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I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Archive for “Permaculture” category
Showing results 96 - 100 of 105 for the category: Permaculture.
9 Dec 2005
As someone currently studying a PhD in a mainstream University after many years teaching using creative methods, I am only too aware of its shortcomings. The teaching is quite formal, and the emphasis is purely on the academic, not on rooting any of it in daily life. Sustainability and talk of education for life beyond oil is almost non-existant. The **Practical Sustainability** course I created in Kinsale was as close as I could get to the permaculture course I would always like to have done myself. In the context of mainstream Irish education it took many risks and broke much new ground, and its success far exceeded any expectations we may have had at the outset.
Imagine though, a University that you would study with anywhere in the world, that supported activists and earth-repairers, was able to issue Batchelors and Masters level degrees, and was built on principles of permaculture and the manifestation of a post-carbon world.
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7 Dec 2005
Here is an exercise that I do with students on permaculture courses. I always thought that it came from Skye and Robin Clanfield’s indispensable book ‘The Manual of Teaching Permaculture Creatively’, but just looking for it now I can’t find it. I alway find it a very powerful exercise. It comes at the end of a session on urban sustainability that will have looked at a range of strategies for making the town more sustainable and is called **’Urban Tour Guides”**. I take the students to a housing estate somewhere near the college, or more specifically to a crossroads between a few different areas of housing. I divide the group into smaller groups of 4-6, and give each group a topic, such as waste, water, energy, food, community or building.
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6 Dec 2005
**David Holmgren** is the co-founder of permaculture, originating the concept in the late 1970s when David was Bill’s student at a progressive university in Australia. For many years, David had been overshadowed by Bill’s outgoing and occasionally outrageous character; while Bill toured the world inspiring many people and infuriating a few more, David stayed at home, home-schooled his son, built his house, planted his garden, walked his talk. With the recent publication of his latest book, ‘Permaculture – principles and pathways beyond sustainability’, David has begun to reclaim his place at the heart
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2 Dec 2005
I read about **Geoff Lawton’s** work a while ago in an article he wrote that almost moved me to tears, about his work in Jordan. Geoff is doing such amazing work, watch this short movie on his website, and believe that this world can be healed, anywhere. If you thought permaculture was just some odd kind of gardening for people with a borage obsession and too many old newspapers in their garages, take 5 minutes to watch this.
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24 Nov 2005
**The Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan** is now available on this site as a pdf. file. This plan was produced at Kinsale FEC by myself and the college’s second year students, and was, as far as we know, the first attempt by a community to design an intentionally designed way down from the oil peak. You can read more about how it was carried out in the article called **”Designing Energy Descent Pathways”** in the Articles section on this site. We printed 500 copies, and they are already very scarce.
We heard the other day that the Action Plan has been awarded Cork Environmental Forum’s prestigious **Roll of Honour Award** for 2005. It is wonderful for the Plan and for the town of Kinsale to be recognised
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