APC Program Schedule Monday

Wellness sharing circle

Presenter: Jasper Simmons

Registration

APC Opening Address

Keynote: Timorese community permaculture
From a small island to global impact

Presenter: Ego Lemos

Morning tea

Change venue

P4R #1 Permaculture Outcomes in Refugee Worlds

Presenters: Greta Carroll, Rowe Morrow, Sarah Boulle,
Benedetta Martin

We are a global network of Permaculture educators and practitioners working to apply Permaculture in displacement settings. Started in 2016, Permaculture for Refugees has movements in four continents. We support refugees to become Permaculturlists and now (after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban and the war in Ukraine) Permaculturalists who become refugees. Our work has provoked an updated PDC curriculum as we develop innovative ways to teach, and update content relevant for a future of increased forced migration and disasters.

Permaculture, Solarpunk and speculating futures

Presenter: Lizzy Smith

The workshop will present the concepts of solarpunk as an art movement eg comparing to principles and processes in permaculture and thinking approaches such as speculative design or other design led practices.

Diversity in the suburbs – building disability friendly spaces for resilient living

Presenters: Adelaide Parr and Jon Vella

1 in 5 Australians have some form of disability – that’s over 4.4 million people – and over 35% of households include a person with a disability. And as the need to renew and retrofit our suburbs for resilient living becomes more pressing, ensuring that these changes accommodate a wide range of differing mental, sensory or mobility needs is key to ensuring equality in an energy descent future. This session explores the development of two suburban Melbourne gardens using the permaculture expertise of Jon Vella of Mutiny Gardening Co and the lived experience of the owners, who have a range of disabilities.

Presented by Jon and Adelaide Parr, one of the owners, this practical session introduces participants to some of the key facts and design choices that promote or restrict access for people with disabilities to the benefits of permaculture – including improved mental health, increased resiliency and self-sufficiency and access to fresh and healthy local food sources. Participants will come away inspired to incorporate disability positive choices into their own permaculture practice as well as an introduction to the skills required to have honest, reflective and inclusive conversations with disabled people about their disabilities, needs and permaculture dreams.

Tie-downs are a girl’s best friend: getting stuff done as a short, single female

Presenter: Beck Lowe

A session to support and empower – especially for women working on their own (but everyone is welcome!) When I first bought my farm, I was a single mum with a two-year-old, and I’ve continued to practice permaculture there for the last 24 years. Like many suburban Australians, I grew up with very few practical skills, so had to learn everything – from basic building skills to growing and preserving food to butchering animals – from scratch. Being able to do such things is a critical part of my personal resilience, in both a practical and an emotional sense. Wherever possible, I like to empower others to develop skills and build resilience – and to have confidence in their capacity to learn. In this session we will share empowering stories, as well practical tips on working alone – such as using ratchet tie-downs to assist in construction and moving heavy things.

Caring for Country (Part 1)

Presenter: Ivan-Tiwu Copley

Making do

Presenter: Alison Heidenreich

How to repair or make do with household items around you that may be broken and repurposing them to some other use. This includes repairing them to their original use and changing their function to something else useful. For example, (based on the repair cafe model), an unsuccessful lamp repair could end up providing a pot plant. The electrical switch could be repurposed in another electrical project.
This would illustrate that we don’t need to throw out things, but think about what we can do with the resources around us, to care for the environment by reducing waste, provide meaningful links with other people by connecting with others through the repair process and sharing this exciting process with others.

Change venue

Permaculture for Refugees (P4R) #2

Mértola Project ‘Terra de Abrigo’

Presenter: Eunice Neves

‘Terra de Abrigo’ is a community supported refugee resettlement project for 8 Afghans taking place in Mértola, Portugal, from March 2022 to August 2023. Inspired by permaculture design, this project offers a holistic model to refugee resettlement, which integrates multiple dimensions (ecological, social, cultural, psychological, spiritual, legal, financial) with the aim to developing and consolidating personal, social and professional skills for full autonomy and integration in Portuguese society. Resulting of a strategic partnership between Terra Sintrópica Association, the Portuguese High Commissioner for Migrations, the Mértola City Council, the Mértola Parish Council and the Australian organization Permaculture for Refugees, ‘Terra de Abrigo’ is financially supported by various organizations and individuals, at the local and international levels, who aim provide a program of excellence and a model for refugee resettlement that can be replicated worldwide. Central to this model is an emphasis on care, both for the refugees being hosted and for the hosting community and land, through beneficial relationships, enjoyed reciprocally.

Permaculture Refugees in Kenya

Presenter: Morag Gamble

We are a global network of Permaculture educators and practitioners working to apply Permaculture in displacement settings. Started in 2016, Permaculture for Refugees has movements in four continents. We support refugees to become Permaculturlists and now (after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban and the war in Ukraine) Permaculturalists who become refugees. Our work has provoked an updated PDC curriculum as we develop innovative ways to teach, and update content relevant for a future of increased forced migration and disasters.

Regenerating Our Future: Permaculture in Schools

Presenters: Emily Gray, Claudia Peoples,
Aaron Sorensen, Kate Washington

The aim of these talks is to celebrate what is there already, sharing of good practices using permaculture with children. We will hear short stories from educators from around Australia

Home Garden Food Forests

Presenter: Tracey Hall

Home Garden Food Forests
It is not only possible but relatively easy to grow a multi-layered, highly productive mini forest in a home garden.
These provide a continual supply of homegrown fruits, nuts, berries, herbs and tubers, offering food security in an easily managed home garden. Set up well, a home garden food forest will self-manage during periods of neglect, nourish soil, moderate temperatures, and feed the soul, all while providing an abundance of both variety and volume of healthy food to sustain and share, while avoiding demands of hand watering, mowing, constant weeding etc. Even with acreage, which most households do not have, one of these near your house will sustain your family. It can help shield your home from extremes of our Australian climate and provide a cool, green, ember screen. The seven layers of the food forest, and how they interact, early soil preparation and feeding, simplified planet conscious watering, plant selection, sharing options and ongoing maintenance will all be discussed.

Publishing in Permaculture

Presenter: Richard Telford

Richard will be explaining some of the issues with the current industrial book system and and an alternative model that he has developed with Oliver Holmgren that looks at the whole publishing system in an integrated way that is working towards restoring a fair book trade using the ethics and principles of permaculture.
A thriving sustainability book trade creating high quality resources is critical to supporting society making the transition to the Permaculture vision of a rich and resilient culture sustained by nature. Fair agreements are the backbone of the book trade toward this vision.
Much of the book trade is struggling to survive at present, with shrinking margins and sales volumes and yet people still love books. Massive online retailers wielding incredible and growing bargaining power have secured huge discounts, making for a playing field that is anything but level. With the introduction of digital content and online shopping, many businesses in the book trade are finding it increasingly difficult to survive, let alone thrive.
We have created a Fair Share book distribution model that supports everyone in the book trade to thrive and continue producing the vital literature and educational resources our culture needs so desperately to make the leap to a sustainable future.

Caring for Country (Part 2)

Presenter: Ivan-Tiwu Copley

Growing Community

Presenter: Robin Clayfield

Growing healthy community needs the same love and care as a vegie garden or a food forest. Like all of us humans it requires a supportive group environment in which to thrive. What are the elements that grow community and assist our groups, teams, organisations, businesses and families to be at their best? Robin has a huge basket full of processes, tools, ideas and methodologies that support dynamic groups, group dynamics, effective collaboration, good governance and empowered action. In this workshop we’ll share the basket and add to it by gardening the answers together and harvesting the gifts of our shared wisdom.

Change venue

Lunch and networking

Change venue

Green Thumb Garden Planner

Presenter: Chaitanya Shettigara

Growing a Permaculture garden can get complicated quickly. I am creating an app that can make this easier, by suggesting good companions and warning against bad ones, providing information about plant care, keeping calendars for sowing, harvest, and tasks, helping share your bounty and more.

Edible Garden Trail

Presenter: Susanne Rix

The Edible Garden Trail movement started in the Blue Mountains in 2018. We had 40 gardens open and attracted over 500 visitors from all over the state. That first trail has inspired a number of communities to take up the idea and use strategies developed for the first trail. (Including Permaculture Central Coast this last weekend). A group from Permaculture North Sydney came by bus to the first trail in 2018 and set up the Sydney Edible Garden trail the following year. Since then, similar city wide events have developed in Adelaide and Hobart followed by smaller communities including Central Coast NSW, Singleton, Bass Coast in Victoria, Samford in Queensland and as far as New Zealand. The Edible Garden Trail was established to recognise the power of gardeners in tackling and preparing for climate change by creating healthy soils, contributing to food security, supporting local economies and building community resilience. This presentation will explore how a community can establish their own Edible Garden Trail, to encourage more gardeners to discover permaculture, organic growing principles and build community through sharing their edible garden journey. It is also a journey of how one person and a good idea can begin a movement.

Food Matters

Presenter: Liz Sanders

The food system challenges we face are complex and multidimensional. Addressing them successfully will require collaborative efforts and new innovative solutions that work across sectors. One of the key initial steps is to mobilise an informed community around this issue. The Food Matters course developed by the Food Embassy with support from Green Adelaide and Flinders University builds food system literacy and community action around local food systems.
Food Matters was adapted from a Flinders University online course which examined the food system through three lenses: environment, economic and social and aimed to build an informed and actively engaged community. It is based on a food democracy framework and the practice of food citizenship. Since Covid the course has evolved into a series of 4 events.
Over 500 people have attended the courses/events and they all report positive gains in knowledge and confidence to improve the local food system at an individual and community level.
“I think of my environment as a food environment rather than thinking of my refrigerator as a food environment”
Food Matters is the only known community-based food system education offered in SA and possibly Australia. Awareness raising and supporting action for change are critical steps in creating a more regenerative food system.

Growing Inclusion in Permaculture

Presenters: Debbi Long, Naomi Amber, Toad Dell and Guy Ritani

Growing Inclusivity: practical strategies for making permaculture teaching more accessible. Permaculture and its teachings have always been set in non-formal, alternative and community level environments. This is critical to ensuring permaculture knowledge is available to all. The practice of understanding diversity and inclusion must be continuously revisited as society evolves around us. This panel offers
perspective on some things Permaculture teachers should be aware of to ensure their classes are relevant, appropriate and accessible in these changing times. Bringing experience from the secondary, tertiary, corporate and non-formal teaching sectors, four permaculturalists and educators discuss the forefront of inclusion and accessibility practices in ways that can be adopted in permaculture education.

Topics include (but are not limited to!):

• Teaching neurodiverse students
• Cultural safety in teaching spaces
• Trauma informed education
• Gender safety in teaching spaces
• Unconscious Othering, and how to avoid it
• Unconscious Muting, and how to avoid it
• Accessibility technologies

The Political Reality of permaculture ethics

Presenter: Andrew Adams

Permaculture provides a viable alternative social ethic and system of living. As important it is to acknowledge what could be lost it is as vital to acknowledge what could be. Direct action is key to making this a reality. Permaculture can be a key part of an alliance of movements for change. Let’s create hope through a vision of what is possible through vision and practical ethics and action.

Dan Palmer’s Permaculture Legacy

Presenter: David Holmgren

A discussion, review, reflection, critique and honouring of Dan’s Palmer’s legacy in permaculture

Change Venue

Closing the APC – Robin Clayfield

End of day / pre-dinner break

Dinner

Cultural Compost Theatre

Presenter: Chris Banks

Daily 10 minute improvised parodies of convergence activities, sometimes involving volunteers from the audience.

QUIZ NIGHT AND FUN!

Presenter: Brenna Quinlan