Ryan Rising is available for teaching Permaculture Design Courses, workshops, and other ecological design intensives. Contact him at RootsRhizing@gmail.com
The following is a listing of workshops being offered this summer:
1. Introduction to Permaculture - Principles and Ethics
This hour long workshop covers an introduction to permaculture as a design science, holistic lens through which to look at human activity in the world, and a way of living. We'll discuss the ethics and principles that build the foundation of the evolving culture, as well as the tools through which we put it into practice. This workshop will give you a broad yet comprehensive understanding of permaculture to guide your own path of learning, experimentation, and ecological living - from the big picture of how we as humans relate to the ecosystems we are a part of to some concepts around the edges including forest gardens, earthworks, rainwater catchment, and planting perennial polycultures.
2. Water in the Permaculture Landscape
The workshop with explore how permaculture views one of the most vital elements of ecology and our lives as humans: water. We will learn how water relates to landscape, how it flows, and how we can design systems to optimize the use of water as much as possible. We will learn about rainwater harvesting earth works, roof catchment, cisterns and barrels for water storage, as well as grey water systems, and urban applications for sinking rain water into our soils and irrigating our gardens.
3. Soils through a Permaculture Lens
If we want to grow nutrient-rich, organic food, we must build nutrient-rich living soils. We will discuss how to build soils through proper composting, planting patterns that mimic natural ecosystems, and how categories of plants such as nitrogen fixers and dynamic accumulators affect our soils. We will also learn about the types of soils that exist and how they are formed, water absorption and retention, acidity, macro nutrients, and the microorganisms that make the soil come alive. We'll also explore bioremediation techniques for lead and other toxins in the soil, vermicomposting, and no till methods of preparing topsoils for planting that regenerate what has been lost through conventional agriculture.
4. Social Permaculture
Permaculture is an inherently social way of being in the world, although it often gets misperceived as a strictly ecological design system. Through applying the principles of permaculture to social groups and communities, we see how we can create ways of living together that mimic nature's tendency towards mutual aid, cooperation, and interdependence. As we look to natural ecology as an example of healthy living systems, we start to see how to pattern our human relationships to foster the same degree of vitality and holistic well being. We will look at applying the teachings of permaculture to the way we live together in community and organize together in collaborative groups to make change.
5. Permaculture and Direct Action
This workshop will explore how we can act directly to change the world in which we live and transition our created environments, urban and otherwise, to be in greater balance with the earth’s natural ecosystems. We will start with a story telling of direct actions over the past three years that have gone outside the realm of what is necessarily legal to create permaculture in the world around us; transitioning from systems based on resource importation and relationships of domination and capital to systems that embody symbiosis, mutual aid, and horizontal structures. From liberating busy city streets to allow the human movement of dance, to emancipating the earth below our feet for growing food, this conversation will explore the many ways in which we can create environments that foster community, ecology, and vitality.
6. Permaculture Design Science
Take a deeper step in the design science of permaculture as we look at how to perform a site assessment and analysis of the landscapes and ecosystems we are designing for. We will look at using the permaculture lenses of zones and sectors to design for how the naturally encouraging energies of a site interrelate with human activity and the productive systems that we cultivate to sustain us. We will start with simple base mapping techniques, and move into how to translate what we observe on the land to an on paper design. We can then look at how to build and grow various elements in relative placement to each other to foster the most mutually beneficial relationships.
7. Communities Creating Permaculture
Land Access, Community Organizing, Reclamation of Space
Permaculture offers us a number of tools and lenses for create healthy and regenerative human cohabitation with the rest of natural ecology. It empowers us with the ability to grow our own food, craft medicines from plants, build from natural materials, and sustain ourselves from the earth. However, today there is an unsustainable paradigm that controls a lot of our relationships to each other and to the land. Engage in this dialogue on how we can organize together in community to bring more land into collective stewardship. How do we move beyond a paradigm of private property, industrial destruction of the land base, and an extractive economy and toward a healthy way of living.
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