As part of our online Permaculture Design Course, we encourage participants to spend time in nature to observe. Here are some reflections from Naomi, course participant in 2022/23 on observing flow, also published on her own blog livinglearninggettingolder.com.

Another Permaculture Design Course comes to an end. This was my first in-person course in a few years. I’ve really loved working with this group of talented and inspiring participants. I feel humbled by the course and encouraged for what’s next.

As, on these courses, we’re all learning from each other, we like participants to award the certificates to each other. Here are photos of some of the proud new certificate holders.

Hi I’m Liz and I am very fortunate to live in the Stroud Valleys with my partner. I am originally from the West Midlands and am proud to consider myself as a Black Country “wench”, having grown up in a former mining village next to a steel making town, all now long gone. That background, where folks don’t have much, has inspired a resilience in me to make the most of what we have, help who we can and grow as much food as possible.

I’m in my early 30s and have spent much of the last decade ‘being a comedian’ which has mostly meant doing stand up, until the last few years during which I’ve been lucky enough to spend most of my time writing and acting in sitcoms for the BBC. I feel lucky and I enjoy it, but nevertheless I increasingly felt like something was missing from my life and more specifically I felt disconnected from nature and like I didn’t spend enough time outdoors, which I suppose is what ‘led me to permaculture’.

People come to take Permaculture Courses for a number of reasons: some want to adopt a new way of thinking and bring more creativity into the work they are already doing, others don’t find meaning in their current occupation and are looking for alternatives; some are looking to buy land hoping to run a homestead, while still others have a small garden at home and would like to get more in touch with the soil and produce a few things for themselves.

People come to take Permaculture Courses for a number of reasons: some want to adopt a new way of thinking and bring more creativity into the work they are already doing, others don’t find meaning in their current occupation and are looking for alternatives; some are looking to buy land hoping to run a homestead, while still others have a small garden at home and would like to get more in touch with the soil and produce a few things for themselves.

On our yearly London-based Permaculture Design Course we’ve made it a tradition to spend one weekend away from the city. We had photographer Amy Behrens Clark join us to document some of our journey and asked a few of the participants about their experience learning about Permaculture.

Organising a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) is generally a great opportunity for a project or a community to integrate more of the Permaculture principles into their workings. Developing a well functioning Permaculture system however takes time… This is why I am excited to go back to Tribewanted Monestevole this coming October to deliver a second fully accredited PDC. It will be an opportunity to build on the lessons learned from last year’s course while continuing to build the Permaculture community across Europe.

For some time now, Social Landscapes has been developing the idea of a bike tour to raise awareness of these projects, tell the stories of the people behind them and get people thinking differently about city living.

When did it happen that time became a forward line? When did the idea of an inevitability of progress settle in the psyche of the western mind? When did we as human beings set ourselves apart, thinking that we are at the head of the parade? And how does all of that affect our relationship to place and planet? These are questions I have been asking myself for a while, questions I might never have the answers to.

In a time that often seems dominated by conflict, economic deprivation and environmental destruction, Permaculture points into a different direction and offers opportunity.

This summer we are running a Permaculture inspired 24-hour Designing Edible Landscapes training course at Spires in Streatham. The course is funded by Lambeth and supported by Incredible Edible Lambeth and therefore free to attend for anyone who can make it.

Small and slow solutions is one of my favourite Permaculture principles. Not only does it relate to the type of interventions that a designer makes on a piece of land, it describes a helpful attitude to life.

First time novelist, Sarah Kisielowski, joined the Introduction to Permaculture weekend to find out how its principles might apply to creativity and writing.

Permaculture is an intuitive framework for change that reconnects us to each other, the natural world, and ourselves.

This was the opening definition...

This week, the UK Permaculture Association published a short version of our 5 stories of Permaculture Design Course participants on their blog.

Find the full post here.

This is the first of a series of short blog posts exploring the core permaculture principles and relating them to our work at Social Landscapes. 

Lately, in my work as well as on Permaculture courses, I have been exploring the topic of livelihood. Livelihood is often described as “that which sustains us” and for us in the west, more often, “that which brings in an income”.

“Permaculture is thinking like an ecosystem”

On the second day of the 2016 Permaculture Design Course the concept above was mentioned, from that moment on Andrea, also known as Dre, began to question the impact of why and how we approach things. Ecosystems rely on dependency, much like the human ecosystem we all live in.

"I hope to make the world a better place by fostering resilience in communities."

Robert’s passion for permaculture runs deep, beginning at school twenty years ago, when his Geography teacher taught his class the fundamental principles. Robert went on to study Environmental Sciences at University and is now a member of...

“I feel like I know a secret and want to share it with the world!”

This time, I find myself sitting in a café near Old Street, chatting to the outgoing Natasha. Deciding that spending the majority of your waking hours in a job that doesn’t bring you much satisfaction, in August 2015 Natasha...

My second interview was with Permaculture Design Course (PDC) participant Nicky, 26, who works with children with special needs. He is currently developing his practice as a yoga teacher and artist and he chose to do the permaculture design course hoping to ...