This year, Lucid University will include the Permaculture Action Hub - a central space for workshops, classes, panel discussions, and skill shares around regenerative ecology and social transformation, community building, and all things permaculture. Focused not only on education, but catalyzing community organizing and action, the hub is also a networking space to connect individuals with organizations doing food justice and sustainability work, as well as to connect individuals with each other to form new projects and groups.

Between 5pm and 7pm each night, the Permaculture Action Hub will host panel discussions. Friday night’s will be on Permaculture in Practice, while Saturday will focus on Social Permaculture. Read descriptions below:

Permaculture in Practice

This panel discussion will focus on how practitioners are using permaculture design methods and techniques to produce yields that meet peoples’ needs now. From regenerative agriculture and ecological food production, to systems that produce wood, medicine, fiber, and other materials, come explore the ways permaculture design methodologies can produce an abundance to meet the needs of our human communities in symbiotic relationship with our non-human ecological community.

Social Permaculture

This panel discussion focuses on the invisible structures of permaculture, rather than the visible structures (food forests, rainwater catchment systems, and natural buildings). Permaculture is more than a gardening technique, and is still more than permanent agriculture. A permanent culture includes all the invisible structures of how we organize in community, how we facilitate economic relationships, how we make decisions, resolve conflicts, and relate to one another. Come learn how community organizers are applying the ecological design principles of permaculture to the social realm, and learning from the patterns of nature how to transform our social systems.

Mycelial Mixers

Each night between 7 and 9pm, the Permaculture Action Hub will host a mycelial mixer.

Join in for some permaculture friendly social connectivity. Let’s bio-mimic the magic of the mycelium, as we create relations within our culture of regenerative goodness. Meet new friends and explore the sharing of information and resources. Come connect! It’s a perma-party; a function-stacking good time.

Workshops, Skill-Shares, and Panel Discussions

During the day, join a diversity of facilitators for workshops on compost and soil building, cooking and solar ovens, rainwater catchment and harvesting, making natural deodorants, ginger ale, and probiotic sodas, re-wilding, botanical medicines, and urban permaculture, as well as permaculture introductions, youth workshops, and more. Check out some of the offerings below; and make sure to stop by and check out the full schedule.

Introduction to Natural Building: The Power of Cob

Friday 12pm-1pm
The earth beneath our feet can also be our shelter. come learn about the magic of cob and other natural building techniques from legendary natural building pioneer Ray Cirino.

Introduction to Permaculture

Saturday 12pm-1pm

Permaculture is more than a gardening system, and more than just permanent agriculture. A permanent culture looks at the whole of human relationships, to our ecosystem and to each other, to find how we can meet the needs of people, care for the earth, and cycle back the energy that sustains us. Come learn about the principles and ethics that guide permaculture design, and the tools and techniques for regenerative living and healthy human communities.
Soils and Compost

Saturday 1pm-1:45pm

The health and wellness of any culture is directly correlated with the health of its soils. Come learn how to love up on your soils with an introduction to several composting strategies for our everyday lives.
Rainwater and Greywater: Relations and Solutions

Saturday 1:45pm-2:30pm

Water is life. Gain understandings for how to deepen your relationship with this most precious of resources. Through roof catchment, earthworks, grey water, and many other strategies we can catch and store water and cycle it in the landscape to produce abundant yields.

Urban Permaculture

Sunday 4pm-5pm

Permaculture in the city? Come learn about turning empty lots into farms and gardens, seed libraries, place-making, lead and contaminants in urban soil, and the yields of urban homesteading. We’ll touch on gentrification and urban farming, planting food not lawns, and look at how the permaculture principles guide community regeneration in the city.

Social Permaculture and Community Action

Sunday 5pm-6pm

We’ll apply the ecological design principles of permaculture to the social realm. Permaculture is not only about food forests, cob ovens, and rainwater catchment systems (visible structures). It’s also about how we relate to each other, make decisions, resolve conflicts, and organize ourselves in community (invisible structures). We’ll start here and then move into stories of direct actions like Occupy The Farm and the People’s School for Public Education that transformed underutilized spaces into permaculture places. Then, we’ll talk about the 2014 Permaculture Action Tour, where we go from here, and what’s coming next.

 

This environment can be found in Lucid University