Getting to the Heart of Permaculture Design

Getting to the heart of permaculture design, with Wendy Seabrook

Dates - Venue - Cost - Booking form - The Course - Wendy Seabrook - Sharing lifts - Accommodation - Questions


Dates: 28 September to 1 October (4 full days, 9:15am to 5:30pm)

Venue: Cambridge Sustainability Centre, Fen End Farm, Oxholme Drove, Smithy Fen, Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, CB24 8UP (map and directions)

Cost: This course is being offered on a cost basis.
We suggest the following contributions:

  • Waged: £150
  • Concessions (unwaged): £100
  • Working ticket (e.g. helping with admin before the course or with catering during the course): £75

The cost includes lunch and refreshments.

Booking form: To secure your place on the course, please fill in the booking form and send it together with your cheque by post. Alternatively you can send a payment by bank transfer (details here) - please also send an e-mail including the reference that you used when sending the money, and your name, address, phone number, and any special requirements. We will send a confirmation e-mail to confirm your place on the course.

The course

Permaculture at its heart is a design process, where the main focus is creating productive and regenerative systems for both us and our environment. This course provides participants with the skills to interpret and put into action a toolkit of the Key Ecological Practices. We have developed these Ecological Practices to help people redesign their systems to better mimic the functioning of healthy natural ecosystems. The Ecological Practices are universally applicable for different climates and ventures, and not centered on principles needing translating into practical tools, before they are accessible.

Our approach doesn’t mean ‘going back to nature’. This unique and innovative design and decision-making kit contains Permaculture and other tools necessary to design systems with functioning mimicking healthy natural ecosystems, the basic functional units in nature. Nature has had millions of years to fine tune the design of productive, self-maintaining, resilient and sustainable systems. It therefore makes sense to tap into this ancient wisdom, and many people around the world are discovering the value of this approach in crafting systems to be more sustainable in ways that work well, are easy to manage and cost effective.

‘Getting to the heart of Permaculture Design’ differs from the standard ‘Permaculture Design Certificate’ and ‘Introduction to Permaculture’ courses in that we focus on giving participants understanding of the ecological rationale underpinning Permaculture Design. This approach helps participants better appreciate and understand Permaculture as a design process, and provides them with a sound ecological basis for their own system designs. Participants become more independent of ready-made Permaculture and other sustainable solutions and able to develop system elements that highly match their own situation and needs. Read more on Wendy Seabrook's web-site.

More about Wendy Seabrook

Wendy Seabrook brings considerable experience as an innovative and strategic thinker, Permaculturist and Agroecologist, working for many years in the UK and Australia with other ecologists and community food producers. Over the last ten years, Hill Top Farm, its courses and food production practices have provided the ideal proving ground to trial and test the applicability of these ecological practices. She has extensive experience delivering these courses to diverse groups including Indigenous Australians, low-literacy and tertiary educated participants.

Wendy is visiting from Australia in September and October, to visit her parents who are living in Cambridgeshire and to present at the International Permaculture Conference and Convergence in London in early September. She is keen to offer her skills and ideas to a variety of audiences in the spirit of exchanging and growing ideas. This course is a relatively new course that she is developing, and she invites everyone to join her in this learning adventure, which she is offering at cost price. Read more about Wendy Seabrook on her web-site.

Sharing lifts

For those coming from Cambridge, we will do our best to put you in touch with others who live near you so that we can share lifts to get there. It is also possible to take the bus to Cottenham (Citi 8) and walk the last part (probably a 30-40 minute walk).

Accommodation

'For those coming from further away, Fen End Farm offers camping or the opportunity to stay in their yurt, tipi or gypsy caravan. For more information and pricing, see their website here here. They are offering a 10% discount to course attendees. Alternatively there are various Bed and Breakdfast options in Cottenham, Histon and Cambridge. We would highly recommend staying on the farm!

Questions

If you have any questions about this course, please get in touch with Anna or Wendy and we will do our best to help!

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