PDC 2019 Course
Permaculture started as a design system for creating ecological agricultural systems, recognising that natural systems autonomously produce a steady supply of useful resources when allowed to develop a natural state of balance. Permaculture emerged as a way of designing a landscape to best imitate this ecological balance within productive agricultural systems. However the systems thinking framework behind permaculture is a progressive and adaptable tool to apply to a wide range of systems from how you craft your life to how you build a city.
In this Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course we investigate how a systems-thinking approach can be applied to a permaculture design methodology to create health-promoting and resilient systems. I call these regenerative systems.
In other words: we explore how you can make sense of the complexity of a system and modify it in ways that restore it to good health, produce a good range of useful resources and ensure it is well-aligned to the environment in which it is positioned.
This system could be a farm , your body, the relationships you have, financial, a business, a community, a housing project, a house, a glasshouse, a pond etc etc.
The systems-thinking process explored in the PDC is a process where:
The main two parts of this process are an awareness of patterns and principles aligned to promoting healthy outcomes and the design methodology applied to develop systems, obtain feedback, refine systems and manage them in ways aligned to promoting healthy function and resiliency within that system.
The two main elements explored within this PDC are and identifying patterns common to systems that show health and resiliency and developing principles to focus efforts towards creating these systems and applying a design methodology to creating a system aligned to these characteristics.
The first “systems-thinking” section provides the foundation of what to look for in developing a regenerative system and all people enrolled in the PDC complete this section. Each topic covered in this section are supported by a range of online resources (ebooks, articles, and video resources) to help you explore and understand the main concepts relevant to that topic and a series of online tasks to consolidate and apply your understanding and benefit from the thoughts of others enrolled in the course. The topics covered in this section are:
Within the second “regenerative design” section you get to choose which type of system you would like to develop and are guided through understanding the background context of this type of system and are walked through the stages of creating a design project to come up with a detailed plan for creating your system. The topics explored in this section are:
In this Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course we investigate how a systems-thinking approach can be applied to a permaculture design methodology to create health-promoting and resilient systems. I call these regenerative systems.
In other words: we explore how you can make sense of the complexity of a system and modify it in ways that restore it to good health, produce a good range of useful resources and ensure it is well-aligned to the environment in which it is positioned.
This system could be a farm , your body, the relationships you have, financial, a business, a community, a housing project, a house, a glasshouse, a pond etc etc.
The systems-thinking process explored in the PDC is a process where:
- Information about the environment in which the system will be developed is obtained.
- Strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of that environment are identified.
- The goals, values and resources of the creative agent (or agents) that are going to manipulate the factors within that environment to create a productive system are identified.
- Alignments are identified between capabilities of the creative agent and opportunities within the environment.
- A small range of potential alignments are developed as prototypes to a minimal viable level and stress-tested for feedback from the environment and impact on the creative agent.
- Feedback is reflected upon on the basis of the awareness of patterns that will lead to positive outcomes aligned to promoting better health and becoming self-reinforcing.
- The most promising prototypes are further refined and developed as productive systems.
- Opportunities are sought to create beneficial alignment between the systems created and other systems to create synergistic outcomes that will result in promoting greater health and resiliency within the systems, for the creative agent and for the environment in which those systems are positioned.
- Initial developmental and inquiry focused stages, shift to modification and refinement on the basis of broader and deeper feedback filtered through an awareness of underlying principles aligned to creating greater levels of health and resiliency of that system.
The main two parts of this process are an awareness of patterns and principles aligned to promoting healthy outcomes and the design methodology applied to develop systems, obtain feedback, refine systems and manage them in ways aligned to promoting healthy function and resiliency within that system.
The two main elements explored within this PDC are and identifying patterns common to systems that show health and resiliency and developing principles to focus efforts towards creating these systems and applying a design methodology to creating a system aligned to these characteristics.
The first “systems-thinking” section provides the foundation of what to look for in developing a regenerative system and all people enrolled in the PDC complete this section. Each topic covered in this section are supported by a range of online resources (ebooks, articles, and video resources) to help you explore and understand the main concepts relevant to that topic and a series of online tasks to consolidate and apply your understanding and benefit from the thoughts of others enrolled in the course. The topics covered in this section are:
- Background of permaculture
- Pattern recognition
- Principles of permaculture
- Applying ecological design
- Creating regenerative systems
Within the second “regenerative design” section you get to choose which type of system you would like to develop and are guided through understanding the background context of this type of system and are walked through the stages of creating a design project to come up with a detailed plan for creating your system. The topics explored in this section are:
- Environmental analysis
- The creative agent
- Identifying opportunities
- Developing a prototype
- Managing for a critical yield
Navigating Course
The course is navigated via a Moodle platform that features forums where you can ask questions of instructors or other participants about particular details of the course. These then act as a depository of resources for other students to help improve their own navigation of the course. Access to course topics and submission of design tasks also occurs on the Moodle platform.
The course content is a mixture of ebooks and video supported by online readings and video to further expand upon concepts. All of these resources are organised on this Weebly website platform.
The course content is a mixture of ebooks and video supported by online readings and video to further expand upon concepts. All of these resources are organised on this Weebly website platform.