Before each weekend of our Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course, we share recommended readings, videos, podcasts, resources, and activities for our permaculture students to explore. It’s more fun than “homework”–and it’s optional–so we refer to it as “homefun.”
This series of blog posts compiles the homefun that we assign throughout our six month PDC course. Each weekend’s homefun corresponds to the topics of that weekend. Learn more about our PDC course and consider joining us here!
Social Permaculture & Community Development
Websites/Online Readings
- What is Social Permaculture by @liberationpermaculture
- Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC) Intentional Community
- Santa Cruz Bioregional Directory
- Communities Magazine & Foundation for Intentional Community
- Global Ecovillage Network (GEN)
- California Farmlink
- Santa Cruz Community Orchard
- Community members create community orchard in Riverside Gardens Park
Books
- Raising Dough by Elizabeth Ü
- Getting Things Done by David Allen (related website)
- The Permaculture City by Toby Hemenway
- Books by Diana Leafe Christian
Videos/Podcasts
- Ecovillages and Intentional Communities with Diana Leafe Christian (podcast interview)
- CityStream: Beacon Food Forest in Seattle (video)
- Helping Britain Blossom about community orchards in the UK (video)
- Optical Surveying and Social Forestry with Hazel (podcast interview)
Activities
- Reflexive journaling on a prompt (choose at least one, or answer all):
- What has stood out as most meaningful for you in this course? What dreams are being manifested through this experience?
- Imagine you’re on a stepping stone right now, and you can see stepping stones ahead and behind you. What are the next few stepping stones ahead of you?
- What are your next steps?
- Imagine that you have decided to get serious about starting an Intentional Community or Ecovillage. Use this template to start writing out your criteria (you can also easily do this by hand as shown here). You’ll see there are criteria along the left side (location, size, water, amenities, etc.) and then “A – Need” “B – Comfort” and “C – Luxury” along the top. A need is the bare minimum you would accept, a comfort is the next step up that would be really swell, and a luxury is your fully developed ideal scene. Feel free to completely modify the criteria down the left side. Get creative and make this your own. What really are the criteria that you’d consider for your ideal Ecovillage? Use this matrix to state your intentions. The second tab of this template shows a filled in example.
- What has stood out as most meaningful for you in this course? What dreams are being manifested through this experience?
- Imagine you’re on a stepping stone right now, and you can see stepping stones ahead and behind you. What are the next few stepping stones ahead of you?
- What are your next steps?