TERRA PERMA PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE (PDC)
- BOOKINGS NOW OPEN FOR APRIL 2020 -
Thanks for your interest in our Permaculture Design Course. Terra Perma returned to teaching in 2019 after a little down time whilst moving to Pemberton to commence triaging the family farm and setting up our new life down there. Our first Pemberton-based "petite class size" PDC re-invigorated our desire to teach and our delight to share all that there is to offer in this beautiful corner of the South West. The next PDC to be held in Pemberton will run from Tuesday April 14th to Saturday April 25th.
The two week course will be all you've come to expect from the Terra Perma Team. We have found that there is almost too much to see, when it comes to site visits, hands on activities and our usual practical, engaging, logical, respectful and highly organised learning environments. After a highly enjoyable Spring 2019 PDC, we've elected to set an earlier April 2020 PDC to capture the combination of pleasant weather / learning / growing conditions, with a lower farm activity period and school holidays to enable those with school aged children better access.
Please note that although the location is rural, the content will cover all PDC requirements which addresses urban, small scale and broad scale applications with the weighting of time / practical activities adjusted to meet the needs and interests of the group. It will therefore be relevant to all design contexts.
Please see below for more information, head to the "Registration" form via this LINK
or get in touch with us via our "Contact Us" form if you have any further queries.
Best Regards,
Jolene and Charles
The Terra Perma Team
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The two week course will be all you've come to expect from the Terra Perma Team. We have found that there is almost too much to see, when it comes to site visits, hands on activities and our usual practical, engaging, logical, respectful and highly organised learning environments. After a highly enjoyable Spring 2019 PDC, we've elected to set an earlier April 2020 PDC to capture the combination of pleasant weather / learning / growing conditions, with a lower farm activity period and school holidays to enable those with school aged children better access.
Please note that although the location is rural, the content will cover all PDC requirements which addresses urban, small scale and broad scale applications with the weighting of time / practical activities adjusted to meet the needs and interests of the group. It will therefore be relevant to all design contexts.
Please see below for more information, head to the "Registration" form via this LINK
or get in touch with us via our "Contact Us" form if you have any further queries.
Best Regards,
Jolene and Charles
The Terra Perma Team
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Terra Perma April 2020 PDC -10 day course + Recap day* Tuesday April 14th to Saturday April 25th 2020 Typical hours are 9:30 - 17:30 Two rest days will be included within this period. Recap Day - TBC as a group / remote log in will be offered Terra Perma Design educators Charles and Jolene, with the help of guest educators, run a full time Permaculture Design Course (72hr, 2 week course + recap / design presentation day). Take control of your future and be the change you want to see in the world. Permaculture thinking and design creates a harmony of human and nature's needs while creating richly productive systems. Permaculture's founder Bill Mollison maintains, "The problems of the world are becoming increasingly complex but the answers remain embarrassingly simple." With two presenters facilitating all lessons and activities, we can effectively address all the needs of the group and provide a very diverse experience base from which to educate. Having more than one presenter also offers more opportunities to gel with a teacher and more opportunities to chat in break times rather than waiting for time with one teacher. Additional presenters will depend on course numbers and the topic specific guest presenter availability. We pride ourselves on creating a practical, engaging, logical, respectful and organised learning environment. You'll find it quite a technical course and, whilst we do lots of walking discussions, activities and visits to design/ example sites, there will be significant classroom based learning. As long as this suits your learning style, then you are guaranteed of receiving way too much information rather than being left wanting more. You are encouraged to ask any questions at any time throughout the course - your questions will be the same as your peers! Through this course you will become part of the permaculture family. We’re here to support each other in our journeys, we are all peers in learning with nature the ever present teaching and inspiration. The course certificate will be awarded on the completion and mentored review of a draft Permaculture design for a location of the student's choosing. In response to feedback, a bonus day has been added to this course. This day will be dedicated to this review process through discussions with teachers and peers. The 'presentation day' is scheduled about one month after the PDC to enable the digestion and application of the class and practical material in a methodical manner to a specific design space. Where students are unable to complete their draft in time for the review or are unable to attend (in person or electronically), an alternate meeting should be arranged within 6 months of the course's final class session to obtain certification. 
Course Timings
The days will be defined closer to the time, however at this stage to avoid Easter Monday (April 13th) and the Balingup Small Farm Field Day (Saturday, April 18th - a highly recommended field trip which we'll offer as an optional part of the course anyway) the tentative days are - Tuesday 14th to Friday 17th, Sunday 18th to Tuesday 20th, and Thursday 22nd to Saturday 25th. This arrangement will be confirmed closer to the course based on the availability of sites for visiting and the provision of the best learning experience for attendees. Course hours will typically be 9:30 - 5:30 including 1 hour of combined breaks. However there may be after hours and in between days activities which are optional, but likely highly beneficial. The Recap day will be arranged for a later date and a discussion will be held during the course to try to accommodate as many of the attendee's availability preferences as possible. This day also serves to reinforce the commitment Terra Perma has for supporting its students beyond the completion of the class content. Location The course will run from at various locations in Pemberton with tours to locations farther a-field. Closer to the time the details of accommodation, food and other logistics options will be provided to assist with budget and comfort requirements. Field trips will be included in the course timetable and transport will be arranged. We're very excited about the opportunities available down here and its very tricky to narrow them down to fit within the education framework - hence the potential for "after hours / day off" activities. There is so much to see and talk about. More information to come on this. Presenters Charles and Jolene will be the core team with Charles specialising in teaching team and Jolene split between teaching and the logistics / food. Guest teachers will be present for appropriate topics to ensure as many personal experiences / teaching methods are presented throughout the course as possible. We are planning to increase our guest presenter contributions and will be hoping to incorporate more educators including some PDC graduates to provide the experience of presenting PDC topics or discussing their own experiences and hence grow the Permaculture educator pool. 
Food
We love to support the community and so have recently trialed a combined fundraiser for a local kids sports club with our offering of home made sweet and savoury morning and afternoon teas. This worked brilliantly so we'll be looking to continue this support of our local community. We will also ensure there are gluten free options available (due to our own dietary requirements), as well as some local fresh and processed produce as seasonally available. Beyond this, if you have any dietary requirements please let me know and we'll do our best to ensure you don't miss out. We also provide tea and coffee facilities (yes we like proper coffee too!) of course. The food is always a highlight of the course... unless you're dieting :). Lunch is BYO, however there are shops/eateries just minutes away with a great range of healthy and exciting food options. Basic cooking/kitchen facilities will be available for heating, serving and washing depending on locations, but we'll discuss this closer to the time. Cost $1400 gets you: ($1200 early bird payment before July 31st)
The length and immersion of the topics (trial by ordeal) brings our PDC groups very close together creating the most important and significant 'benefit' of a doing a PDC. You get peers at the same point in life, and become part of Terra Perma's extended family with its life long Permie support service. Yes, after this course you will be part of the family and we are here to support each other in our journeys. Having a group of approachable, knowledgeable friends attempting the same life changes is actually the most important thing to come out of your PDC experience, and something online courses can't offer. Peer support is very important when so many around us are not interested in being a change agent. 
Why do a PDC with Terra Perma ? Terra Perma have had 8 years and 11 PDC's to refine our course from regurgitating permaculture curriculum, to actually working permaculture thinking into what people need to know about nature and want to know about living in Perth and rural WA. We are making ecological common sense common again. We teach everyone to design with Permaculture's toolkit, how much detail you learn on top of that will depend on where you are starting from. With new ways of thinking and patterning like nature you will look at any situation and start designing a better one, it will be your new default setting. Apologies in advance :). You will leave this course with new eyes, brains and opportunities - just have a look around the WA Permaculture community and see what all the amazing Terra Perma grads (and, in turn, their students) are doing! As most things are learned by doing, you can have access to all the combined wisdom, ingenuity and ideas of Charles, Jolene and others who have learned from both the failure and success of doing. We're keen to test everything that's worth trying and find out what works and what does not! This is not something that can be read in books and, while you will need to learn this all yourself, hearing our experiences will save you a lot of time. Many poster-child Permaculture techniques are not suitable for the WA climate/soil, so if one simply copies from the Eastern States and overseas Permaculture books, then failure and disappointment is highly likely. Over the duration of the course you will learn how to design and adapt these techniques to our unique set of conditions, so you can avoid blindly copying situation specific ideas and fads (e.g. herb spirals, swales, corrugated iron raised beds, elevated hugelkultur, aquaponics, vertical gardens, etc). As you will learn, in the right situation these are all great techniques, however most are prone to failure in Perth's conditions if not intelligently and situationally adapted. So you can be assured that we offer a localised, accredited, and design- based PDC. Land development groups, community gardens, community associations, local councils, rural land managers and private businesses choose us as their ecological, sustainable educator due to our reliability and return on investment. Permaculture design and ecological thinking is universal and global in its application. With us, not only will you specialise in urban and rural design in WA, but gain the ecological know how and design processes to apply it anywhere in the world, at any point in your life, and on any scale. That is the true beauty of Permaculture. |
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If you cannot make it down our way, or the timing does not suit, never fear, there are some other great opportunities being offered which might suit your needs. These links represent, to the best of our knowledge and as of April 2019, what else is on offer in WA:
1) The Fair Harvest full time PDC held in Margaret River.
2) Perth's Permaculture Educators Alliance are running several full and part time PDCs across 2020.
3) Swamp Road Farm will host PDC in Benger.
As PDC's come up within the Perth and south west WA regions, they should be added to the information issued by PermacultureWest, so we'd recommend you kept an eye on either their Facebook page or check with the providers who are all listed here on the PermacultureWest website.
If you cannot make it down our way, or the timing does not suit, never fear, there are some other great opportunities being offered which might suit your needs. These links represent, to the best of our knowledge and as of April 2019, what else is on offer in WA:
1) The Fair Harvest full time PDC held in Margaret River.
2) Perth's Permaculture Educators Alliance are running several full and part time PDCs across 2020.
3) Swamp Road Farm will host PDC in Benger.
As PDC's come up within the Perth and south west WA regions, they should be added to the information issued by PermacultureWest, so we'd recommend you kept an eye on either their Facebook page or check with the providers who are all listed here on the PermacultureWest website.
