Imagine a gathering where you get to chat with people who are designing, building and nurturing permaculture spaces. At the South East Bioregional Permaculture Convergence, you can ask questions, observe how things work and put strategies into practice. Permaculture is a mature movement with many great achievements, energy and networks. Convergences are one of our great people-care tools.
When we were first bringing our fledgling permaculture plans to life, we were fortunate to learn from the people around us. They shared practical knowledge, ranging from the little detailsโlike how to lay cardboard for no-dig gardens without leaving the soil underneath lifeless. But perhaps more importantly, key figures like Stuart B Hill showed us the people-care side of permaculture.
We learned not only through their words, but by watching, participating and experiencing what it meant to care for people as much as the earth. Convergences with site tours are an enriching experience.
Site tours create space to observe, ask questions and learn from experienced practitioners.
Three days of skill-sharing, two nights of accommodation and all meals included in your ticket. This event is a chance to connect, learn and play.
Tours
We have much in common, and this region has many great pioneers. The event has an incredible line-up of tours on Friday, where you can see mature permaculture sites with friendly practitioners who are kind and generous with their knowledge.
Draft Friday tour program, subject to change. Check the organiser page for the latest details.
Event details
Friday 23 โ Sunday 25 October 2026
Auspiced by South East Producers Association, formerly SCPA.
South East Bioregional Permaculture Convergence: Sharing the Abundance, 23โ25 October 2026, Mumbulla School, Bega.
For the latest program, event details and tickets, visit the South East Bioregional Permaculture Convergence website.
From November 7–15, 2026, Thailand will host the 16th International Permaculture Convergence (IPC) for the first time. Under the theme Sustainability and Beyond: Many Paths the week-long event will bring global leaders and pioneers in permaculture together with practitioners of indigenous wisdom from Thailand and elsewhere in the world. The conference is being held at the Golden Jubilee Museum of Agriculture, near Thailand’s ancient capital in Ayutthaya, which is dedicated to sharing knowledge about Thailand’s Sufficiency Economy, while the convergence is being held at Loong Choke bamboo farm, a beautiful forest garden near Khao Yai National Park dedicated to teaching about building with bamboo.
Both events will feature presentations, workshops, and discussions on a wide range of permaculture-related topics, including building resilience in the face of financial, environmental, economic and demographic challenges, restoring healthy ecosystems, and community building.
Keynote Speakers
Kyle Holzhueter
Kyle Holzhueter will draw on over 20 years of bridging Western permaculture and traditional Japanese building craft. Kyle works as a farmer, builder and educator specialising in natural building materials and sustainable systems such as no-till rice cultivation, agroforestry, natural plasters and energy efficiency.
He is a graduate of the Kyoto Plastering Institute and the first westerner in Japan to pass the highest level Japanese National Plastering Exam.
David Holmgren
David Holmgren co-originated permaculture with Bill Mollison and distilled the discipline into the twelve design principles used by permaculture teachers worldwide. For the permaculture community in Thailand and across the region, his presence at IPC16 is a thread back to the source. The farms, food forests, natural buildings and seed networks gathered here are local answers to a global idea, and the man whose pen helped start it is taking the time to speak to them directly. It is a rare and fitting way to open a conference whose whole purpose is to carry that idea forward.
Other Speakers
Catherine Austin Fitts
Catherine Austin Fitts, publisher of The Solari Report, has developed Financial Permaculture as a framework to redesign the financial system using ecological principles. Her philosophy integrates Bill Mollison’s permaculture models with her own financial strategies to foster community resilience and economic self-reliance. A core concept is the Eight Forms of Capital, which expands the definition of wealth beyond money to include diverse, interchangeable assets essential for resilient communities.
Manish Jain
Manish Jain is the co-founder of the Ecoversities Alliance, a global network connecting alternative higher education and learning spaces. A leading voice in decolonising education, he also co-founded Swaraj University in Udaipur, India, is a key figure behind the Indian Multiversities Alliance, and serves as coordinator of Shikshantar Andolan, a people’s institute advocating unlearning and gift culture.
Jon Jandai
Jon Jandai founded Pun Pun, a center in Northern Thailand for self-reliance where he holds regular workshops and events for guests who want to learn from him and his team about self-reliant living, organic gardening, community living, natural building and natural health. His TEDx talk, “Life is easy. Why do we make it hard?” has now been viewed over 5 million times. He questions the modern lifestyle where many are in a continuous cycle in trying to earn and gain more, and contrasts it with living a simple life with the freedom to be happy.
Thalea Tane
Thalea Tane will moderate the Weaving Together the Threads of Wisdom panel on the second day of the conference. This session will bring together the different movements that align with permaculture and share the common strands. It will have a particular focus on indigenous traditions with deep cultural roots. Thalea is an indigenous leader from Aotearoa, New Zealand dedicated to revitalising regenerative communities across Oceania and Southeast Asia. She has project managed long-term ecological restoration projects for local, national & international communities – always aligning her work to Te Tirīti O Waitangi (the founding document of Aotearoa, NZ), Matauranga Māori (the Indigenous knowledge bases of Aotearoa, NZ), interlinking the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to indigenous principles.
Padma Koppula
Padma Koppula is the co-founder of Aranya Agricultural Alternatives, a 17 year old permaculture nonprofit organisation in India. Aranya was the host of the International Permaculture Convergence in November, 2017. India has a large government watershed program, in which Aranya has been responsible for facilitating the implementation of rainwater harvesting and vegetative plantings on 37,500 acres of land.
Robin Clayfield
Robin Clayfield is an acknowledged Permaculture Elder and Pioneer and an international educator, group facilitator, ceremony guide and ‘best-selling’ author specialising in Social Permaculture, creative, interactive facilitation, teacher training, group leadership and community governance. Robin has lived at Crystal Waters Permaculture EcoVillage in Queensland, Australia for over 38 years and guides tours and ‘EcoVillage Experience Days’ in and around the village. She has lived and breathed Permaculture, Deep Ecology and social change for over 43 years.
IPC16 Conference — November 7–8, 2026
The IPC16 conference brings together designers, farmers, educators, builders, and community leaders for two days of keynotes, talks, and conversations. It is being held at the Golden Jubilee Museum of Agriculture, better known as Wisdom King Farm. Throughout the conference there will be a farmers market – a gathering of farmers and local wisdom-keepers from across Thailand to share organic produce, herbal remedies, traditional food and the know-how behind it.
IPC16 Convergence — November 11–15, 2026
The IPC16 convergence is a five-day, participant-led gathering where learning happens through doing, sharing, and direct exchange through workshops, demonstrations, discussions, and practical sessions shaped by the people in the room.
Set at Suan Loong Choke Bamboo School in Nakhon Ratchasima, the convergence is designed for real participation. Sessions will unfold across multiple spaces, from kitchens and meeting rooms to outdoor learning areas, creating room for both focused teaching and informal collaboration.
For more details about IPC16 Thailand 2026, or to register for the event, please visit thaipermaculture.org.
It’s official! From 20–26 April 2027, permaculture people from across Australia and beyond will gather at the iconic Woodfordia site on Jinibara Country (South-East Queensland) for a very special Australasian Permaculture Convergence called Return to the Village.
“The challenges of our time call for new ways of living, learning and belonging. APC 2027 is an opportunity to come together as a community of changemakers, dreamers, doers and future ancestors to explore what comes next and help design a world worth inheriting.”
Special Permaculture Australia Members Only Tickets on sale now!
The last APC sold out very quickly to the general public. This time round we want to ensure dedicated members of the permaculture community have the opportunity to secure their place before tickets are opened more broadly. Permaculture Australia members can purchase first release tickets throughout August.
Tickets have officially launched! As a thank-you for your ongoing support, a specially priced ticket is available exclusively to Permaculture Australia members, along with Early Bird tickets for supporters and followers. These are available for a limited time only – until the end of September.
With only 150 Permaculture Australia Member tickets and 100 Early Bird tickets available, we encourage you to book early if you’d like to join us.
The Convergence and Permaculture Festival, together for the first time
For more than forty years, the APC has been a place where ideas are exchanged, friendships are forged and new possibilities emerge. In 2027, we invite you to step into something even bigger – a week-long village beside the shores of Lake Gkula at the famous Woodfordia site, where the APC and a new Permaculture Festival Weekend will come together over 7 days.
The 4-Day Australasian Permaculture Convergence
Return to the Village will start with the 4-Day Australasian Permaculture Convergence, which will include:
Inspiring talks, presentations, panels, forums, conversation hubs and facilitated design circles – a wide array of formats to ensure all participants have an opportunity to converse, debate, design and think deeply about the topics that are significant to our present and future world
Reskillience Hub with an incredible program of hands-on workshops
Ecovillage Education and Community Design Commons
Regenerative Farming and Happy Homes Forums
Honouring the deep relationship between Country, culture and community through ceremony, creativity, shared traditions and genuine connection
Daily Eco-Kids Club, and a youth-led Youth Summit
Creative spaces, live music, games, art and celebrations
Lakeside camping and times to come together in pause and reflection with morning rituals, nature connection and open spaces
Village Kitchen providing nourishing local meals (APC is fully catered for all participants from Monday night to Friday morning)
Countless opportunities to connect with people who share a commitment to creating a thriving future
The 3-Day Permaculture Festival
This will be followed by the 3-Day Permaculture Festival (open to the public), where the site will be transformed into a vibrant village where education and entertainment collide, with:
Permaculture Education talks stages
Hands-on workshops covering bushcraft and survival skills, food and farming, homesteading, health and wellbeing, natural building, energy efficiency, hand crafts and tools, and community building
Sustainable Village Market Stalls
Permaculture Business showcases
Evening Perma-Parties
Family Fun and Games
Youth Activations and more!
You’re invited to help design the next 50 years of permaculture
The challenges of our time call us to think bigger than ourselves. Return to the Village is a rare opportunity to gather with some of the most thoughtful and caring minds in the country and help shape the future we want to create together.
There is only so much any one person can achieve alone, but in community, our ideas become movements, our actions gain momentum and our collective impact grows. Together, we can help design the next fifty years of permaculture.
This is an invitation to reconnect with each other, with the living world around us and with the timeless idea that our greatest strength has always been community.
Permaculture People Power! – Help spread the word
Return to the Village isn’t something we want to build with algorithms or advertising budgets. We want to grow it the permaculture way – through PEOPLE POWER!
Please share this post with 10 permaculture friends. Or go old school and pick up the phone, or catch up over a cuppa. Invite people you haven’t seen in years, organise a road trip, plan to camp together.
Let’s start bringing village culture back now – the village doesn’t begin when the gates open at Woodfordia. It begins now, as we reconnect with each other and remember what community feels like.
Become a Permaculture Australia Member and join a growing community of passionate Permaculture People across the country. Along with discounted tickets to Return to the Village, you’ll enjoy member benefits, connect with like-minded changemakers, and help strengthen the movement that’s shaping a more resilient future.
Chinese Second National Permaculture Conference in Shenzhen
About 150 Chinese permaculturists attended the conference in this remarkable permaculture village/town designed in every detail from permaculture design principles and methods. It was a delightful and innovative site for the conference. Participants come from all over China to attend.
It was evident from the speakers that permaculture is thriving and spreading fast in China.
China is deploying permaculture โat scaleโ to redesign ecological systems and infrastructure for adaptive resilience.
Yangtze Delta Permaculture Challenges
Being flat, highly productive with deposited soils and also canals, the worldโs deltas will be challenged by global warming. Preparatory work has been done for the Yangtze Delta. There are three serious threats:
Water invasion
Coastal erosion
Saltwater intrusion
The Yangtze Delta is possibly only viable for about the next 100 years because the estimated rise in the ocean by that time would cover it. It has a short-term but no long-term future. How to make best permaculture design decisions under these conditions is challenging. 127 million people live there and it also produces huge amounts of food for China.
Originally all deltas in the world would have been enormous buffering wetlands which over the millennia have been cleared and drained. Nature constantly tries to return them to their original state which was better for climate and wildlife. In fact, although impractical, allowing and assisting the region to return to wetlands would be the most protective and sustainable response to global warming and coastal inundation. Wetlands protect and buffer big flows of water.
Working in a huge Delta is a disturbing experience and a challenge for permaculture designers with its flat land, and waters threatened by rising seas and global warming: incursion of brackish waters and pollution of canals; altogether a new landscape for permaculture designers to consider water management and hydration. How to catch and store water in what is virtually wetlands, presents enormous challenges.
The Delta living and agriculture, comprising a multitude of canals which were once used for most transport, shows lack of understanding of how nature cleans water. The canals are full of rubbish and very polluted. By simply developing a fringe of plants known as macrophytes along all the canals to extract pollutants as water moves from land to canal would assist enormously. There is work to be done here.
Delta Ecological Protection
Environmental protection design in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) focuses on integrating regional ecological security patterns, sustainable urban-rural development, and high-tech monitoring. Key features include constructing ecological corridors, using โsponge cityโ techniques, restoring water networks through โpoldersโ (dykes/berms), implementing strict โecological red lines,โ and advancing zero-carbon, climate-responsive architectural designs to ensure sustainable development.
Shanghai
The Shanghai Centre of Creativity and Innovation under Wei Min is part of a team working on this, and the greater delta region. Valuable work has been done in short-term on wetlands in the region with remarkable increase in bird numbers and other wetland species. This is one of its original ecosystems. Wetlands protect and buffer big flows of water.
In Shanghai, renewable energy is visible everywhere. Streets are cleaner, quieter and greener than I have seen in Australia and people are proud of their progress. China jumped from bicycles to electric bicycles in a wide range of types and styles โ it seems there is the right one for each person. Parking is easy. In this way, much of the city has avoided the challenging impacts of noise, and pollution caused by fossil fuels. By moving from bicycles to electric bicycles, they omitted the stage in transport innovation of every citizen owning a petrol or diesel driven car.
As one of the worldโs great cities, Shanghai has many huge modern buildings and the question arises what is to be done with the fill from excavation of underground areas used for parking and air conditioning. This problem is one that city designers are working with.
Town planning in Shanghai placed in the centre of Creativity and Innovation is outstanding. Among other activities they have listed and mapped all the Community gardens in Shanghai and also in China and also map their progress and changes. The local gardens in Shanghai are a result of reclaiming part of a formerly wide street. Gardens along the edges of the roads gave a sense of enclosure for pedestrians, and double planting of street trees with their overhead canopy gave protection. A public noise monitor records and shows street noise in decibels.
Sponge Cities in China
The number of Chinese cities affected by floods has more than doubled since 2008.
Why? Concrete jungles are mazes of impermeable surfaces that donโt absorb water, which exacerbates flooding and runoff during storms. This dirty water gets funnelled into rivers and oceans, harming wildlife and reducing the supply available to city residents. For highly populated cities like Shenzhen, both improperly managed storm water runoff and water shortages during extreme droughts jeopardize human access to fresh water.
TNC is collaborating with city officials to transform Shenzhen into an innovative, cost-effective โsponge city.โ By planting more vegetation all around the cityโon roofs, along sidewalks and in parksโwe are helping the city become a sponge that retains and filters rainwater, sustaining a clean supply for expanding communities and making Shenzhen itself a safer and healthier place to live.
The sponge city project works at three levels:
Public education campaign to communicate the value of urban nature to the lives of Shenzhen residents;
Pilot projects that demonstrate best practices across a range of sites, such as using permeable building materials for new buildings and establishing a rooftop garden in Gangxia urban village;
Finance and policy research to assure that sponge cities are taking advantage of the latest innovations.
A Permaculture-Designed Neighbourhood in Shenzhen
Sponge cities are committed to using natural infrastructure for stormwater management. Shenzhen โ a pioneer city in terms of economy, manufacturing, governance and its โsmart cityโ status โ is at the forefront of becoming more sustainable and liveable.
Shenzhenโs environmental design focuses on transforming a dense, high-tech metropolis into an ecological โsponge cityโ that integrates nature with urban infrastructure. Key initiatives include massive electric vehicle (EV) adoption, coastal mangrove protection, and sustainable architecture. The city prioritizes sustainable development through green construction, waste-to-energy projects, and flood-resilient landscaping.
The Permaculture Conference in Shenzhen was held in a permaculture designed neighbourhood of the city. It was exceptional in its water management, solar passive designs, people movement and natural furnishings.
Permaculture Connect Inc. is a grassroots community initiative founded in 2019, to bring together people who want to live by permaculture values. Rooted in the three core ethics, Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share, the group exists to nourish the land while strengthening human connection.
While food growing and edible gardens are central interests, the focus reaches far beyond harvests. Members share a commitment to regenerating landscapes, improving soil health, and leaving the earth in a better condition for future generations. Equally important is the social fabric that Permaculture Connect weaves.
The group creates opportunities for like-minded people to meet, learn, and support one another through shared experiences. Monthly gatherings rotate across properties in the wider Brisbane region, pausing briefly over the December - January holiday period.
Events range from garden tours to hands-on workshops and creative skill-sharing sessions. Past activities have included tool-sharpening demonstrations, weaving workshops, mending circles, and a popular sustainable cook-off where teams prepare meals using only homegrown ingredients.
These gatherings spark meaningful conversations, foster friendships, and strengthen community resilience, benefits that extend well beyond the garden gate and contribute positively to mental wellbeing. Permaculture Connect is free to attend, with a gold coin donation welcomed to support running costs.
Permaculture Week began as a simple idea in the Yarra Valley (Victoria, Australia): create a shared moment in the calendar where permaculture could be visible, accessible, and celebrated beyond individual sites and courses. Initiated by Permaculture Yarra Valley, Yarra Valley ECOSS, and PEACE Farm; the first Permaculture Week brought together local talks, garden visits, workshops, and gatherings. There was no central festival and no single organiser running everything. Instead, it was deliberately decentralised, with events hosted by community groups themselves. That principle has remained at the heart of Permaculture Week ever since.
Now entering its seventh year, Permaculture Week has grown well beyond its regional beginnings. Events are now held across multiple Australian states and increasingly internationally, reflecting the expanding relevance of permaculture as a response to ecological, social, and economic challenges.
Permaculture Week 2026 will run from 21โ29 March, aligned with the autumn equinox in the Southern Hemisphere. This yearโs theme, โRegeneration: People, Place, and Planet,โ highlights regeneration as more than landscape repair. It recognises the interdependence of healthy ecosystems, strong communities, and empowered people, including future generations.
At its core, Permaculture Week is about participation. There is no expectation that events be large, polished, or resource-heavy. A short talk, an open garden, a working bee, a film night, a walk-and-talk, or a shared meal can all be powerful ways to make permaculture visible and welcoming. Events may be free or ticketed and are shaped entirely by local hosts.
A key focus for 2026 is creating accessible entry points for new and younger audiences, while continuing to value the depth of experience held within established permaculture networks. By opening gardens, sharing stories, and creating spaces for connection, Permaculture Week helps bridge generations and invite fresh energy into the movement.
All events will be showcased on the national hub, www.permacultureweek.org, making it easier for people to discover whatโs happening in their area and for local efforts to gain wider visibility.
Whether youโre part of a long-established permaculture group or just beginning to explore regenerative living, Permaculture Week is an opportunity to contribute in a way that feels achievable and meaningful.
This March, the invitation is simple: share what regeneration looks like where you are.
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