[Sdpg] Permalearners Permalearners- - Permaculture Action Learning (UK) Online. Website

[Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Just updated the Permalearners website,
including a link to the Dial  House Teachers event PDF.
See http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/permalearners/index.html

Any ideas on how this site could be made a more useful resource?

Graham

Welcome to Permalearners- Permaculture Action Learning (UK) Online. The 
primary purpose of this website is to facilitate communication, networking 
and information sharing amongst the UK and international permaculture 
learning community, especially those working towards the Permaculture 
Diploma, or who are involved in permaculture teaching or design work.

Our aim is to put people in touch with each other by accessing the various 
existing online permaculture communities and discussion lists, as well as 
providing our own dedicated discussion forum and announcement boards. I 
have also set up the Permaculture Learning List, an email community at 
YAHOO! groups for the development and discussion of Permaculture teaching 
and the Permaculture Diploma, see the link below to subscribe. In addition 
this site will act as a portal to online resources that may be of interest 
to the permaculture learning community, and as an archive of relevant 
documents and resources as these become available.

Permaculture Action Learning (UK) Online supports and works closely with 
The Permaculture Association (Britain) and The Permaculture Academy Of 
Britain, although please note that we are independent of both organisations.



What is ‘Action Learning’?

LESSONS FROM THE CHERRY PLUM’- A personal view of Permaculture, Action 
Learning and 'the 4 Questions'

Sometimes it seems that there are as many definitions of permaculture as 
there are permaculturists- this is a good and healthy thing- it’s important 
that permaculture is a living, evolving and changing body of thought, not a 
dead and static set of rules and prescriptions (in fact in one sense 
'Permaculture' is anything but 'Permanent'!!!). One thing that sets 
permaculture apart from many other contemporary disciplines is it’s 
tendency to avoid the artificial divisions between 'academics' and 'doers'- 
Not always the norm in our fragmented culture where specialists and experts 
insist on separating left and right brain thinking but never get their 
hands dirty. In other words, permaculture isn't either 'all theory' or 'all 
practice', but in fact is a holistic synthesis of the two.

Good permaculture design is about developing powers of observation, 
deduction and problem-solving by working with nature’s patterns- ideally 
being intuitively alert and tuning in to the messages and energies which 
come from the living earth around us. In traditional cultures such wisdom 
and knowledge has often been communicated down through generations, 
learning the forms of the trees, the lie of the land, the songs of the 
soil, and what these all mean.... But most of us, through no fault of our 
own, have now forgotten the instinctively earthright ways. We live in an 
industrialised and commodified society where the cycles have been broken. 
Most of us simply don’t have ‘earthright’ ethics and skills passed on down 
to us by our parents and elders anymore. But if we are to once again be 
reconnected, sustainable ways will need to be relearned, and that isn't 
going to just fall out of the sky. Most of us are going to need stepping 
stones to help us on the way, and just as we can use hand tools to assist 
us when we cultivate our land, so too we can develop ‘thinking tools’ to 
make the job easier.

Modelled on how people actually learn from experience, The 'Action Learning 
Cycle’ is one useful addition to our tool-kit. Although it might sound like 
something that escaped from a management-training manual, in reality it’s 
simply a step by step cyclical process of task analysis following a pattern 
of Research, Plan, Act, Reflect... I suspect that most of us to some extent 
do this all the time anyway on a subconscious/ instinctive level and maybe 
don't feel a need to go through this in a formalised way or to record our 
thoughts. However, for people like me, who tend to have quite disorganised 
and cluttered mental processes, it can be helpful to use this cycle on a 
conscious/deliberate level from time to time.

RIGHT TREE, WRONG PLACE

This doesn't have to be some heavy, rigorous process- I have a small back 
garden, not much more than 28’ x 17’, into which I've planted a number of 
fruiting trees, mainly on dwarfing rootstocks. A few years ago a friend 
gave me a cherry plum- at the time it was about 6" high and looked pretty 
inoffensive in it’s pot. However, 5 years on it's about 20' tall and 
showing no signs of slowing down. It's a lovely tree with delicious melt in 
the mouth golden fruits, and in some ways it's great that it's done so 
well. However I think I finally have to face the fact that it's in the 
wrong place, and will have to cut it down. Maybe I’ll coppice it, or 
perhaps propagate it from it’s fruit stones or root suckers and try growing 
cherry plums at a more appropriate site, maybe a local forest garden 
project where I might have a go at training it as a fruiting hedge... A 
straightforward story of the average permaculture plot I’m sure, but it 
might be useful to see how the stages of an Action Learning Cycle could 
apply here.

RESEARCH; 6 or 7 years ago I read somewhere that cherry plums are quite 
tasty and decided I'd like to grow some in my garden.

PLAN; I spotted a place in the garden that I thought might be suitable for 
a cherry plum.

ACT; I planted a 6-inch tall cherry plum seedling that a friend gave me.

REFLECT; 6 years later it's 20 ft tall and still going, so it's clear that 
I've planted it in an inappropriate place.

So now I'm on the second round of the cycle;

RESEARCH; I've been asking questions, reading books and chatting to people 
about cherry plums, getting different views and opinions, gathering data 
about them....

PLAN; Now I'm thinking about what to do next- shall I coppice it? Grub it 
out? Leave it alone and just hope that it will stop growing? Shall I plant 
cherry plums in my forest garden? As standards, coppiced, or as a 'fedge'?

ACT; Hopefully I'll make the best decisions possible with the information I 
now have and the assessments I'm thus able to make.

REFLECT; Where I'll probably realise that I've got it wrong again and go 
back to the beginning of the cycle once more. Or maybe I’ve got it right- 
how can I then transfer the lessons and knowledge I’ve gained to other 
situations...

OK, so maybe that’s just too painfully obvious and like common sense for 
most readers, but how many of us DON'T actually participate in action 
learning cycles and just go through life making the same mistakes over and 
over again? If my
response were to say; "Oh well, that cherry plum was a bit big for my 
garden. Still, I'll cut it down and put another one in the same spot and 
with a bit of luck it won't grow so big this time", then clearly I wouldn't 
have learned from my experiences... A laughable example- who'd be that 
daft? Yet how many of us are just like that with the things that are REALLY 
important, like the patterns we get into in our lives, relationships and 
behaviours, the negative ways of being that cause us anger, hurt and 
disempowerment over and over again?

Magnify this to a macro/global level, and it doesn't take much to see that 
we are living in a society/culture/world where we clearly DON’T 
experientially learn. We KNOW that greenhouse gasses, pollution, soil 
erosion, industrialised agriculture, car culture, militarism, consumerism, 
etc, are messing us up and killing us, but are we as a species observing, 
absorbing the lessons and amending our behaviours? Doesn't look like it 
from where I'm standing right now...

At the moment Action Learning and other creative and positive thinking 
tools aren't taught much in the schools of the world. But by ‘thinking 
globally but acting locally’ or ‘starting at the end of our noses’, 
permaculturists and other earthright world-change workers can make positive 
use of such techniques, particularly in community or group development 
settings, where meetings often have a habit of being lengthy, boring, 
indecisive and divisive. Focused attention to the ‘Research, Plan, Act, 
Reflect’ cycle can have real meaning and value when applied to questions 
such as; "Why is our LETS scheme failing?" "How can we develop a safe and 
sustainable integrated traffic system in our town centre?" "How can we 
ensure our box scheme is economically viable?" "How do we complete a 
successful funding application?", "How do we plan our next permaculture 
course to be fully inclusive?" Equally, Action Learning can be invaluable 
within the context of our individual personal development, particularly 
when utilising the ‘Set’ model.

THE ACTION LEARNING SET

An ‘Action Learning Set’ (sometimes called a 'Vision Support Group') will 
typically consist of three to four people who agree to meet on a regular 
basis, say, every couple of months, to address and reflect on the common 
issues that concern them. Each person will take it in turns to speak, 
uninterrupted, for between twenty minutes to half an hour, whilst the 
remainder of the group will give high quality focused listening attention. 
In itself this is something of a rarity in our high speed, sound bite 
culture- good listening is a skill that needs to be learned and practised. 
It is important to emphasise that the purpose of this session is not so 
much to elicit advice or assistance from the rest of the group, as it is a 
way of providing a chance for the speaker to clarify their own thought 
processes. To work things through by literally ‘thinking out loud’, and 
thus finding their own ways forward.

To be successful, an Action Learning Set requires a number of ground rules, 
agreed in advance by all participants- these might include;
‘Equal time for all participants to speak’
'Give good listening attention to the person speaking'
‘No interrupting’
‘No judgements’
‘No rescuing'- or offering to help or advise, however well meant (Remember- 
this is YOUR space to work out your problems and solutions!)
‘Speak in the first person' (Take ownership of your statements- "I think
", 
"I say
", not "people think
", "People say
")
‘The proceedings of the meeting will be kept confidential between 
participants’ (An Action Learning Set is all about trust and creating a 
safe space)
‘The Set will meet for an agreed amount of time, to be clearly 
differentiated from any other events which may occur once structured Set 
business is concluded’ (End the session with a small ritual, eg, a handclap 
or ring a bell, in order to 'mark' it's closure and ensure that 'Set stuff' 
isn't carried over into, say, the pub socialising afterwards)

It also helps to create the right conditions- an informal atmosphere, with 
soft lights, no distractions, comfy furnishings (cushions on the floor?) 
and refreshing non-alcoholic drinks on hand can be provided anywhere- 
somebody's front room (or back garden) would do just fine!

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Set participants might find it helpful to create a structure around which 
to hang their thinking. The following four questions can be useful in 
providing such a framework, and are often used in permaculture support 
sessions;
What is going well for me? This is an empowering way of reflecting on and 
celebrating our achievements so far and our capacity to do well. It is 
deliberately addressed first as a way of setting a positive tone, a 
contrast to our often deeply ingrained habit of complaining and seeing 
ourselves in a negative light.
What am I finding difficult, or could I be doing differently? Often the 
very act of speaking about what appear to be barriers and difficulties can 
result in ways forward becoming apparent, in developing new perspectives 
and alternative answers that reduce the difficulties that we perceive... 
Remember the permaculture principle that ‘The solution lies in the problem...’
What is my long term vision or goal? Spend some time creating a solid 
picture in your head of where you want to be. Developing a clear vision of 
our own long term aims and objectives can be one of the most important 
steps towards turning them into reality, whether it’s to build your own 
straw bale house, become a Tai Chi master, reduce your personal Ecological 
Footprint to zero or buy and manage from your own sustainable woodland...
What is my next achievable step? Moving towards realising that goal is a 
pathway of change, and like any journey needs to be undertaken in 
manageable stages. What practical steps can you take today? Enrol on that 
gardening evening class? Get your rusty old bike out of the shed? Join your 
local LETS system? In much the same way as the road signs will change as 
you travel from London to Glasgow, so the next phases of your personal 
journey (your future ‘next achievable steps’) will become apparent as their 
relevance arises. And remember these are YOUR next achievable steps, not 
anybody else's.

Using Action Learning Set methods may seem awkward, stilted and artificial 
at first, but with practice can be highly effective, allowing a release of 
emotions and ideas that we might not otherwise be used to openly 
expressing. Participants can be free to develop their own avenues of 
thought, laugh a lot, cry, be at a loss for words and make mistakes which 
might otherwise be 'forbidden'. Paradoxically, what might initially appear 
to be it's somewhat overly structured approach can unleash wild thinking, 
new perspectives and fresh approaches, leading to enhanced understanding, 
insights and creativity that we can apply to our permaculture work.

Graham Burnett

The theory and practice of Action Learning is covered in greater depth in 
'The Permaculture Academy Of Britain Action Learning Manual' by Andy 
Langford (1997).

Thanks to Stefania Strega, Andy Langford and Janet Baraclough for their 
inputs and comments.

Further reading;

David Kolb, Experiential Learning, Experience As The Source Of Learning & 
Development, 1984, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall

Andy Langford, Designing Productive Meetings & Events- How To Increase 
Participation & Enjoyment, South Oxfordshire District Council


The Online Permaculture Communities (email lists and newgroups)


PCAL (UK) online created by Graham Burnett


NB. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS WEBSITE IS BEING OVERHAULED AND UPDATED IN ORDER 
TO PROVIDE A RELEVANT RESOURCE FOR THE PERMACULTURE LEARNING COMMUNITY 
WITHIN THE UK- WATCH THIS SPACE!


Permaculture Learners email list


site updated27/9/2005

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
(805) 962-2571
sbpcnet at silcom.com
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in new directions, in order to
grow." - Anonymous

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