Liberation Ecology Project

Holmgren and Temford’s Ethics icon

(1) Care for the Earth
(2) Care for People
(3) Redistribute Surplus

These three ethics have always been at the heart of Permaculture thinking and teaching. At least, that is what folks in the Permaculture movement claim - including me. They are hard to disagree with too strenuously, no? This is partially because they so vague. This abstraction is part of their strength - they are widely appealing, and serve as a commonsense and positive entry point to draw people into a conversation.

The trick is, their abstraction is also part of their weakness. I have often found that the Ethics are taught in a watered-down and feel-good style, that does more to create good vibes and excitement than it does to challenge students, or help designers navigate the sometimes-murky waters of choosing clients, partners, and projects. If they get reduced to a story about tending our garden, then sharing our kale with our friends, and then composting our “surplus” kitchen scraps back into the garden, then what does the movement really gain by having ethics at all? Other than to say - in Permaculture, it is so easy to be ethical!
Continue reading ‘Thinking about Permaculture Ethics’

The Liberation Ecology Project - which has really been just me for the past six years - has finally found a nest. I’m working with a small group of grad students, undergrads, and professionals here in Burlington, to found a new project. We are called the Ecological Learning Institute (ELI for short), and our mission is to do ecological design, research, and education, in partnership with grassroots community projects. Our mission is social justice, and our toolbox is ecological design. The Liberation Ecology vision, toolbox, and workshop curriculum, can now be incorporated in a larger collective project. This is what I’ve always been hoping and working for. I feel like the real work can begin now!

Our website is under construction, and in the mean time you can find us here, on Facebook.
We are based in Burlington, Vermont currently, but not for long. We will be relocating in the next year to a major city in the northeast. We’re not sure which one yet! We’re doing outreach and research to find our way to a place that the local leadership, the need, and the potential for change are strong. We won’t land anywhere without an invitation.

We’ve just formed over the past 10 months, but we’ve been busy…
• Design and installation of a gorgeous raised bed garden at a Burlington grade school (see picture above).
• Facilitating a community-driven design process of an ecological master plan, for the landscape of that same school (and supporting a Masters thesis at the same time).
• Running an ecological design / social design workshop curriculum on campus here.
• Managing field trials on the effects of biochar on organic vegetable production.
• Mentoring a dozen or so undergraduate interns through various service learning projects.

And lately, as a part of Ecological Learning Institute, I’ve been working with the flagship urban agriculture project, Growing Power, out of Milwaukee, WI, to incorporate mushroom production with their integrated urban ag model. If you don’t know their work already, check them out. Their combination of sophisticated ecological design and a grounded, inspiring, community development model will blow your mind. I’m so excited to be working with them. Check out a post on the Growing Power blog about the first (of five) workshops here.

I’ll post more soon, I promise.

The bulk of the workshop is divided into two sections: Context & Design.

0. Introductions

I. Context (50-60%)
Objective: re-frame our current situation in terms of “deeper” functional and historical relationships; realize some points of leverage and intervention that might otherwise remain hidden.

This section alternates between:

A. Small-group active learning: create a new “snapshot” of present-day social and ecological relationships using the Daylighting mapping exercises.
B. Lecturette: illustrate and explain long-term trajectories in human cultural evolution along key variables; show relationship between social caste and ecological extraction.

II. Design (40-50%)
Objective: foster opportunities for new interventions; bridge knowledge gained in first section with thinking about current and desired projects.

This section follows a similar pattern of alternation between interaction and presentation, with less small-group discussion, and more large-group.

A. Offer design criteria, tools, and techniques, to frame the transition from theory to application, and stimulate fresh and provocative project ideas.
B. Discuss, dissect, experimentally adopt, playfully provoke: wrestle with questions of application in our lives and projects.
D. Review currently existing projects that can function as models and inspirations for our work.
E. Invite and challenge participants to articulate daring desires, concrete goals, and doable next steps, in order to bring the work home and into their lives and projects.

III. Feedback and Closing