Integral Permaculture Book

• Posted by Stella Strega on November 30, 2010 at 4:54pm in Evolutionary Expressions

... & e-Book ...

See Integral Permaculture CoCreation forum for more about the actual subject.

Creating a book out of a very good curriculum we have developed over the last 8years has been a dream and inspiration for years, so I was delighted to find this group!

We've already developed some of the graphics, which I love ... like these icons which I'll scatter on this page, which are explained in the above link ..

I publish by internet (love making websites, it's like weaving with luminous colours and words for me), so I would be delighted to give any help with this to anyone here.

Infact if anyone wants a mini-course in using googlesites (wonderful tool which we could use to keep in touch later and make an Evolutionary e-Book with eventually) please just let me know, I'd be delighted to set it up!

(See links to some of the online 'books' (+ one magazine) I have contributed to below)

But I do think 'real' books are also important and one of my dreams is to publish our amazing Integral Permaculture curriculum as a bilingual text book.

For some reason I envisage a series of very small books (the size of a CD but about 1cm thick), one for each of the 'chapters' (modules) of the course, which are colour-coded, so together it would look like a little rainbow on the shelf! (I'm a fool for rainbows, always have been... :)

Each module would have a small text book (maybe several eventually) and also a DVD (of the same colour, of course).

I have no experience whatsoever in layout though, or publishing on paper, so any help with that very welcome.

This would be a kind of evolutionary text-book for designing sustainable societies.. it's such basic design knowledge, am sure it will be part of the primary curriculum in the future (if we keep schools, which I doubt) but for now it's still esoteric knowledge... As it will be always a rapidly evolving science, the format has to be flexible to accomodate that.

We started some years ago by creating en e-book (but in Spanish) which is presented as materials for self-run Study Circles in Permaculture, here: http://circulosdestudio.pbworks.com

This is done using a wiki, and various students of ours have been involved in it's growth. On the first page you can see icons to all the various 'chapters' .. including a Video and Radio page, Designs Gallery, etc.

With the new course we're launching in spring next year, online and in both English and Spanish, we hope to improve on this e-Boo a lot (re-design it) and make it fully bilingual, proposing it as a group project for everyone on the course who would like to co-design it ... and then present it as our 'big group' co-creation at the end of the year-long course.

The paper version will probably come out after that (hopefully!).

I'll put this here as a discussion so I can add things but especially so that others can, if you feel inspired to co-create this with us! (we want to write this amongst many people interested in these subjects, which you can see outlined in the Programme of the course)

thanks for creating this space!!

love

Stella

These are some things I've e-published in english:

The 8thLife site ... is I hope a very educational site as well as the presentation for our very ambitious home project ..

My Blog (blogging is such a wonderful new publishing medium!)

& am in the editorial team for E-Connection, first issue out only a few weeks ago!

which is a nice model for a possible Evolutionary Mag if we want to create one .. it's EASY!!

I am SO excited about this but have been so busy with launching this 'baby' that I haven't had time to participate much on here!! A bit frustrating...

I was tickled no end when I discovered the first logo, in Barbara's work. ... the second is David Holmgreen's "Permaculture Flower" and the third is what the wonderful co-creating team I work with, Nodo Espiral of the Permaculture Academy (started in Spain, now going international) came up with over 7 years ago. We didn't know about David's flower then, it is just one of those lovely sinchronic things we all 'downloaded' at the same time, from the Collective Subconscious or wherever.. I would love to know the story behind Barbara's circle!!

We put a big paw in the middle of our flower (it also represents the sun, see below for many-fold-meaning of this symbol) because we want to emphasise the DOING - Permaculture is perhaps not very well known because we are very short of academics ... it usually attracts practical people who want to get their hands dirty and see the need to be actively changing the environment in service of Nature and Spirit.

If you are not familiar with Permaculture, there is a short basic article here, about The Heart, Mind, Hands and Legs of Permaculture.

Then there is an article (in progress, we are writing it together with anyone who feels called to participate!) about Integral Permaculture, an emergent creature.

And the info about the Online free Conferences is here, please do join us! (you need to register in order to get onto the mailing list for these), we're still getting used to the conferencing technology, now not having some of the glitches we experienced during the first English one!

And the mega-course we are preparing (again, being designed NOW, we want to get as many co-creators on board as feel called) is described here, the PDC+++ ... might change in the near future, but this is the draft we are onto now so far! In a sustainable human society, this course will be taught in every primary school, it is the 101 of planet management, also of life-design - but sadly still esoteric knowledge for most!

We are aiming with this initiative to make it easily accessible to all, and we are designing it to empower every person who wants to, with no previous experience even, to facilitate a study circle / course / meeting of minds around these materials in their own living-room, classroom (it's perfect for 11yr olds upwards), community-group ... wherever! Although you can of course just do the course individually also, if you wish (and have an international support group FOREVER if you want, to be in for doing this essential planet-repair / design anything towards sustainability work). It is especially indespensible if you're involved in Transition Initiatives of all kinds (and if you're not, look closely at why not please..).

If you feel ready to co-create something very concrete, out there and that NEEDS your support, just write to me directly ok. Or ask all the questions you like on the online conferences, or here... whatever works for you. WE WANT YOU!

Am also wanting to see how it can be woven into to whatever other co-creations are going on here, but so far not managed to understand fully what is going on, maybe someone who's been longer in here can help me with this? thanks :)

lots of love

Stella

PS .. here are the other meanings woven into the symbol..

Sustainability is beautifully summarised in this lovely saying: "Harvest only sunshine" - basically our challenge is to design a solar-powered society .. and the Permaculture curriculum is about exactly how to do that, the basic energy know-how we need, how to design eco-technologies, how natural systems work. So the core of this symbol is a playful sun ...

The ubiquitous paw ... is about walking our talk. No talking shops, what we need now, urgently, is focused concrete action: eg. did you know that if we each planted 10,000 trees we would repair ALL ecosystem damage humans have done so far? Just with a little eco-literacy sprinkled on top ... and it's not as difficult as it seems. The most important SPIRITUAL work now for humans (the ONLY creature that can help fast enough now) is to restore damaged ecosystems, and to help humans take our rightful place in Nature: a much smaller, much more important place than we imagined.

The spiral is a symbol that is found practically in ALL native cultures, and here it represents our deep respect for all native cultures, our connection to our own ancestors, and the native peoples of our land, wherever we are. We are destroying not only other species right now, but the habitats of the only humans who have learned to live in harmony with nature: native peoples everywhere. One of the urgent jobs now is to unite in solidarity with this wise part of humanity, bringing our wisdom as westeners to the mix, not by romanticising their cultures, but by doing practical action that stops the destruction of the few remaining ancient peoples.

This is our reminder to PLAY .. action-learning is an upward-spiral endlessly learning, experimenting, trying out and perfecting our models. It's meant to be fun, and an active curiosity-led cycle, spontaneously arising in humans. The dark periods are just when big learning steps are made, often, and not to be shunned.

And each of the colours represents one of the 5 main aspects of the science of Integral Permaculture: (more detail about each module on the PDC+++ page, under Programme)

People-Care

Design Techniques

Earth Care

Energy & EcoTechnology

EcoEconomics

Community & Transition

(although we usually just do the first 5 for the Certificate Course, this last one in more depth later)

All together they represent the wealth of practice-based wisdom which the international Permaculture Community (a great co-creating network) has been collating since the early 70s, when it started being tried out in nearly all continents, by many different cultures and climates. It takes from all sorts of practical holistic sciences, only the best and tested, and is being collectively perfected all the time.

Tags: Integral Permaculture, online conferences, systemic science, transition movement, transition training