Next Steps Project

by charliewilson | Nov 21, 2023

Next Steps Project

The Next Steps Project is funded by an permaculture aligned Foundation which prefers to remain anonymous. This group funded project includes a number of projects within the CoLab from the start of 2023 through to the end of 2025. For more information on individual projects, see the Projects page.

Funded with 360, 000 GBP through next steps

STATUS : ongoing

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Team

Project Manager: Aimee Fenech

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Area

Next Steps project

objectives

To support new research and existing research projects on the ground and online pertaining to permaculture and it’s wider applications including digital ethical tools, monitoring and evaluation techniques, permaculture convergences and working towards a more connected permaculture movement.

Offer a tailormade training programme for the colab and allied networks and communities.

To provide the colab services in order to continue it’s work in line with the vision, mission and aims.

To provide access to Digital Tools needed by CoLab projects.

To support engagement initiatives in the colab and with allied networks and communities.

Support emergent projects in the colab & with allied networks & communities.

Support diversity & decolonization activities, training & participation in the CoLab.

Fiscal Host costs.

OUTCOMEs

resources created

contact links

contact@perma.earth

Domestic Waste Water Systems - Legislation?

On the list of climate actions any home with a garden can “easily” engage in, we’d like to see the topic of Domestic Waste Waters; how to avoid them and how to reuse them in our immediate landscapes; for food resilience, for wildfire prevention, for shelterbelts for biodiversity and so on.

The NBS of reedbeds or other phytopurifying installations are well known solutions already for working with grey waters. WET-lands or leeching fields can also take higher levels of “contamination”. Vermicomposting toilets work, and in combination with a secondary and terciary purifying process (aquatic plants in gravel beds + woodchip bowls or channels in combination with vegetation) provide a nutrient rich water source for our foodscapes, firebelts and biodiversity hedges.

Project Aims

We feel there is a need for awareness raising of these Nature Based Solutions on a domestic scale as well as a lack of transparency in legislation in these matters.

Therefore we would like to take time to list European and maybe also global legal frameworks that allow to reuse domestic waste waters in our gardens and under which circumstances.

We want to identify and document case studies and free up funds to conduct proper research such as laboratory tests on effluents of maturing and mature systems and/or soil irrigated with these effluents.

Ideally we can give anyone working with water professionally the jumping board they need to back up their often innovative (to the ears of some) solutions in front of administrations or their clients, especially now that we are living a general time of droughts and floods in many areas of the globe.

Funded with 876.15 GBP through emergent festival

STATUS : COMPLETED

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Team

Aline VaMo, Kinga Milankovics

Reporting Officer: Aline VaMo

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Area

Prototyping, Emergent festival, Next Steps project

Objectives

April 2023

1. Survey:

1. During the 2 months survey we gather information about already existing material online in the form of infographics, articles, documents, professional services and projects in favour of using the NBS mentioned above and document the resources found in a NextCloud folder and spreadsheet with links.
2. During this stage we also search for legislation and list interesting resources or research papers mentioning such legislation in a spreadsheet and NextCloud folder.
Analysis: During this 2 months’ phase we go through the materials found and identify the top 3 case studies, the top 3 legal frameworks to work within and the top 3 habits to adopt for optimal reuse of your domestic waste waters
Design: In the last phase of again 2 months we will edit the data and the raw material, and pour it into an informative, professional looking, educational slideshow presentation that can be shared online.

OUTCOMEs

September 2023 Update

So far we have started a database that is open to the public and which we hope you can can add resources to: https://cloud.perma.earth/s/Xx4ZWSZ9ReoTMDD

We are working on pouring the key findings and case studies of this Emergent Festival funded project into a shareable presentation format, which should be ready by the end of October, as per the “Next Steps Project” outline for this edition of the festival.

resources created

1/ Database of Resources (legislation in different languages, case studies, forums, information, books, training and more) – https://cloud.perma.earth/s/i7LjJdRpicqN3CE (hoping this link works as a collaborative document for anyone visiting the project webpage)

2/ Presentation of findings, as per objectives – 3 legal frameworks in the spotlight (EU in the end), 3 case studies, 3 top recommendations for the home – https://cloud.perma.earth/s/LXYWndyXcnDQHZb

contact links

contact@perma.earth

Permaculture Places in the Metaverse

Research into and development of permaculture-themed virtual 3D worlds for the open source Mozilla Hubs platform.

Funded with 612.30 GBP through emergent festival

STATUS : COMPLETED

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Team

Rakesh Rootsman Rak, Ewan Findley, Jemma Findley

Reporting Officer: Ewan Findley

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Area

Prototyping, Emergent festival, Next Steps project

Objectives

Phase one: research & planning (May-Jun 2023)
- Identify affordances, limitations and potential for the Mozilla Hubs platform
- Explore and identify suitable permaculture themes and concepts based on the above
- Develop these ideas into more detailed virtual world plans
Phase two: Development (Jul-Aug)
- Build the worlds defined in 1.3 (above) using open source tools such as Blender and Spoke
Phase three: Publishing and Launch (Sep)
- Publish the developed worlds with a Creative Commons CC-BY 3.0 license using Spoke
- Share this via CoLab Slack, newsletter and website article
- Present and demonstrate the world(s) to permaculture educators at the in-person Educators Gathering in September 2023 organised by the Permaculture Association. This will be demonstrated on phone, desktop and VR headset, along with an introduction to the Hubs platform and the metaverse as a concept.
Ongoing: learning & reporting
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- Updated aims due to lack of funding through the Emergent festival –
- The project can continue as planned within this budget. Proposed work within this budget is as follows:
  Jemma, Rakesh and Ewan have two 1.5 hour meetings (total 9 hours work at suggested hourly rates).
  Rakesh 3 x 25h = £75
  Jemma 3 x 25h = £75
  Ewan 3 x 22h = £66Total £216
- These meetings will cover the first two items from phase one:
  Phase one: research & planning– Identify affordances, limitations and potential for the Mozilla Hubs platform
  – Explore and identify suitable permaculture themes and concepts based on the above.
- By the end of this the outputs will be;
- – notes documenting the process
  – recordings of the sessions that can be shared with CoLab and our educator and permaculture networks
- The remaining budget will be used to edit the notes and recordings to make sure they are useful for distribution for others to learn from.Ewan 0.5h x £22 = £11I will seek further funding for continuation of the work, with the aim to complete a usable prototype for testing and sharing.

OUTCOMEs

Project Update September 2023

Further funds of £380 have been allocated to the project from the Emergent Festival

– Based on 17.3 hours at £22 per hour
– With additional aims now within the scope of this project:

development of a first iteration prototype virtual world that can be contributed to the commons, uploaded and used by anyone. The theme and concept for this world will come from the second team meeting.

November 2023 Update

We have successfully completed some limited R&D around how the spatial/3D social platform Mozilla Hubs might be used for permaculture people, for example in events or education. From this research a prototype 3D world was developed using the FOSS tools Blender and Spoke. The permaculture themed world includes several areas that users can navigate around including; a presentation stage, a breakout room, a campfire and a lobby. The space has been deliberately designed to be largely event-agnostic, so that it can be more easily used for a greater variety of scenarios.

resources created

A video tour of the virtual world can be watched here: https://cloud.perma.earth/s/tYgnGmo4jrT7Qi7

The virtual world can be found here, where anyone can use it for their own virtual gathering, or remix it using Mozilla Spoke. https://hubs.mozilla.com/scenes/n3rkRvd

Full meeting notes including a link to the first meeting in video form, can be found in this document: https://cloud.perma.earth/s/TWoRmckiCMAFz

contact links

contact@perma.earth

Stories to Decolonise Permaculture

Creating a free resource of stories about the origins and inspirations behind permaculture to aid teachers and practitioners in decolonising permaculture

Funded with 610 GBP through emergent festival

Funded with 2,518.00 GBP through diversity grant

STATUS : COMPLETED

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Team

Rakesh Rootsman Rak, Ewan Findley, Jemma Findley

Reporting Officer: Rakesh Rootsman Rak

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Area

Diversity, participation and engagement, Emergent festival, Next Steps project

Objectives

April 2023

By the end of October 2023 we will have
1. A way for people to capture electronically stories of the origins and inspirations of permaculture.
2. A process in place to verify the content
3. A way in which to share for free verified content to the public
4. Run a session for CoLab to explain how people can add content and how to use the content
5. Run a session for Permaculture Association Britain’s Educators CoP to explain how they can add content and how to use the content
6. Deliver a session on this work at the UK Permaculture convergence in September

Updated aims due to lack of funding through the Emergent Festival –

The amount allocated means we have budget for 24 hours of work, hence the first 3 parts of the project
8 – 8 – Look at what data we want to capture
8 – 16 – Create a structure to hold the data in a meaningful and flexible way (normalisation)
8 – 24 – Create a way for people to enter the initial sample content.

To complete the project we will apply for further funding from the CoLab Diversity pot.
For any shortfall, we will do crowdfunding to the general permaculture people worldwide.
We are confident we will achieve this, so this initial amount is a great way to get us up and running.

OUTCOMEs

November 2023 Update

The following objectives have been met:

By the end of October 2023 we will have
1. The initial input for stories is via the following Google forms. In the future we may move this to a baserow form.

2. The main criteria for verification is to ensure the content is a genuine story (not spam), and that it is not discriminatory or offensive.

3. We have set up a baserow database to contain the final content which can be found here

4. This was delivered on 22nd November. A recording of which can be found here on YouTube

5. This was done in person at the Permaculture Educators gathering in London on 22nd September. We received very good feedback and ideas of how to improve the work. This is also where we finalised the criteria on how to verify data.

6. This was delivered in person on 23rd September at the permaculture festival in London. It was again very well received. This is where we decided to also accept audio and video recordings, which were not part of the original idea.

Rakesh has also delivered the content to several other permaculture practitioners including his students and other key people.

We are now ready to accept stories from anyone who has a good story to tell. So look forward to hearing from you

resources created

Stories to Decolonize Permaculture video

Submit your story

contact links

rakbsub@gmail.com

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.

Funded with 510.44 GBP through emergent festival

STATUS : COMPLETED

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Team

Kathy Otto, Jorge Barbosa, Aline VaMo

Reporting Officer: Kathy Otto

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Area

Diversity, participation and engagement, Emergent festival, Next Steps project

Objectives

April 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

October 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

resources created

Baserow results of people/projects that responded to our mail and filled out the form

Infographics of data harvested

contact links

contact@perma.earth

Next Steps Project

Team

Area

objectives

OUTCOMEs

resources created

contact links

Related

Domestic Waste Water Systems - Legislation?

Team

Area

Objectives

OUTCOMEs

resources created

contact links

Related

Permaculture Places in the Metaverse

Team

Area

Objectives

OUTCOMEs

resources created

contact links

Related

Stories to Decolonise Permaculture

Team

Area

Objectives

OUTCOMEs

resources created

contact links

Related

Communicating Permaculture in Spanish

Team

Area

Objectives

OUTCOMEs

resources created

contact links

Related