Permaculture Action Network

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Permaculture Action Network is a continent-wide collective that mobilizes thousands of people to take direct action on regenerative projects with a diversity of groups and organizations. We collaborate with performing artists and cultural events to invite people into hands-on work that regenerates ecosystems and catalyzes the movement for a just transition.

We work at the edge of art, music, culture, and the regenerative community movement, offering people a pathway to take action locally where they live through Permaculture Action Days, Permaculture Action Hubs, and Permaculture Action Courses; our approach is to create events that are easy to engage in and sprout long-lasting movement involvement.

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Permaculture Action Days

Permaculture Action Day

Permaculture Action Hub

Permaculture Action Courses

What is a Permaculture Action Day?

Permaculture Action Days are one-day events in which we mobilize people from a concert or cultural event to a day of hands-on direct action creating regenerative systems and common spaces in our own cities and communities. Hundreds of people at a time have come out to Permaculture Action Days to build urban farms, community gardens, public food forests, natural buildings, rainwater catchment systems, greenhouses and other systems in 65 cities across the continent. These days of community action are always free and host workshops, music, and shared food in addition to the hands-on projects being facilitated.

What is a Permaculture Action Hub?

Permaculture Action Hubs are an essential gathering place at any event. We set up Permaculture Action Hubs at large gatherings and music festivals as a central space for workshops, classes, panel discussions, and skill-shares focused on regenerative ecology, social transformation, community building, and permaculture design.  This is a space where people can network with individuals and projects, as well as catalyze community organizing and action.  

Past Permaculture Action Hubs have included the main workshop and speaker space, a networking node for bioregional organizing and informal workshop sessions, and demonstration systems of natural buildings, greywater filtration, solar ovens, garden beds, alternative energy, and more. Past speakers have included Dr. Vandana Shiva, City Repair’s Mark Lakeman, Erica Wohldman, Penny Livingston, James Stark, Lydia Neilsen and many other amazing facilitators.

What is a Permaculture Action Course?

Our permaculture courses teach both hands-on techniques and social tools that participants can use to create greater connection and sustainability in their life, today and for future generations. Permaculture is a design science for regenerative ecological systems and holistic socio-economic structures that mimic nature. In addition to methods and skills for designing and implementing physical systems, these courses offer methods for community organizing to bring visions and dreams of a better world into reality.

BIOREGIONAL CREWS

BioRegional Crews are the primary organizing unit of Permaculture Action Network. They live where we organize. They know the local needs. They’re building networks with the projects and facilitators around the region.

These crews organize Permaculture Action Days in their area, as well as courses, workshops, and other events.

We organize our crews by BioRegion, a geographical space that is defined by watershed, landform, climate, and culture, rather than by borders, state lines, and city or municipal boundaries. We do this to remind ourselves to connect to a sense of place through our relationship with the earth and one another.

Go to our Organizational Structure page to learn about the sociocratic structure through which these BioRegional Crews practice participatory decision making and horizontal governance.

The term “permaculture” is fairly new, but the essence of the design science and practice itself is the amalgamation of indigenous wisdom specific to place and culture from all around the planet.  It is important to recognize the root of permaculture in indigenous land-use practices, foodways, and lifeways.

From the Mayan Milpa systems as a model of permaculture’s food forests, to South China, Thailand, and Indonesia’s cultivation of rice in paddy fields in combination with fish as a model of aquaponics and aquaculture systems, indigenous cultures have given innumerous practices to the design system we think of as permaculture.  What also must be confronted is that a great many of these practices and systems were not in fact “given,” but were taken by colonial forces that too often throughout history have taken not only the cultural traditions and practices of indigenous people, but often their land, their languages, and often their lives.   

In many ways we can say that permaculture is largely “indigenous peoples’ understanding of how to live in place.”  

These ways of observing and working with nature are the legacy and heritage of indigenous peoples all over the globe. They do not call it permaculture. They have often not heard the word, yet they understand nature’s patterns and use them to create polycultural, perennially based, energy efficient homes, gardens, farms, communities… These are found all over the world where remnants of those cultures have been allowed to survive. They deserve acknowledgement and respect.

So no one actually ‘invented’ permaculture. Good ideas and good practices have been borrowed from indigenous cultures. These have been mixed with appropriately scaled renewable technologies and low embodied energy materials to try and design the most ecologically elegant solutions to our current problems”  – Maddy Harland; Permaculture and Indigenous Culture

Take Action with Permaculture Action Network

We partner with artists, musicians, and performers to empower their fans to action! We also love to have musicians play at our action days! Turn your work into an inspiration for real action in the world.

What is Direct Action?

By direct action, we mean those actions that directly create the change we want to see in the world. This is not to disregard those actions and efforts that work with institutional power to push change; nor to disregard those efforts that take the shape of lifestyle choices, artistic expression, or ….. However, we are inspired by the immediacy of direct action and feel this empowerment every time we use our own hands to plant a garden that feeds a family or build a tiny home village that houses those otherwise living on the street.

We encourage you to find each other. Turn fleeting encounters into real relationships. Learn skills from one another. Find common ground from which to work towards a common future. Begin to understand yourselves as something more decisive than a group of friends. From there, anything is possible:

  • A Permaculture Action Day has been the ground on which hundreds of people have found one another and built something together: a relationship, an organization, an action. In lieu of an upcoming action day in which to find each other, we offer you the following resources for discovering organizations, projects, and people near you:
    • X Pollinators – a directory of orgs, nonprofits, collectives sorted by issue and region
    • NuMundo – a directory of permaculture farms, regenerative land projects, and other “impact centers” you can visit, learn from, and maybe even become an integral part of
    • Our collection of Resource Lists by city with some of our favorite organizations

Nothing can replace the visceral experience of meeting one another face-to-face, but the internet can be a pathway to connectivity in an otherwise isolated world. Start here; and get offline and on the ground as quickly as you can. From there, life will take you.

Social Change and Ecological Regeneration Start with You.

Being an agent of change in your community alone is hard. We are here to help you find allies and make it fun to be the change you want to see. Since 2014, we have held 62 Permaculture Action Days in 51 cities across 23 U.S. states. In doing so, we’ve partnered with 12 different artists and music festivals, mobilizing 9,430 people to take action on the ground hand-in-hand with more than 80 organizations and projects. Here’s how you can join us:

¤ Want to Learn More About Permaculture?
Take a course or attend our workshop to learn more about ways to utilize the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems that teach us how to care for people, care for the earth and do so fairly.

¤ Bioregonal Crews
We partner with local organizations to put together action days on their project sites, spreading ecological education, and bringing the crowds out of concert halls and into their spaces. Get in touch with us to inquire about bridging your organization and community action with music, land, and culture.

As we move into 2017, the structure of our organization is growing into a network of BioRegional Crews across the continent putting on action days, spreading ecological education, and bringing the crowds out of concert halls and into the streets and gardens. Get in touch with us to inquire about starting up or joining a BioRegional Crew of the Permaculture Action Network where you live!

¤ Find local organizations and projects to work with in your area?
Get involved with local projects, places, and organizations that are making the shift towards a more permanent human culture (perma-culture) through education, community building, and action

  • Find local organizations working on efforts you care about:
    • Use X Pollinators’ platform

 

These hundred plus projects and organizations include:

Urban Farms                                       Community Centers    Public Food Forests

School Orchards & Gardens             K-12 Campuses & Universities         Permaculture Center

EcoVillages                                          Low-Income Housing Residences Cooperatives

Land Trusts                                          Indigenous Culture Centers Community Gardens

Composting Facilities                         Art Spaces                Seed Farms

WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?

Through a set of principles for social and agricultural design, permaculture utilizes the patterns and features of natural ecosystems to design human-made systems that care for people, care for the earth, and redistribute the surplus. From agro-ecological food systems like forest gardens, to sequestering carbon through soil building, to catching and storing rainwater for irrigation and drinking, permaculture works with nature to meet the needs of people while regenerating the natural world. Permaculture is a design science; a movement; and a toolbox for transitioning to a just and sustainable way of living.

Check out the principles and values that guide our Permaculture Action Days.


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    We use email to contact about what we’re up to including upcoming Permaculture Action Days, Action Hubs, Workshops & Courses. We organize events in the Continental United States and try to send pertinent information based on your geographic location.  We respect your privacy; we never share your email or information with outside parties. Thank you for being part of the movement. We couldn’t do this without you!

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    View previous campaigns.

    • At Oregon Eclipse I spent the majority of my week in the Permaculture Action Network area, attending the classes and taking in as much as I could. I went straight home after Oregon Eclipse and I formed a Community Placemaking team in my town. Our first few projects have already gone under way, and we're off to an official start of transforming Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
      Quade VargaOctober, 2017
    • "I had the opportunity to work with these wonderful people in Nashville Tennessee. An amazing event, excellent live music while we worked, happy and inclusive people came out no matter the weather. Keep up the amazing work!! Soo much love, don't miss these events when they visit your town!"
      Mariah FrancesDecember 12, 2018
    • "Yes ! I just went to an Action Day in Detroit and this is exactly what I needed in my life right now meet so many amazingly incredible people , learn life long usefull skills ! Premature Action Network is the future of our Hope , the way to go , We All Human being should adopt this Self-sufficient life style to save mother Earth ! Thank you so much for doing this ... Thank you thank you Much Love !"
      Rebeca ArrndocxNovember 12, 2018