. She also currently serves as a Community Emergency Response Team Trainer and is a Citizen Corps Council representative for the Urban Area Securities Initiative (UASI) region as well as a UASI Public Information Officer representative.
Andrew Millison
Permaculture 101: An Introduction
This introduction to the Permaculture design system includes the ethics, history, design process, and examples of systems that show the diverse scales at which Permaculture design is applied. This is a talk geared for complete beginners, as well as experienced practitioners who wish to see my version of the Permaculture “stump speech."
Andrew Millison is an instructor in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University, teaching the Permaculture Design Certificate Course. He has taught through other organizations including Prescott College, the Ecosa Institute, and the Cascadia Permaculture Institute. He instructs Advanced Permaculture Courses in Teaching. More information at his website beaverstatepermaculture.com
Barbie-Danielle DeCarlo
Telling Your Story: Common Ground is Sacred Ground
We are all connected. As the notion of permaculture design rests on elements of the environment depending on each other –independent of how different or similar– so do our personal narratives, which are built on systems that are intertwined. The gift of possibility in identifying ourselves in each others’ stories can be a powerful healing discovery (and tool). The aim of this workshop is to demonstrate the possibilities of finding common ground among each other through participants’ personal narratives in fun, engaging, and interactive ways. Participants will expand, share, learn ways of identifying, harmonizing and infusing the notion of ‘social permaculture’.
Barbie-Danielle DeCarlo earned her Heart of Facilitation certification in 2010. She participates in Coming To the Table and New Legacy Puget Sound’s racial reconciliation group, Healing Together: Addressing Slavery in Our Family’s Histories. University of Washington graduate in Women Studies, Geography and Latin American Studies (Brazil).
Bill Aal
Power Dynamics and Oppressions
Historically, in order to gain access to American society, all of us have been expected to leave our different cultures, traditions and perspectives at the door. We have been divided from each other both in the ways in which we have been raised, and the social and economic structures in which we operate. This has made it impossible to create inclusive contexts and establish the trust necessary to work together effectively. What are ways that permaculturists and the Permaculture movement itself learn to deal creatively with the differences in culture, political beliefs and life styles? How do we confront delinquent institutions?
Bill Aal is Co-Chair of AGRA Watch, and a co-founder of the Community Alliance for Global Justice (CAGJ). He joined forces with Margo Adair as co-director of Tools for Change. Bill was a member of the board of directors for the Washington State Sustainable Food and Farming Network for ten years and was a board member of the Western Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, and teaches social permaculture in California and the Northwest.
Brush
Social Sector Analysis: Economy
Economies bring resources and needs into relationship. These days we’re acutely aware of breakdowns in one of the strongest social sectors -the money economy. Most permaculturists also know about alternative economies: from sharing among friends and family through local currencies and barter exchanges. In this workshop we’ll examine how both sectors affect our social designs, at personal, group, and network scales, looking especially at class dynamics in Permaculture contexts. We’ll then explore practical tools we can use to deepen real wealth and autonomy in a world of less and less money.
Brush is a consultant and activist. He is legal and financial coordinator for TLC Farm in Portland. He co-founded ReCode a movement in Oregon to legalize sustainability; A Circle Group, and Cascadia Witchcamp annual gathering.
Carlos R. Alicea Negrón
Power Dynamics and Oppressions
Historically, in order to gain access to American society, all of us have been expected to leave our different cultures, traditions and perspectives at the door. We have been divided from each other both in the ways in which we have been raised, and the social and economic structures in which we operate. This has made it impossible to create inclusive contexts and establish the trust necessary to work together effectively. What are ways that permaculturists and the Permaculture movement itself learn to deal creatively with the differences in culture, political beliefs and life styles? How do we confront delinquent institutions?
Carlos R. Alicea Negrón is a professor at Center for Literacy and Cultural Democracy where he teaches Environmental Sciences, Introduction Physical Sciences and Geography using a Multicultural Teaching Model. He has also been involved in the Environmental Art Festival and The Alliance of the People of Las Americas project in the USA.
Charlotte Anthony
Communing with Nature: Victory Garden Demo
Learn how the victory gardens works to grow vegetables sustainably. Like in the forest, we use techniques that increase the soil microbes, such as mycorhizzals and bacteria to create great growing conditions. We use full permaculture complements of dynamic accumulators, nitrogen fixers, predator and pollinator habitat. We use a “pay it forward” system.
Charlotte Anthony received her Permaculture Design Certification in 2004 and has has helped create almost 650 gardens in the Eugene, OR area. In 2003-2004, Charlotte ran a one hundred-family CSA in California. She was volunteer coordinator for a permaculture restoration project in New Orleans after Katrina, where she also worked with bioremediation projects for pollution clean-up. More information at her website www.VictoryGardensForAll.org
Chuck Estin
Transition Economics
Using principles from the recently evolving field of Financial Permaculture, we are designing a “Transition Economics” plan to develop Bainbridge Island's local economy for today’s world while creating a more ideal economic system to evolve toward a more just and sustainable future economic environment. We hope our Transition Economy will engage conservative community members and businesses in shifting from the current economic paradigm that exploits people and the environment to one that nurtures life systems. Our workshop will invite participation and feedback in different components of our design, including land, capital, labor, economic agents, and currency.
Chuck Estin has been teaching Permaculture Design Courses and workshops since 2005 while designing and installing edible landscapes, managing a nursery, growing produce for local markets, and mentoring apprentices. Chuck has studied “alternative economics” and complementary currencies over the past decade, integrating new understandings into his work with the local community on Bainbridge Island. Bios Design is his Permaculture business.
David Arias
Trauma & Initiation: Medicine for Deep Resilience
Even if you have a great idea, if people can’t work together over a sustained period of time “Village Building” efforts tend to ring hollow. We have started to address this issue using methods of curative story, trauma resolution, and nervous system re-imprinting. Deeply mending and restorative, the work gives us great hope not only for the physical survival of our precious planet, but also for our emotional and spiritual evolution and resilience.
We live in a traumatic age of information overload, medicalized birth, greed, busyness, and other modern maladies. It is our hope that if we can get to the root of what keeps any one of us stuck in automatic response instead of resilience, permaculture will emerge as a truly collaborative movement rather than yet another push for self-sufficiency and isolation.
David has his Permaculture Design Certification. His wife, Krista, is a Midwife, trained in Somatic Experiencing. Also see www.tierrasoulpdx.com & www.mamamuse.com.
Deston Denniston
VETS CAFE: The Heritage and Legacy of the Orting Soldier's Home Farm
For over 60 years the Soldiers Home Farm in Orting Washington provided all the sustenance needed for the hundreds of vets it served. In 1934 the State operated home closed the farm and began sourcing food from local farmers. For sixty years vendors became de-localized.
In 2013, The Veterans Entrepreneurial Training & Studies in Conservation, Agriculture, Forestry and Ecology (VETS CAFE) program will work with the Washington State Veterans Conservation Corps, State Higher Education Institutions and NGO partners to develop an integrated animal and edible forest garden on a 20-40 acre parcel in the Orting Valley. Our goal is to provide local, fresh, veteran produced food to the vets who live at the home, while giving returning vets skills they can use to implement their own farm or other conservation based livelihood.
Deston earned his BA/BS in Ecological Science and Design from The Evergreen State College and his Masters Degree in Agriculture from Washington State University. He lived and worked on small family farms in Western Washington before and after serving in the US Army.
Don Tipping
The Farm as An Organism
Don Tipping and his family have stewarded Seven Seeds Farm for the past fourteen years on the north slope of Grayback Mountain in Williams, Oregon. Their farm has been designed to function as a self-contained, life regenerating organism with waste products being recycled and feeding other elements of the system. Lauded as one of the best examples of a small productive Biodynamic and Permaculture farms in the northwest, Seven Seeds helps to mentor new farmers through internships and workshops.
Don helped to found the Siskiyou Sustainable Cooperative which manages a one hundred and fifty share CSA, commercial seed growing, an equipment co-op and internship curriculum among twelve cooperating farms. Don is currently serving as the president of the Family Farmers Seed Cooperative. Don has been a regular contributor to the Permaculture Activist, the Biodynamics Journal, OSU Extension programs.
Emet Degirmenci
An Example of Re-localization in Turkey
Cazgirler Village was an abundant village through urbanization which was brought by neo-liberal government politics. This presentation will use examples of how our group has started to make a connection with the villagers and how we are continuing to regenerate the local economy. It may be a model of the Permaculture approach for other parts of Turkey.
Emet is a geophysicist who gained her first Permaculture certificate from Max Lindegger in 1997 in Turkey. Her initiative, Innermost Gardens, has two centers up and running that utilize permaculture principles. Emet teaches Permaculture/Ecological restoration with social justice context and focuses on women’s leadership at her home country, Turkey, as well as in greater Seattle region. She has published a book “Ecological Transformation Through Women’s Eyes” or ‘Kadinlar Ekolojik Donusumde’ in Turkish. More at www.koruora.com
Erico Schleicher
Community-Based Paradigm for Herbal Medicine
By shifting herbal medicine towards bioregional collectivist (tribal) methods – harvesting together, making medicines together, taking plant medicines together and ultimately healing together – we remove the most isolating aspects of illness prevention and simultaneously protect shared resources. This approach Increases our awareness of the plant and human world interweaving into one community together. Activities include plant ID, group medicine making, and making local plant medicine calendars.
Erico Schleicher, LAc, MAOM, is a practicing herbalist and acupuncturist and is a founder and faculty member of the Elderberry School of Botanical Medicine in Portland OR. Erico’s herbalism workshops have been featured at the Breitenbush Herbal Conference, the Northwest Herbal Fair, Tryon Life Community Farm, the Montana Herb Gathering, and at the Herbe Shoppe and Clary Sage Herbarium. He studied Chinese Medicine at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. Erico is a board member of Tryon Life Community Farm, and has served as Treasurer and Vice President of the Oregon Acupuncture Association. He operates the CommunityHerbalism.com blog.
Erik Blender
Permaculture for Local & International Refugee Situations
In a world of declining available resources to help those in need, this talk will explore real ways to turn human crisis into a part of the solution for a sustainable, regenerative future. Climate change is causing an increase in natural disasters and human displacement all over the world. When displaced people in crisis are in need of aid, too often they become passive aid-recipients waiting for help on degraded landscapes. Yet, our global responses to crises are often inadequate and limited. Permaculture offers an abundance of applications that, coupled with rapid design, could be utilized in refugee situations for immediate water & energy catchment, human waste recycling, soil-building, obtaining food yields, and developing new communities that produce no waste.
Erik Blender is a Permaculture Designer & Instructor based in Oregon. He spent nearly a decade working in post-conflict and disaster situations in former Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan. Erik was the 2011 Coordinator of the NW Permaculture Convergence. He has been a guest Permaculture instructor at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and at Lost Valley Educational Center. He writes a Permaculture blog called Guilded Gardens.
Ethan Rainwater
The One Straw Revolution Revisited
The system of Natural Farming developed by Japanese farmer/philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka is an important inspiration and complement to Permaculture as we know it. By intently observing natural cycles, Fukuoka attempted to bring the agricultural system back into balance as a resilient polyculture. His yields were impressive, though he used none of the inputs or tools that conventional agriculture deems necessary. In the summer of 2010, Ethan Rainwater traveled to Japan to discover what has become of Fukuoka’s “revolution.” He spent three months researching Natural Farming, meeting a host of its current practitioners, and tracing the evolution of this great man’s legacy.
Ethan Rainwater holds a B.S. in Natural Resources from Cornell University, and one year of training in Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon. He is Permaculture Certified by the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas, CA, and is an OSU Certified Sustainable Landscape Specialist. Ethan is based in Eugene, OR. More information at his Website.
Evan Gregoire
Raising Ducks: The Permaculturists Companion
Evan Gregoire and Rachel Korstein raise foraging Ancona ducks on Boondocker Farm. They will present the latest methods in raising these sustainable garden companions in backyards and farms. They have been providing the United States with Rare duckling and breeding stock for the last 6 years, and have been featured on radio, television, and in newspapers.
Gabe Berry
A Permaculture Model of Conflict Resolution
Bill Mollison and David Holmgren both speak about conflict resolution as a component of permaculture practice. This presentation will develop a potential permaculture model of conflict resolution utilizing permaculture ethics and principles alongside well established conflict resolution practices in a collaborative interest based model in order to find and develop common cause at those times when it is absent. This is also an excellent model for collaborative problem solving in the search for common cause within relationships, families, communities and nations. Practical and useful tools will be presented.
Gabe holds an MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a Doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine. He is a certified mediator and mediation and negotiation trainer who has worked in the area of conflict resolution domestically and internationally in both the private and public sectors. His international experience includes countries such as Poland, Russia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Cuba.
Glenn Herlihy
Public Permaculture
Glenn and Jacqueline Cramer of the Beacon Food Forest will discuss turning a design from a permaculture course into a large scale public permaculture project. Their talk will offer valuable insights to working with the public, the Press and negotiating with Government agencies on policies for growing food on public lands. They will describe how to design for the inclusivity of not only main street but the back streets of the under served culturally diverse population. Jacqueline and Glenn will reveal the successes and difficulties they have experienced in finding a common language with the public while staying focused on permaculture methods.
Glenn Herlihy is a Seattle based Sculptor and Permaculture Designer/Builder. He co-founded New Volute Inc. He helped to create the Jefferson Park Alliance, the Beacon Mountain Playground, and the Beacon Food Forest. Find more information about him HERE
Hannah Apricot Eckberg
Aquaponics Today
Aquaponics is a way to incorporate many permaculture principles into one way to make a lot of food for people, in just about any location. This is important for those trying to grow food sustainably in cities, refugee camps, or schools.
Hannah received her Permaculture Design Certification through Living Mandala and has offered Aquaponics workshops at many main festivals, the NW Permaculture Convergence and Southern California Permaculture Convergence. More information at her page here.
Hannah Poirier
Block Repair and
Urban Village Remediation
This workshop will present the collaborations and initiatives being undertaken by our neighborhood to transform a city block into a thriving Urban ecology. We will discuss efforts to reclaim commons space on the block, take down fences to create inner-block pathways, create co-operative agricultural models in the neighborhood, map and share our collective skills and resources, create new opportunities non-monetary exchange, and much more. Additionally we will discuss our neighborhood’s Urban Permaculture Design Course model that is integrated into the immediate landscape and Community.
Hannah Poirier lives at the Planet Repair Institute – a creative hub for the design and experimentation of perennial polyculture, and blockwide permaculture systems in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, OR.
Helen Kolff
Building a Sustainable Human Community
The Port Townsend EcoVillage Process Team will share
group facilitation processes that can help build and maintain a healthy human
community. Techniques include consensus, applied theater, compassionate
communication, group games and conflict resolution. Part of the workshop will
be experiential.
Helen is an educator and Co-founder of the Port Townsend EcoVillage.
Ja Schindler
Fungi 101
This workshop will be an introduction to fungi lifestyles and lifecycle, with a discussion on approaches to inviting them into your permaculture model. We will work through identifying twenty or so specimens and discuss ways of working with them to enhance the health of our habitat and ourselves.
Jason Schindler of Eugene, Oregon, is an experienced amateur mycologist. He has harvested mushrooms commercially and worked on a progressive production farm; initiated myco-remediation projects and developed low-tech culturing techniques. Jason runs a small business called Fungi For the People that offers workshops in all facets of mushroom production.
Jan Spencer
Allies and Assets for Transforming Suburbia
Suburbia is a defining icon of American culture and essential to the economy as we know it. Half of all Americans live in suburbia and it employs tens of millions of people. We cannot afford it. The deepening trends of our times -economy, culture, natural environment in decline, resource depletion, climate change, global relations under stress- all have a robust connection to suburbia. Suburbia has a massive social and ecological footprint. There is urgent need to quit building more suburbia and at the same time, repair what is already here. This presentation will show and tell an eleven year transformation of a quarter acre suburban property in Eugene. The place is aesthetically appealing and has become a destination for hundreds of people by way of tours, classes, curious neighbors, out of town visitors and media.
Jan Spencer has a degree in Geography. His PC Intensive was in Austin, Texas in 1992. He has been on the board of his neighborhood association in Eugene for ten years and a resident of the city for twenty. You can learn more from his site Suburban Permaculture
Jaqueline Cramer
Public Permaculture
Jacqueline and Glenn Herlihy of the Beacon Food Forest will discuss turning a design from a permaculture course into a large scale public permaculture project. Their talk will offer valuable insights to working with the public, the Press and negotiating with Government agencies on policies for growing food on public lands. They will describe how to design for the inclusivity of not only main street but the back streets of the under served culturally diverse population. Jacqueline and Glenn will reveal the successes and difficulties they have experienced in finding a common language with the public while staying focused on permaculture methods.
Jaqueline Cramer is a Board member of P-Patch Trust, a founder of Friends of Beacon
Food Forest, and a Seattle Fruit Tree Steward. She advocates for community gardens, and teaches public workshops as well as teaching at Roots of Empathy. She runs a gardening and landscape business in Seattle, Design Collaborators, and is a partner in Honeyscapes, (honeyscapes.com) a design collaborative.
Jenny Leis
Organizational Permaculture and Social Ecology
Ever get frustrated, bewildered or simply curious at the many ways we in our small groups of powerful people seem to replicate the structures we are trying to change? Perhaps many common paradoxes and tensions in our groups can be approached differently with a permacultural lens. For example, if the edge between two ecosystems is often an incredibly productive place, how can we find the edge between two people or ideas as similarly creative? Have you considered complementary guilds of interests in your community groups? Or how to harvest the energy from an abundant moment (like a campaign) and use it to build the soil of your relationships? Applying permacultural thinking to our organizational dynamics allows us to consider subtle and hopefully more effective ways to work together.
Jenny’s ventures include co-founding Tryon Life Community (TLC) Farm in Portland, OR where she currently lives. Jenny has collaborated with community organizers to launch The Cascadia Center, a social ecology resource center. She also co-founded the City Repair Project’s Village Building Convergence.
Jenny Pell
Pacific NW Permaculture Projects in Action
Join Jenny Pell to drop in on three different scales of permaculture being designed and implemented in our backyards: A sixty acre farm, a seven acre city food forest, and a one acre LEED Platinum House.
Jenny is a Permaculture Designer, Consultant and Educator. She is helping craft the vision and mission of the project, the contracts and covenants, and will help with the overall permaculture design for the property. More information at permaculturenow.com, & Community By Design: Small Farm Incubator.
Joel Magnuson
Economies in Transition: A Systems View
This presentation will be an extension the transition movement that is taking place in Portland. The crises of resource depletion, climate change, and global instability that are being confronted by activists in the transition movement are monstrous and systemic. So is the increasing volatility of our financial systems that is creating turbulence worldwide. Our challenge will be to work toward a much deeper transformation of our core economic institutions in our local communities with the vision that these transformations will bring positive changes to our economic system. In this presentation, I will discuss economies as systems and institutional change.
Joel Magnuson, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized economist specializing in non-orthodox approaches to political economy. He is mostly known for his book, Mindful Economics: How the U.S. Economy Works, Why it Matters, and How It Could Be Different. He is currently a professor of economics in Portland, Oregon; a visiting fellow at the Ashcroft International Business School at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, England; and is an international advisor to the editorial board of Anglia's Journal Interconnections.
John Kallas
Edible Wild Plants: Abundant, Holistic, Sustainable
Slide presentation: An introduction to the idea that edible wild plants can be part of an overall holistic approach to feeding and supporting oneself, the household, society, and food producers. Primarily due to ignorance, edible wild plants are passed by, ignored, or classified as weeds and destroyed (at great effort and expense). The alternative is to understand their potential roles in feeding individuals and the society, as well as helping to support food producers. This presentation is all about revealing the opportunities.
John Kallas has a Doctorate in Nutrition, a Masters in Education, and majors in Biology and Natural Science. He founded Wild Food Adventures in 1993 and later the Institute for the Study of Edible Wild Plants & Other Foragables. He was the primary writer and editor of the Wild Food Adventurer newsletter from 1996 to 2006. Over the years John has written articles for magazines ranging from Fine Cooking to Primitive Technology. He published volume 1 of the Wild Food Adventure book series; Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt to Plate, in 2010.
Johnnie Pratt
My Year With Goats
How do you bridge the gap in the arena of cross species communication? Let’s explore and share the variety of ways that this communication can occur. My year with goats (chickens and pigs also) chronicles my personal experience with becoming part of a herd in spirit and community on a five acre farm on Vashon Island, WA. Lets find common cause in our intent with being one.
Johnnie Pratt is a PDC certified transgendering human who lives on a five acre farm on Vashon and loves creating projects for sustainability and resilience from every day trash. Johnnie designed and maintains a humanure factory that is creating black gold from unmentionables! Johnnie co-created and facilitated a workshop on “Engaging Emergence” with Peggy Holman at an internationally recognized conference for issues around gender.
Josho Somine
Greening Awareness in Public Spaces
This presentation and discussion will highlight several cutting-edge green urban design projects in Seattle, and examine the ways sustainable design is infiltrating the mainstream. Opportunities for connecting permaculture with broader social movements and wider public awareness will be discussed, using grass-roots precedents from the SF Bay area.
Josho Somine received a permaculture teaching certificate in 2001 from Cascadia Permaculture Institute, holds a BFA in sculpture and community-based art from the California College of Arts & Crafts, and recently completed a master’s in landscape architecture at the University of Washington. He has developed long-term relationships with Earthaven Ecovillage (NC), the Lama Foundation (NM), and the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (CA).
Jude Hobbs
Designing Multi-Functional Hedgerows
A hedgerow is a beautiful, functional and biologically diverse component of rural and/or urban landscapes. As a multi-tiered row of trees, shrubs, ground covers, vines, grasses, flowers and herbs it can border or divide fields, waterways or city lots. During this presentation you will learn how to design and establish a hedgerow to provide windbreaks, soil stabilization, shelter and food for wildlife (and people), buffers from noise and dust as well as ways to diversity your income. Come take this opportunity to start the design process on your own site by being introduced to plant selection via right plant, right place.
Jude Hobbs has written an Oregon State University Publication: A Guide to Multi-Functional Hedgerows. She is co-developing a demonstration site on seven acres of diverse microclimates in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Jude offers courses and workshops throughout the US and Canada and has developed curricula that encompass diverse learning styles. More information at www.cascadiapermaculture.com.
Kelda Miller
Not Just Groovy Yards: How Permaculture Can (and Should) Transform Urban Sprawl into Functional Villages
There are two parts to this workshop: presentation and design exercise. The presentation is about our country’s land-use issues gone awry, why Permaculturists should care, and what within our movement are, and are not, solutions. The design exercise takes this to the metaphorical streets, playing around with rural, suburban, small town, and urban centers in a way that honors complex and humbling real-life situations. http://www.divinearthgp.com/?page_id=715
Kelda Miller is a contributor and leader in the Permaculture movement and counts as her favorite projects: Seattle Permaculture Guild, Tacoma’s Permaculture Design Courses, and groups such as Sustainable Puyallup. She’s chosen to practice permaculture in an area rife with urban sprawl issues and enjoys the conversation exchange between the permaculture movement and resource-depleting consumerist America.
Kelly Hogan
Nature Immersion Education: A Workshop for Parents and Teachers
How do we raise healthy children in the modern world? Discover the beneficial effects of nature on wellness and intelligence. Kelly will share stories and hands-on experiences so that you leave the workshop equipped to integrate more nature-based activities at home and at school.
Kelly Hogan has a Waldorf teachers certificate and permaculture certificate. She serves as the director of Mother Earth School. A mother herself, Kelly lives on Tryon Life Community Farm. She studies wilderness skills and has experience providing medical care for people with special needs.
Krista Arias
Trauma & Initiation: Medicine for Deep Resilience
Even if you have a great idea, if people can’t work together over a sustained period of time “Village Building” efforts tend to ring hollow. We have started to address this issue using methods of curative story, trauma resolution, and nervous system re-imprinting. Deeply mending and restorative, the work gives us great hope not only for the physical survival of our precious planet, but also for our emotional and spiritual evolution and resilience.
We live in a traumatic age of information overload, medicalized birth, greed, busyness, and other modern maladies. It is our hope that if we can get to the root of what keeps any one of us stuck in automatic response instead of resilience, permaculture will emerge as a truly collaborative movement rather than yet another push for self-sufficiency and isolation.
Krista has her MA in philospohy and her Permaculture Design certification. She is a Midwife, trained in Somatic Experiencing.
Laurence Cole
Building a Sustainable Human Community
The Port Townsend EcoVillage Process Team will share
group facilitation processes that can help build and maintain a healthy human
community. Techniques include consensus, applied theater, compassionate
communication, group games and conflict resolution. Part of the workshop will
be experiential.
Laurence is a songwriter and the Founder and Co-Director of Songlines Community Chorus.
Leonard Barrett
Get to Work! Observations and Opportunities for Livelihoods in Professional Permaculture Design and Implementation
In this presentation and discussion, Leonard Barrett will share his observations of the state of the trade, and the numerous opportunities for both aspiring and established Permaculture professionals. Climate change and economic uncertainty have forced more individuals, corporations, and institutions than ever to invest in regenerative human infrastructure. Vast resources are available to fund total overhauls of Business-as-Usual systems (food, housing, economics, etc.), and the opportunities are endless for Permaculture entrepreneurs who can effectively articulate and deliver solutions.
Leonard Barrett owns Barrett Ecological a Permaculture design firm in Portland, OR. His work is featured in the best selling permaculture book Gaia’s Garden: A Homescale Guide to Permaculture by Toby Hemenway. Leonard has taught and lectured at colleges and universities throughout the northwest, and guests instructs at many permaculture and and ecological design courses.
Marc Tobin
Lost Valley Ecovillage & Educational Center Site Plan
This presentation will visually show, and tell the story, of the new site plan for Lost Valley, a 22 year old ecovillage on an 87 acre rural retrofit property that is home to over 30 people. The presentation addresses “Finding Common Cause” on two levels. First, the residents and stakeholders of Lost Valley needed to find a common vision for the future of the site. Secondly, the site plan represents a combination of two very important, but often not synergized, causes; that of a. rural self-reliant homesteading and b. community oriented mixed use pedestrian friendly village design.
Marc Tobin holds a degree of Master in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon, where he was a student co-director of the Ecological Design Center, and a BA in Environmental Studies from Naropa University. He received his Permaculture Design Certificate from the High Altitude Permaculture Institute in Ward Colorado in 1996, and is authorized by the Global Ecovilage Network to instruct the Ecovilage Design Education Curriculum. He has written for Communities Magazine. He is currently president of the board of Lost Valley Educational Center, where he lived for seven years and was the founding director of the Ecovillage and Permaculture Certificate Program.
Marc Weinblatt
Building a Sustainable Human Community
The Port Townsend EcoVillage Process Team will share
group facilitation processes that can help build and maintain a healthy human
community. Techniques include consensus, applied theater, compassionate communication, group games and conflict resolution. Part of the workshop will
be experiential.
Marc is the Founder and Co-Director of the Mandala Center for Change, a multi-
disciplinary education organization dedicated to community dialogue, social
justice and societal transformation.
Marisha Auerbach
Permaculture 101: A Foundation for Understanding
This will be a session for beginners on the basics of Permaculture.
Marisha Auerbach is a regular permaculture instructor at Lost Valley Education Center, Planet Repair Institute, and Oregon State University. She sits on the Board of Directors for the Northwest Permaculture Convergence and can be found online at www.herbnwisdom.com.
Mark Lakeman
Block Repair and Urban Village Remediation
This workshop will present the collaborations and initiatives being undertaken by our neighborhood to transform a city block into a thriving urban ecology. We will discuss efforts to reclaim commons space on the block, take down fences to create inner-block pathways, create co-operative agricultural models in the neighborhood, map and share our collective skills and resources, create new opportunities non-monetary exchange, and much more. We will also discuss our neighborhood’s Urban Permaculture Design Course model that is integrated into the immediate landscape and Community.
Mark Lakeman is a co-founder of the City Repair Project, the Village Building Convergence, and the Planet Repair Institute. He is also the owner of Communitecture –an architectural design firm based in Portland.
Matt Bibeau
Education Track: Panel on
Permaculture in Higher Education
With employment experience ranging from research and restoration work in the mountains of Sequoia & King’s Canyon National Parks to residential youth counseling in cities of both U.S. coasts, Matt has witnessed a breadth of the impacts of humans living out of balance with their environments and the consequences of this imbalance. He has also recognized the necessity for faster and more coordinated progress towards naming and addressing the patterns most responsible for the disintegration of our ecological literacy, our sense of place and belonging and our participation in local food production.
Matt received his Masters degree in 2008 from Portland State University through the Leadership in Ecology, Culture & Learning track of the Educational Leadership & Policy program. He served as a Grad Assistant to PSU’s Learning Gardens project and his master’s thesis focused on ‘The Promise of Garden-Based Education.' Matt lives and works at Tryon Life Community Farm in Portland, OR where he is Development Director of Mother Earth School, and organizes for Gaia University.
Melanie Rios
Sociocracy and Deep Democracy:
Permaculture approaches to nurturing thriving social ecosystems
This workshop introduces Sociocracy and Deep Democracy as permaculture-related tools for helping groups collaborate with more ease and joy. These tools can help you create networks of organizations that are effective at getting things done while at the same time tapping the wisdom and energies of everyone involve and develop an awareness of the roles we play and the sensory signals we send in a way that facilitates cooperation even in diverse and passionate groups.
Melanie Rios is the executive director and a permaculture teacher at the Lost Valley Education Center near Eugene, Oregon. She has lived in intentional community for 35 years. Her Communities Magazine article, describes the transition Lost Valley Center has made to a sociocratic method of governance, and is called “Sociocracy: A Permaculture Approach to Community Evolution.”
Michael Becker
The Permaculture Classroom
: Using design principals to build community
The question is not how do we get more institutions to begin using Permaculture but rather how do we use Permaculture to begin shifting those institutions? Following the case study of the Hood River Middle School project, the evening will explore how do we begin to use design methodologies to build resilient systems.
Michael Becker has a BS in Geography and a Masters in Education, both from Portland State University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Sustainability Science at Prescott College.
Michael took a Permaculture Design Course at the Bullock farm on Orcas Island. The Oregon Middle School Association named Mr. Becker the 2008 Teacher of the Year for his efforts in integrated and applied, science and math instruction. He currently directs the Food and Conservation Science (FACS) program at Hood River Middle School.
Michael Cook
Place Is Our Soil
In gardens we make soil, in cities we make place. In this story time picture show, we will take a brief look at the context in which we find ourselves, a social monoculture grid mirroring the tragedy of modern farming. With inspiration from our indigenous roots, we’ll see how the cultivation of place can be harnessed as a powerful catalyst for community growth with some local examples of creative public space reclamation and 10 helpful principles to take home with you to plant in your own communities.
Michael is a core member of Portland, OR based City Repair, the annual Village Building Convergence and has traveled across North America to share the story of place.
Michael Pilarski
Permaculture, Deep Ecology and Fairies
“All Our Relations” and “All My Relations” are terms we hear in certain circles and generally coming from a Native American ethos. In this workshop we will explore the relationships that a person can have with plants, animals, birds, insects, and all the lifeforms around us. As well as relationships with rocks, mountains, streams, oceans, clouds, winds and the natural world. We will discuss how permaculturists can improve their results by allying with the lifeforms around them, seen and unseen.
Michael is the president of the Northwest Permaculture Convergence and conveinor of the Fairy & Human Relations Congress (11 annual so far) and has organized many permaculture gatherings. He is a hands-on plant person currently growing 2.5 acres of gardens and agroforests.
Mighk Simpson
Block Repair and
Urban Village Remediation
This workshop will present the collaborations and initiatives being undertaken by our neighborhood to transform a city block into a thriving Urban ecology. We will discuss efforts to reclaim commons space on the block, take down fences to create inner-block pathways, create co-operative agricultural models in the neighborhood, map and share our collective skills and resources, create new opportunities non-monetary exchange, and much more. Additionally we will discuss our neighborhood’s Urban Permaculture Design Course model that is integrated into the immediate landscape and Community.
Mighk Simpson is a permaculturalist, writer and community organizer whose homebase is the islands in the Salish Sea. He is a co-founder of the Planet Repair Institute.
Morgan Brent
Cultivating the Deeper Dimensions of Permaculturalist Pro-activity
A talk on the synergized human being birthed out of this 6th, and greatest, planetary ‘age of extinction’ we are currently in. Guidance to this evolutionary destiny can be accessed thru the Gaian ‘innernet’ we all carry in the evolutionary heritage of our physical form. We will experientially activate this guidance thru a Creation-story of mythic renewal, a narrative we communally ‘sing alive’ in the traditional of shamanic medicine circles. www.TribesOfCreation.com; www.SingingAlive.com
Morgan Brent (MT Xen) has a PhD in anthropology, however he left academia after engagements with herbal healing traditions clued him into a vast Gaian intelligence. He now specializes in the prescriptive teachings (Gaian dharma) of medicinal plants, and has created Singing Alive gatherings, now in their 5th year, and Creation-song circles. These events are about sharing songs (and prayers, chants, blessings, and song om) of personal and planetary renewal ~ which Morgan considers gestures of subtle activism. For more info: Tribes of Creation.
Naga Nataka
Urban Cooperative Living Panel
This panel will explore the pluses, minuses, ups and downs of urban cooperative living.
Naga Nataka is a resident of Fosterville, (a three and a half house suburban retrofit cooperative in Portland.) He spent five years in a Buddhist community learning how to argue nicely, and went on to co-found a multimedia performing arts troupe to do sociopolitical theatre in alternative spaces. These days he does Facilities Maintenance with People’s Food Co-op in Portland, where he actually gets paid to play with greywater systems and living roofs.
Oz Thomas
The Permaculture Song – Video
The video is a brief overview of permaculture. It shows a fairly jargon free approach and general understanding of common sense topics covered.
Oz has been animating for 5 years, both commercially and non-commercially with a special interest in native culture, education and outreach.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OqmvxBGwulY#t=0s
Pam and Joe Leitch
Urban Cooperative Living Panel
This panel will explore the pluses, minuses, ups and downs of urban cooperative living.
Pam and Joe Leitch completed their first PDC in 2002 with Cascadia Permacultre and went through Permaculture Teacher Training with Jude Hobbs and Tom Ward. They then formed the Portland Permaculture Institute. In 2008, they combined the property of the Portland Permaculture Institute with the adjacent thirty-seven unit apartment complex and over a period of two years created the Columbia Eco village Co housing in NE Portland where they now happily live.
Pat Rasmussen
Turn Your Yard Into an Edible Forest Garden
This is a Powerpoint presentation on how to turn your yard into an Edible Forest Garden which includes fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and perennial vegetables. Grow your own food in your yard. It’s organic, no-till, sequesters carbon, and provides a connection to the natural world. You will also learn how to work with your neighbors to help each other put in your gardens and share resources, work with your neighborhood associations to create Edible Forest Gardens at schools and other community locations.
Pat has been installing Edible Forest Gardens in yards in Olympia, Bellingham, West Seattle and Camano Island for the past four years. The non-profit Edible Forest Gardens hosts interns from The Evergreen State College. Pat has made such presentations at all Permaculture Convergences, the Fairy Congress, and at neighborhood association meetings in Olympia, WA.
Rachel Korstein
Raising Ducks:The Permaculturists Companion
Rachel and Evan raise foraging Ancona ducks on Boondocker Farm. They will present the latest methods in raising these sustainable garden companions in backyards and farms. They have been providing the United States with Rare duckling and breeding stock for the last 6 years, and have been featured on radio, television, and in newspapers.
Ravi Logan
Merging WWOOFing and Neighborhood Transformation
This program will report on an initiative by the Prout Institute and collaborating neighbors in Eugene to engage fifteen summer interns in building neighborhood resiliency around gardens, cob and straw bale construction, community cultural events, service work, spirituality and permaculture installations. It will then explore the potential to engage idealistic youth (many in the WWOOFing network) in the accelerated building out of local resiliency projects.
Ravi is the Executive Director of The Prout Institute, which promotes a decentralist, earth-friendly vision of socio-economic development. He is also the Program Director of Darmalaya, a neighborhood center in Eugene, OR.
Rick Valley
Making Sustainable Legal: How can we craft equitable rules to permit sustainable farming communities?
Land use zoning laws for agricultural zones are often prohibitive of multiple residents or communities both living and working on the land. This presentation will explore the legal transition to a more sustainable system of community farming and land-stewardship.
Rick Valley took his Permaculture Design Course after meeting Bill Mollison at Evergreen State College in 1986. He began teaching permaculture in 1987 at the first Permaculture Design Courses in Canada, Belize and Alaska; at Aprovecho (bilingual English/Spanish) and in Portland, at On Going Cohousing. For ten years, he helped the community of Linnea Farm on Cortes Island, BC develop their Permaculture design and programs. He was the landscape manager at Sunlight Community in Portland until 1999. Rick introduced Permaculture to Lost Valley Education Center. Rick has taught there since 1990, and has been Head Land Steward there since 2004. Rick is also a partner in Earthkeeper Landscaping LLC.
Sarah Sullivan
Schoolyards as Productive and Educational Landscapes: Integrating
wellness into the community one child at a time
Abernethy Elementary’s award-winning School Kitchen Garden in Portland, Oregon serves as a model for the school garden movement, integrating benchmark-standard targeted garden curriculum and running Portland Public Schools test-kitchen for healthier, minimally-processed breakfast and lunches featuring locally sourced ingredients. Schoolyards offer unique opportunities for integrating permaculture and food security while empowering and catalyzing communities one neighborhood at a time.
Sarah Sullivan is the Program Coordinator for Abernethy Elementary’s award-winning School Kitchen Garden. She also taught Landscape and Permaculture Design and co-founded Hawai'i SEED. Sarah is the former executive director for the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association. More at the website: www.gardenofwonders.org
Steve Leppold
Scythe Renaissance
Introduction to the European scythe, a human-powered tool with permaculture applications both rural and urban. There will be demonstrations of scythe usage, with a multitude of scythe blades and snaths (handles) being displayed, including snaths made from backyard branches and local oak tree lumber. Information will be provided about good sources for scythe equipment, as well as directions for making a homemade snath.
Steve has a blog called “ScytheConnected“, in collaboration with Canadian scythe guru Peter Vido, and is the inventor of the “Oregon Snath."
Terry O’Day
Finding Common Cause: Permaculture at the nexus of sustainability and education
Terry presents an excellent overview of permaculture being used in regional K-12 schools and describes how the permaculture domains can provide a framework for integrating academic disciplines under the goal of educating for sustainability.
Terry O’Day teaches in the Art and Environmental Studies departments at Pacific University. Projects include the Forest Grove Community School; B Street Permaculture Project, and an interdisciplinary undergraduate education major that includes courses such as Permaculture Design, Learning and Market Gardens, and The Outdoor Classroom as an Integrating Context.
Tom Ward
Permaculture for the Masses: Opportunities in a downsizing empire and how the Back To The Land Movement has tried to move outside of the mainstream economy
A discussion of squatting, the new feudalism, stewardship of the commons and semi-nomadic “bodger” cooperatives, training hubs on existing experimental sites, possible reform suggestions (just for scenario exercise) and home centered economies.
Tom Ward has degrees in Forestry and Botany from Syracuse University and has taught at Laney College in Oakland CA., D-Q University in Davis CA, and at Thlolego Learning Centre in South Africa. He is presently managing a Social Forestry experimental station in Little Wolf Gulch near Ruch, OR. Tom is the author of Greenward Ho! Herbal Home Remedies: An Ecological Approach to Sustainable Health. More at his Siskyou Permaculture website.
Willi Paul
New Symbols & New Myths for the Permaculture Age
Willi's work focuses on what is sacred is to us, the community building power of permaculture and the transformative energy in the new alchemy (ex: soil, sound, digital) and global mythologies.
Willi earned his permaculture design certification in August 2011 at the Urban Permaculture Institute, SF. He is a green certified business and sustainability consultant. Please see his article at the Joseph Campbell Foundation and his videos on YouTube. More at openmythsource.com
Zeratha Young
Zone 0: Applying Permaculture Wisdom to The Self
Come share a lively discussion about how we can apply the wisdom of permaculture principles, tools and techniques to the personal scale or inner world.
Zeratha Young has an MA in Sustainable Communities. She is currently part of the Cascadia Center, helps manage and facilitate the Transition PDX Heart and Soul Group. More at www.zethara.com
Zhaleh Almaee
Building a Sustainable Human Community
The Port Townsend EcoVillage Process Team will share
group facilitation processes that can help build and maintain a healthy human
community. Techniques include consensus, applied theater, compassionate
communication, group games and conflict resolution. Part of the workshop will
be experiential.
Zhaleh is Co-Director of the Mandala Center for Change and Playback Theater expert.
