Communicating Permaculture in Spanish
We feel that when trying to promote permaculture in the Spanish speaking world there are still several hurdles to overcome. One main hurdle seems to be a series of prejudices about permaculture, often confusing the term with an ecological gardening or cultivation technique. We have also personally experienced and received the feedback that the concept is either connected to something that is done only by people who have a lot of money (think big earthworks for example) or by people who use the idea of natural processes as an excuse for being lazy (and want everything for free).
In this context we feel there is a clear need and opportunity in the Spanish speaking world to communicate the basic ideas of permaculture more explicitly and in detail, including all the ethical and other principles as well as all the permaculture flower petals or RetroSuburbia’s 3 B’s (Built Biological and Behavioural) and show its value by doing so. At the same time we feel this could be creating a ground to give impulse to a variety of permaculture projects throughout the Spanish speaking permaculture community, in all its social, economical and cultural contexts.
The idea is to create a meetingplace for Spanish speaking permaculture practictioners and/or interessees, where material optimized for different social networks could be co-created. These resources would be a toolkit for anyone that wants to promote permaculture in Spanish. This facilitated meetingplace and participatory process would give space to different voices and perspectives of permaculture, trying to reflect its diversity but also offer criteria of maintaining quality and some unifying guidelines. Ideally, the basic material resulting from this process would be available for free online through the CoLab website, open to be built on at a future stage.
Team
Auba Riera, Jorge Barbosa, Aline VaMo
Reporting Officer: Jorge Barbosa
Area
Diversity, participation and engagement, Emergent festival, Next Steps project
Objectives 2023
Create a draft image of the recent state of permaculture thinking in the Spanish speaking world, identifying the countries and areas that are proclaiming to have a permaculture movement, visualizing who speaks about permaculture in which areas, what they are saying and in what direction they are developing (family projects, ecovillage, professional designers, regenerative agriculture practitioners…) → spreadsheet
- Create and reinforce connections between different permaculture practitioners in the Spanish speaking world, with a special focus on those who approach permaculture professionally or wish to do so, by using a participatory process for the design of GG (General Goal) 3.
- Create texts and images optimized for different social media platforms (facebook, instagram, whatsapp…) that help permaculture practitioners (and specifically professional consultants, designers and educators) in the Spanish speaking world to communicate fundamental concepts and ideas of permaculture. These resources will also help to make visible to a wider audience the value of the permaculture design approach in our current global climate and socioeconomic context.
- Make the created material freely and easily available on perma.earth and through collaborating agents.
- Impulse the circulation of the created material in the social media channels of the participants of the process by a hashtag campaign.
OUTCOMEs 2023
- First Design Process CEAP (for collaboration between group members): https://cloud.perma.earth/s/AfmdoBSLyYxB28n
- Form to send to people/projects made on Baserow: Recogida de proyectos de permacultura // Baserow
- Design Kathy ‘recopilando datos “communicate PC in Spanish”’ using the Design Web: Recogida datos communicate pc in Spanish • Red de diseño / Untitled view • Kumu
- Database of Spanish speaking PC projects or websites that talk about PC: https://cloud.perma.earth/s/jHif3pR6xXJHL7k
- Baserow results of people/projects that responded to our mail and filled out the form here
- Infographics of data harvested here
- Final email to be sent out by the end of October, sending these results to the Spanish speaking PC community, and inviting them into the CoLab again, to see if we can go for another Year of the Emergent Festival next year and collaborate
Objectives 2024
1. In phase 2 of this project (Emergent Festival 2024) we envision the Design of a Work Group to co-create a set of Permaculture Infographics in Spanish and its Process, or put in other words, we want to Design the Participatory Design that will take place in phase 3, a Comm-PC-Span (com-psi-span) Festival within the Emergent Festival.
2. Engage in this collaborative permaculture design process and document it, sharpening our own designer’s skills as well as sharing an example of a possible diploma portfolio design with the world.
3. As a consequence / impact line of events: Reinforce the Spanish Speaking Permaculture Movement and Make the Permaculture CoLab more wider known.
outcomes 2024
What has been achieved in Y2?
We believe to have covered the goals for Y2, since:
1. We have formed, designed and developed the Work Group (ourselves: Aline, Auba and Jorge), created the template for the infographics and designed the Parcipatory Process for Y3 (between ourselves and the people we are contacting with).
2. We have started to take the needed actions to implement this design, improving our design skills in the process.
3. in this process we are already connecting with the Spanish speaking permaculture community and at the same time promoting work and projects within CoLab.
What has been done concretely?
– Agreeing on a Communication Strategy: how to develop a simple infographic template, where each collaborating project can present themselves, connecting their activities with (at least) on the the petals from David Holmgren’s “Permaculture Flower”, in order to be able to present (Spanish speaking) permaculture projects and at the same time Permaculture itself as a systemic and holistic design method (Aline + Auba + Jorge).
– Developing a participatory desing on miro (using design web) and harvesting ideas and actions from it (Aline + Auba + Jorge).
– Updating website in Spanish (Aline).
– Updating contacts’ database in Nextcloud, marking who has answered in Y1 and adding new contacts (Jorge).
– Creating a graphic template for the infographics and improving it (Auba).
– Updating the texts for the emails, sending emails to people who have previously answered (in Y1) and to new contacts. (Auba + Aline).
– Sorting out the answered emails and gathering the group of interested people/projects in collaborating in Y3, the next phase of this project – a “Comm-PC-Span Festival” within Emergent Festival, where people can present their own PC projects in Spanish, through the infographics and using the framework we have developed (Alina + Auba).
– Share information about this project in Spanish speaking permaculture related social networks (Auba).
– Preparing Reports and attending Emergent Festival events (Jorge)