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Affinity Circles

Workshops at the Permaculture Gathering are organized into Affinity Circles.  Affinity Circle topics are proposed during the Open Space Planning on Friday.  The person who proposes these topics can be an expert on subjects or a novice seeking help.  Also these circles can be organized to facilitate collaboration or accomplishing a hands-on project at the gathering.

Open Space

Open Space is a way to format a group meeting, retreat or conference that generates communication, collaboration, innovation, and other solutions to issues, challenges, transitions and opportunities. Participants emerge from the process invigorated, refreshed, proud of their individual and collective accomplishments – and most importantly in action toward measurable results. It is a process in which every voice is heard and every issue is addressed and acted upon. It always works. Open Space is an interactive process -- participants meet in concurrent and overlapping mini-discussions around a theme or an issue, across departmental, hierarchical or historically opposite lines. The cross-pollination of moving from group to group and topic to topic in a non-linear way allows participants to jump quickly from familiar ways of thinking into innovation and action. The use of Open Space has been effective since the mid-1980's in a diversity of settings, cultures and countries. The method has been used by communities working towards peace, tribal and governmental leaders planning land use, community advocates and local government designing literacy programs, conference organizers holding conferences in this format, board members charting the future, architects designing pavilions for the Olympics, an entire town having a simultaneous discussion town meeting, and community workers helping communities rebuild and heal after times of war. This tool can be utilized by groups of 5 to over 2000 and the dynamics and the results are always the same: input from stakeholders at all levels, new ways of thinking and working, large amounts of work done rapidly, bringing perceived competitors together on issues and projects, organizational flexibility, interdepartmental or intercommunity teamwork, a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of passion and energy for the challenges ahead. Guidelines for Open Space - The rules are simple, although setting up the parameters for a meeting or conference in Open Space is based on the theories of complexity, self-organization and open systems. Open Space is designed to simulate that natural way people find each other and share ideas in all different cultures and countries. It is also based on the understanding that there is a great amount of wisdom and experience in any gathered group of people - that we are all 'experts' and can all contribute - a truly democratic process. — Steve Cochran

Classes & Workshops

There will be numerous classes & workshops to choose from!

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Starting with:
  • Shrooming with the Philosoforager, stand-up mycomedian, and epicure of the obscure, Alan Muskat.

  • Communicating as Our Life Depends Upon It with Steve Torma. As a lifelong peace, justice, and ecology educator and activist with over 40 years of community living, Steve has been teaching NVC (Non-Violent Communication) for the past few decades.

  • Dowsing with Lee Barnes of the Appalachian Dowsers who will sharpen our intuition skills by playful games and methods and gift you dowsing rods to take home with you.

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Here are other examples (plus many more) that you might expect during the gathering:
  • Plant Walks

  • The Ins and Outs of Community

  • How to Start a Residential Community

  • Tree Identification

  • Acorn Culture

  • Beneficial Bugs

  • Rocket Stove Building

  • Tropical Permaculture

  • Bone casting for Beginners

  • Group Songcraft

  • Intro to Permaculture

  • Regenerative Life Practices

  • Dowsing

  • Farming for the Market

  • Writer’s Circle

  • Tour of Mountain Gardens

  • Birds and Bird Language

  • Salves and Tincture Making

  • BioChar

  • Body-Mind-Soil

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