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Permaculture Design Course
Radical • Practical • Joyful

A 10-day Permaculture Design Course (PDC) based at the Permaculture-inspired Aldinga Arts Eco Village running late summer and autumn 2027.

Facilitated by Dani and Sam from Folk of all Trades, and wonderful guest speakers.

What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is a system we can all use to design and live simple, rewarding and regenerative lives. Its roots are acknowledged to be from Indigenous Cultures worldwide. Permaculture's modern framing draws on designing (gardens, farms, lives, communities) in line with three key ethics:

Earth Care (Care for Earth)
People Care (Care for people)
Fair Share (or Return of Surplus; or Set Limits to Population and Consumption; or other versions - this one will be an interesting one to explore on the course)

What is a Permaculture Design Course?

This PDC is a way to delve into permaculture over 72+ hours, giving you examples and information, but also inspiration and time to work on a design of your own. This could be a drawn garden design, but it could also be a mind map life design, or a project plan community design. The PDC goes through the design process which you can apply in a multitude of ways!

We hope this PDC is also a chance to meet like minded people, enjoy good food, and explore great ideas!

How is it radical?

To be radical is to push boundaries, question societal norms and established ways of doing things. We want a better world, so we need to create one.

Financially
- We want to make the course as inclusive and innovative as possible so we’re keen to offer three ways to “pay” for the course (more details below)
- You don’t have to decide at the start, you can wait and see over the course and explore which option suits you best and aligns with your lifestyle and ethos
Health and Wellbeing
- Mental and physical capacity fluctuates so we want to make sure you can access as much of the course as possible.
  - If you are unable to attend the course beforehand, we hope you would let us know with as much lead time as possible so that someone can enjoy a spot on this exciting course. But we don’t want to charge admin fees for something out of your control.
  - If you are unable to attend some sessions, if we run the course again in a similar format, we would happily welcome you along to those sessions at the next course so you don’t miss out on content and activities.
  - We ask participants to please save the backup date of Sunday 18th April in case the course facilitators are unwell and we need another day.
Accessibility
- This is less radical (we hope nowadays) but we want to stress that everyone is welcome. This will be an open space for everyone, no matter their abilities, expression or background. As long as people engage with respect and curiosity we welcome difference of opinion, but intolerance is not acceptable.
- We welcome interpreters, assistance animals, and are happy to discuss any needs. Please reach out to us beforehand if you think it’s best we know about any additional needs in advance.
Not online, no AI, no PowerPoint*
- *Exemptions for diagrams, maps, relevant photos e.g. for real-life examples.
- We are personally a bit over creating and seeing PowerPoint presentations, so we want to challenge ourselves to facilitating a course primarily without them*.
- You will still get LOADS of information, examples, case studies, segments of presentations etc. But it will be more immersive and practical than presentations alone.
Difficult topics, future scenarios
- We will not shy away from the big, tricky, or controversial topics.
- We hope to create a space where these topics can be explored without fear, and with creativity and kindness.
Help us find other ways to be radical!
- We welcome your ideas on how this course can be more radical and relevant in a changing world.

How is it practical?

We love learning and facilitating in-person and hands-on courses. The course will still include discussions and some presentations but we want to explore the depths of permaculture through tactile examples and skills.

We expect this to include:

Hands-on options (things you will do):
- Preparing a site for growing
- Growing from seeds and cuttings
- Fermenting food and drinks
- Working with nature (nature connection and reciprocity)
- Working with wood (green woodworking and basic building)
- Working with fibres (repairing, making, with fabrics and yarns etc)
- Designing your garden (or home / work / business / life!)
Examples and demonstrations (things you will see):
- Growing at different scales
  - Multiple permaculture gardens
  - Permaculture farms
- Eco buildings (strawbale, traditional timber frame [mortice and tenon], earth brick)
- Co-operative projects (shared chickens, goats, llamas, allotments)
Presentations and guest speakers will still be included:
- Permaculture ethics, principles, and applications
- Design systems and tools
- Reading the landscape
- Radical and future permaculture
- Soil (and compost) science
- First Nations perspectives and voices

We are reaching out to potential guest speakers soon and will let you know once we have them confirmed. We are glad to work with others to bring a range of voices to this PDC.

What your experience will include:

Current and future environmental / social / political contexts
Why permaculture
Ethics and principles
Gift economies
Local markets, LETS & localisation
Sustainable housing design
Sustainable community design
Design for work environments
Design for disaster

Design for personal health and family life
Social permaculture
Sharing circles
Vegetable & herb design and practice
Forest gardens / syntrophic agriculture
Reading landscape, land capability assessment, site mapping
Water management
Soils
Self care in the garden

Harvesting & preparing garden produce
Cob building
Composting
Vermicompost
Chickens
Goats
Recycling
Upcycling
Deep ecology
Nature connection
Forest bathing
Basketry
Wood carving

How is it joyful?

We feel like we all need a little joy right now. We will still explore serious, deep, and radical topics, but this will be done with a future focused on love and joy. The further we fall into permaculture, the more we are finding the importance of community, ritual, song, dance, creativity, and fun!

Throughout this course this will manifest as:

Participants who are respectful
Chances to sing together and dance together (optional)
Sharing food together (this is self-catered course to keep costs down, allow you to cater for your own food needs, and also share food with each other at times)
Ten years from now you may not remember all of the information from the course, but we hope we all remember the really good times we spent together, and the feeling of community
And we welcome the opportunity to be a little bit silly sometimes

“Payment” options:

We want to move away from the capitalist debt-based system as much as possible. Or put a better way, we want to move towards a more radical, resilient, and joyously connected community. To feel connected to one another and increase our social ties we believe in offering multiple non-monetary options. Many societies used to, and still do, operate to a significant extent outside of the monetary economy, where help is given and received based on surplus and need. It has been an interesting exercise to apply permaculture principles to “payments” options.

Below are more details about each ‘payment’ option. You may end up choosing one, a mix of two, or a blend of all three. You do not need to decide until the end of the course. During the course we will explore these together a little more too, and we want to be as upfront as possible about finances - something that is sometimes seen as taboo or in bad taste to talk about.

Gift economy
1. For some people on the course, this may be the best option (for you, for the facilitators, for the community). Gifts do not require something to be given in return, but a gift-based society often allows for gifts to circulate in a natural human way. Though no set expectation is given (it’s a gift after all!), we hope the ties and personal connections this fosters means we will all benefit and stay connected to support each other in the future.
Barter / trade
1. You may prefer to barter or swap for the course. We are excited to offer this course to people who want to attend, and we would love to give options for things we are in “want” of in return. We never know when people have these things and they are equally pleased to give them in return.
2. Some things we are open to bartering for:
  1. Massages / physio sessions
  2. Podcast production (teaching or provision)
  3. Small-scale off-grid solar and / or battery projects
  4. Fencing supplies (to guard younger plants from roos and rabbits*)
  5. Ride-on mower (to weed around younger plants*)
  6. 5x7+ trailer (for a mini camper project)
  7. Farm ute (an old ute to water establishing plants*)

*for our revegetation and forest planting projects which we will share more about during the course.

Pay what you feel
1. You may decide you would prefer to give a dollar amount, for whatever reason. This money would then go primarily towards the things we need and want, as well as dollar amounts towards our venue at the village hall, materials etc. Life has required dollar expenses for us, including projects we would have to pay for if we do not receive bartered goods or services, e.g. we are keen to one day buy a (ideally electric) ride-on mower and farm ute to help us weed and water more plants for our passion project of revegetation and forests currently underway at Kuitpo (we will visit this on the course!).

Please remember, you do not need to decide which option suits you beforehand. You are welcome to experience the PDC and see what suits you best. We genuinely mean it when we say that all options are very valid and very welcome. This is not a bait-and-switch or trap to extract money!

We truly want this course to be inclusive and with options beyond the capitalist monetary system.

Meet the Facilitators

Why Dani and Sam?

We have been facilitating permaculture and simple living workshops and courses for nearly 20 years now, and genuinely think this way of life and way of being makes everyone happier. We love to share what we know, and to see the impact these ways of living have on people’s lives.

From a permaculture practitioner experience, we (Dani and Sam) have been growing almost all our own vegetables for many years, including some staple foods like maize, and our own eggs and dairy for nearly a decade. We have grown our veg on 100m2 - a suburban garden size. We also have increasingly been growing trees - from tending orchards of fruit and nuts, to co-managing 125 acres of farmland for five years now by regenerating some areas to native vegetation, woodlands of fine timber forestry, fruit, and nut trees. We definitely have a hand in permaculture on different scales.

We chose the name Folk of all Trades because we like to work on a large range of skills (Folk/Jack of all trades) don’t claim to know everything (master of none). We are also incredibly passionate about folk crafts, skills, and experiences. Folk meaning of the people, of the community. We hope to share our folk skills, but also foster the folk knowledge in our community.

On a more personal note from each of us:

From Sam:

Growing up with a Mum who ended up being a Kindgergarten teacher for nearly 50 years gave me a great love of learning and interest in asking questions about the world. There were empty blocks and wild places nearby, which gave plenty of opportunity for observation, building projects, and engaging with the environment.

Studying subjects like Environmental Philosophy, which taught me to question the human-centred viewpoint of western culture, and Environmental Economics which showed the fundamental flaws in measuring the world through the lens of Gross Domestic Product set me on a path to at least attempt to engage with the world differently.

Coming back to Tarndanya-Adelaide after years living overseas (and meeting the lovely Dani) we longed to make a nest and garden where we could enact lots of the ideas we had come across while spending time in intentional communities and attending workshops. We came across the Aldinga Arts Eco Village through a tiny house building project, and met lots of excellent people who were volunteering their time and giving away materials to help.

We found an empty block in the Village and cold-called the owners to see if they would consider selling. Avoiding real estate agents meant we could offer a fair price and they could keep all of the funds. The next few years were spent designing, building our strawbale house, and setting up our home garden. It was during this time I attended a Permaculture Design Course at The Food Forest with the incredible Annemarie and Graham Brookman.

Now after having tried a lot of different permaculture projects at different scales, and wanting to impart some of our love of simple living skills, we are so excited to share what we’ve learned and continue to learn with our community.

From Dani:

As a child, I found a love of earth and its inhabitants through Geography - a subject I later taught with great passion (and elbow patches) at secondary schools.

Upon meeting Sam nearly twenty years ago while studying Environmental Science in northern Turtle Island (Canada) and moving to now-called Australia, I only truly felt at home once connected with the locals - the flora, fauna, and fungi.

The human community was exceptionally welcoming too, where roles on the Permaculture SA committee and organising the Australian Permaculture Convergence 2023 felt like the solid foundation that brought us to this course.

I deepened my connection to this region with inspiration from First Nations communities who showcase how connecting with our land-based ancestors can show us all how to live in harmony with other people, and our plant, animal, and fungi friends. This topic of appropriate ancestral connection, especially via food, herbs, ritual and ceremony, will be explored in the course.

I am exceptionally excited and honored to facilitate this course. We have thought about it for years, and now is the time. The time to try something meaningful, fun, radical. A course to meitheal (pronounce meh-hul) from my celtic ancestry, in Irish culture, meitheal is the deep bond and connection of community (to me, human and non-human), helping each other, especially in times of need, and it feels like the world could do with a little more of that.

Course Dates

Times: We expect days to run from 9.4am to 5pm (^with optional but highly encouraged evening activities on the two Saturdays)

1. Saturday, 6 February^

2. Sunday, 7 February

3. Sunday, 14 February

4. Sunday, 21 February

5. Sunday, 28 February

(No sessions on the March Womadelaide long weekend)

6. Sunday, 14 March

7. Sunday, 21 March

(No sessions on the Easter long weekend)

8. Sunday, 4 April

9. Saturday, 10 April^

10. Sunday, 11 April

(Pencilled in backup day: Sunday 18th April. In case of unforeseen facilitator sickness or inclement weather)

Expressions of Interest

If you are keen to attend this inaugural Permaculture Design Course we would love to hear from you! We imagine this PDC offering could be fairly popular, as many people may have been prevented from attending a course in the past for financial or geographical reasons.

As a result, we are keen to hear from people who would like to attend, as a first-in-best-dressed system does not seem fair to potential participants, or for us as facilitators.

If you are keen to attend the PDC, please email us by October 18th with the infomation below. We will then get back to you asap after that date (we estimate a month later in mid November).

We are asking for the information below to help us create an inclusive, diverse, community course
- Name
- Gender (so we can have a range of genders)
- Age (so we can have a range of ages)
- If you identify as First Nations (so we can include First Nations voices)
- If you identify as a Person of Colour (this is a weird term, but Permaculture has typically been pretty white, particularly in Australia, and we are keen to see people from diverse backgrounds involved. Let us know if there is a better term to use!)
- If you are an immigrant to Australia (so we can include diverse viewpoints and experiences)
- Postcode (so we can have a mix of geographies but also a local-ish community group)
We are asking the following questions so we can offer the course to a group of people who we hope will work well together and support each other - especially during the course, but perhaps beyond. We do not need long answers, do not worry about spelling and grammar. We welcome honest answers. This is not an interview, but just a way for us to get to know you better.
- Why do you want to do this radical, practical, joyful PDC?
- Do you have any connection with Permaculture SA, the Aldinga Arts Eco Village, or Willunga Environment Centre? (This is not a requirement, but these places and organisations are supporting us with the course so we would love to let them know if folks connected to them are keen)
- Do you know or have any experience with Folk of all Trades, Dani or Sam? E.g. have attended our workshops, know us personally or professionally?
- Do you have anything else you want us to know about?
Acknowledgement acceptance
- At the start of the course we will workshop together the course norms we hope to all foster (respect, inclusion etc) but we also hope you are keen to acknowledge the information below
- By applying for the course you will
  - Be respectful of others which includes examples below, but also expands beyond these examples
    - Being open to the experience and position of otherwise
    - Not attending if you are knowingly unwell with anything infectious. We may have people attending with extra health risks (please refer to our aim to support all our health and wellbeing as much possible [outlined above in “How is it radical?”])
  - Attend as much of the course as you are able to, including being on time. We know life happens, but really want most of the group there most of the time, so if you already can’t make quite a few dates then it might be best to wait for a future course where you can attend more of the sessions.

We do not know how many people will be keen to do this course. But if it is more than we have capacity for, we will let you know if we can fit you into this inaugural course or if we can instead offer you a spot on a future course if we run it again (we sincerely hope we can).

Partners

We couldn't run this exciting new Permaculture Design Course without help from others. This includes our beautiful venue, The Sharing Shed, under the Pago community banner in the Aldinga Arts Eco Village. (TBC with other partners soon; logos pending).

Other course information and logistics

Food

This is a self catered course. There is a large fridge, microwave, hobs and oven available at our venue, as well as plates, mugs, and cutlery etc.

Coffee and teas are available at our venue for making your own during breaks.

Fleurieu Roast has a wide range of teas, and on site roasted coffee available (Saturdays 9am to 3pm)

Slow Food Cafe hot drinks and food available (Saturdays and Sundays both 7am to 2pm)

Accommodation

For those who want accommodation in or around Aldinga, there are a number of options listed below:

Fleurieu Eco Escape (via Stayz), Aldinga Arts Eco Village, Aldinga, SA, 5173

Eco-village studio retreat (via AirBnB), Aldinga Arts Eco Village, Aldinga, SA, 5173

McLaren Vale Cabin Caravan Park, 48 Field Street, McLaren Vale, SA, 5171

BIG4 Port Willunga Tourist Park, 111 Cox Road, Aldinga Beach, SA, 5173

There are also many and varied B&Bs in the region.

For accommodation bookings, contact each venue direct.

Grow your permaculture journey with this
Radical • Practical • Joyful
Permaculture Design Course 2027

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Permaculture Design Course Radical • Practical • Joyful

What is Permaculture?

What is a Permaculture Design Course?

How is it radical?

Financially

Health and Wellbeing

Accessibility

Not online, no AI, no PowerPoint*

Difficult topics, future scenarios

Help us find other ways to be radical!

How is it practical?

Hands-on options (things you will do):

Examples and demonstrations (things you will see):

Presentations and guest speakers will still be included: