Back in Austin now, and here for another two weeks.
The tour was fantastic. When I introduce myself as a presenter, I often say something like: “I do this work because I want to be in conversation with people who are hungry for change, and the tools for making it.” Since that happens to actually be the case, the week of workshops earlier this month was just about the best way I could imagine to spend my time. The participants, and the participation, were amazing. Folks from all different communities and background… urban and rural, ethinic-, age-, class-, and gender-diversity; the only common theme was wanting to be a part of changing the path we are on. I’ve never been so inspired.
Of course, the tour was also demanding, in some ways - kind of grueling, travel-wise. But while I don’t necessarily seek out a challenge like driving out of Manhattan at 6:00pm on a Friday, most of the demands of the tour were the kind of problem I want - adapting the workshop to different contexts, focusing more and more on participatory learning, getting challenged by participants to think in new ways…
Hopefully I’ll be doing some workshops in the midwest this May… more on that as things develop.
I was fortunate enough to teach at the R.U.S.T. Workshop this past weekend. Skotty and Stacy, from the amazing Rhizome Collective here in Austin, put on several of these Radical Urban Sustainability Trainings each year. They are a fantastic, weekend whirlwind introduction to a whole array of cheap, low-tech, ecological systems. My first post on this blog was a review of their first R.U.S.T held in the northeast, at the Albany Free School in Albany, NY.
In addition to helping out with some material on mushroom cultivation, biogas, natural systems, and where ever else it was useful, I gave a 1-hour Liberation Ecology workshop. Trying to squeeze participatory learning activities into a 1-hour timeslot was a crazy, but worthwhile, experiment. It was a good session, despite feeling rushed.
I’ll have a chance to continue the experiment in two weeks, when I do it again! I’ll be teaching another 1-hour workshop at the second R.U.S.T. training at the Rhizome this season. Space is still available in on the weekend of April 12,13, so get in touch with the Rhizome if you are interested.
