CoLab Podcast

CoLab Podcast

The CoLab Podcast was funded through the Emergent Festival and is hosted on the Learn website.

In these Podcast interviews, we interview people from around the world who are involved in interesting and inspiring grassroots permaculture projects.

 

Aims of the project

The aim is to give a platform for grassroots permaculture projects to speak about what they are doing and to gain exposure and promotion.

We also aim to create a pool of educational resources that can be accessed by anybody. This will provide value and will help to attract people to the CoLab. 

 

Team

Charlie Wilson, Daniel Attwell

Reporting Officer: Charlie Wilson

Area

Training and eLearning, Emergent festival, Next Steps project 

Objectives

April 2023

We would prepare by using the CoLab slack channel and CoLab newsletter to find 6 willing participants who want to be interviewed about their grassroots permaculture projects. This could take 1 month.

Before the interviews, we would glean some basic information about the participant’s projects so that we can then prepare questions.

The interviews themselves would be 1 hour long at a maximum. We would aim to do one interview a week, over the course of 6 weeks. We would pay the participants a fee for the interviews as an incentive.

After the interviews, there may need to be some minor editing. We would need to do a short write-up and then upload the materials to the Learn website, perhaps adding some graphics and making it look presentable.

We would then seek to promote the podcasts using the CoLab Slack channel, CoLab LinkedIn, and CoLab newsletter.

OUTCOMEs

October 2023

We received extra funding, and finally had the capacity to record 7 podcast interviews.

All of the interviews have been completed, listened back to, and edited

We have created a “home” page for the CoLab podcasts and then created individual web pages for each interview. We have added a write-up and some simple graphics.

We plan to release one episode per month, using the CoLab newsletter, slack channel, and LinkedIn channel to promote the podcast episodes.

resources created

contact links

Designing Work Spaces For All

Designing Work Spaces For All

We are creating and testing an online course that focuses specifically on creating accessible and safe work spaces and community spaces.

 

Project Aims

The course seeks to Promote Diversity, Accessibility, Inclusion, Equity & Justice in work spaces and within communities.

The course will be a resource that can be accessed by anybody who wishes to learn more about permaculture. It will add value to the CoLab space.

 

Team

Charlie Wilson, Daniel Attwell

Reporting Officer: Charlie Wilson

Area

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

objectives

April 2023

Daniel has already undertaken much of the work, transcribing audio segments and creating a well-structured course outline. We would like to add graphics and make the course more presentable. This could be done within a week.

Once this is complete we would promote the course on social media, including the CoLab Slack and the CoLab LinkedIn page, and run a first test version. We anticipate a month of promotion would be needed to get a willing team of participants to take the course.

We would first allow people to take the course for free and gather feedback. We would have to wait for people to complete the course, this could take 2-3 weeks. We would then use this feedback to improve the course and create a final version. This could be done within a week.

OUTCOMEs

October 2023

Course creation has been completed. We promoted the course and had a number of participants who offered feedback.

We used the feedback to make necessary edits. Please feel free to take the course and apply it in your work spaces and then leave feedback for us to further develop it.

We hope it will add value for Permaculture projects to apply the design tools shown in the course and help give greater diversity within these communities.

 

contact links

Re-evaluation Counselling Scholarship Fund

Re-evaluation Counselling Scholarship Fund

Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) is a peer-to-peer process that commences with shared, deep-listening and, given that the peers are trained to function in both counseling and clienting roles, advances to a process involving structured, non-advisory attention from counsellors and discharge for clients. Roles are always exchanged in every session. Training is an essential element of RC.

The project seeks to engage Colab members to both give and receive one-on-one sessions to a level appropriate to their training and consistent with the peer-to-peer spirit fundamental to the RC ethos.

Team

Andrew Langford, Alena Kempf, Amelie Catheline, Vida Ashmole

Reporting Officer: Andrew Langford

 

Area

Training and eLearning, Diversity, participation and engagement, Next Steps project

objectives

a 5 * 2 hour set of online, interactive classes delivered starting September 2023 explaining the simple/complex, improvisation tool set developed by the international RC Community – classes include ample practice opportunities and, given that students engage well with these, they will be able to introduce these tools to relationship partners, working groups, classes, presentations and other willing assemblies thereby enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging (DEIJB) efforts.

Requires students to negotiate permissions to introduce these tools to their groups. The simplicity of this small yet effective and flexible tool set allows that all members of an assembly of any size can learn to apply these tools and thereby develop their facilitation skills thus democratizing the process of facilitation.

OUTCOMEs

April 2023 Update

We are working on developing our capacities to run the Oppression, Movement Building and our Relationships as Activists (OMBRA) workshop as an introductory overview of RC as a free course for all comers. We are doing this through regular monthly meetings and are referenced in this process by our Area Reference Person and the originators of the OMBRA workshop.
Meanwhile we are reconfiguring existing courses to focus on navigating conflict and de-colonizing our own thinking, these course being: –
Eliminating Common sources of Conflict from Group Dynamics (I am playing with renaming the Designing Productive Meetings and Events course here and am open to suggestions)
Reclaiming discharge – developing our capacity to courageously attend to eliminating hundreds to thousands year-old patterns of separation (aka oppressions and internalized oppressions of many flavors) including racism, the class system, domination of nature, sexism, imperialism and many more …
Liberation from oppression – understanding how oppressions arise, how these are spread and maintained and how these trap us in dysfunctional, irrational societies. The primary emphasis of this training is on practicing proven processes that enable us to turn the volume down on these noxious dynamics with the intention to eliminate them as thoroughly as we can.

resources created

contact links

Open Badges / ICAAFs Project

Open Badges / ICAAFs Project

We aim to develop and strengthen a decentralised accreditation system which empowers learning providers, permaculturists, farmers, and ecosystem restoration practitioners, and the regenerative field as a whole to issue credentials in the form of ‘open badges’; while also operating as a unifying network for regenerative education.

These badges can replace academic credentials, quality certifications such as ‘Organic’ or ‘Fairtrade’,  attendance certificates for events, and create entirely new streams such as greater recognition of experiential learning, better recognition of indigenous learning practices, and new monitoring and evaluation processes for land or social/community permaculture projects.

One of the most exciting potential outcomes of the iCAAFS project is the ability for learners to carry over credentials from within the iCAAFS ecosystem of un/learning providers in order to build up to ‘Diploma’, or “Degree’ milestone badges which recognise the lifelong learning pathway of an individual and/or community. This objective requires the commitment of a number of key partners, but we intend to test a prototype milestone qualification by the end of this project lifecycle.

iCAAFS is firmly rooted in permaculture ethics, regenerative practices as well as an intention to embrace indigenous and decolonial forms of un/learning and knowing.

iCAAFS is at present developed to a minimum viable prototype which includes basic documentation of philosophy and use, prototype badges design, platform use, basic business plan, and testing of technology needed to implement.

We are now rolling out iCAAFS to stakeholders representing the most diverse use cases we can imagine in order to test its limitations and discover new possibilities; as well as co-design the detailed documentation and strategy with the end users. We are also developing and launching an iCAAFS onboarding course in order to streamline the un/learning process for new badge designers and issuers.

We intend to set up an advisory board of indigenous and decolonial leaders to inform the direction and philosophy of the iCAAFS project. Partners, badge issuers, and un/learning providers will be invited to participate, create autonomous working groups, and propose designs/projects for iCAAFS for the long term direction. In order to do this we need to co-create a functional participatory organisational design and governance.

Team

Siobhan Vida Ashmole, Andrew Langford

Reporting Officer: Siobhan Vida Ashmole

Area

Training and eLearning, Next Steps Project, Grassroots permaculture project

Objectives

February 2023

Enrol 2-5 case study partners in the iCAAFS program.

Document onboarding and badge development process with each new case study partner, obtain feedback early and often, refine this into a case study which can be shared for training and educational purposes.

Develop detailed onboarding documentation and codesign this through feedback with initial partners.

Identify training course location for best reach and impact.

Develop and launch onboarding training course.

Together with initial indigenous, BIPOC and decolonial education leaders, create a set of advisory board goals and guidelines for attracting members.
Develop funding strategy for advisory board to compensate for work fairly.

OUTCOMEs

September 2023 Update

iCAAFS is at present developed to a minimum viable prototype which includes basic documentation of philosophy and use, prototype badges design, platform use, basic business plan, and testing of technology needed to implement.

We are now rolling out iCAAFS to stakeholders representing the most diverse use cases we can imagine in order to test its limitations and discover new possibilities; as well as co-design the detailed documentation and strategy with the end users. We are also developing and launching an iCAAFS onboarding course in order to streamline the un/learning process for new badge designers and issuers.

We intend to set up an advisory board of indigenous and decolonial leaders to inform the direction and philosophy of the iCAAFS project. Partners, badge issuers, and un/learning providers will be invited to participate, create autonomous working groups, and propose designs/projects for iCAAFS for the long term direction. In order to do this we need to co-create a functional participatory organisational design and governance.

resources created

contact links

iCAAFS Open Badges: Decentralized Accreditation for Regenerative Un/Learning

We invite anyone in the permaculture/regenerative field with projects and offerings in the following areas:

1. Un/learning (including all types of alternative, indigenous, action and experiential un/learning as well as more formal avenues working on climate/land/community)

2. Certifications of quality for products, projects or organisations (i.e. replacing BCorp, Organic, Fairtrade etc.)

3. Monitoring, Impact and Evaluation

We would love to hear from you, get you involved in iCAAFS codesign, and see your project using open badges. We especially invite elders from decolonial-indigenous backgrounds, and un/learning/M&E/certification providers who are willing and able to contribute to the overall project, to reach out about board opportunities.

You can reach the project lead, Siobhan Vida Ashmole at vida@gaiau.org

Microsolidarity

Microsolidarity

We propose to host a Microsolidarity program for the CoLab and allied community networks including GRC, Ecolise, Deep Adaptation Forum and others who may be interested in this practice. We would use the cohort model. Microsolidarity is a community building practice that helps to build structures for belonging. We would apply the deep listening framework dsigned by Katie Carr from Deep Adaptation Forum.

The program will involve a series of 4 calls of 90 minutes each, spread out over 4 weeks, and set up at a convenient time. The calls involve doing a series of community building practices and working in groups of different sizes. We would aim to have around 20-30 people joining this program.

As an adjunct to the meetings, participants will be recommended some light reading materials. The purpose of the program is to practice different relational modalities with a view to sow the seeds for a mutual aid circle.

Team

Aimee Fenech, Charlie Wilson, Jyotsna Maan

Area

Training and eLearning, Capacity+ project

objectives

Aimee has already received C+ funding to attend the Microsolidarity training during the first year and has been a deep adaptation facilitator for 2 years serving the Deep Adaptation community. The incubation of a mutual aid circle is an explicit deliverable for the C+ project and we hope that this creates impetus towards this practice.

Participants will benefit by feeling that are an active part of a larger community doing meaningful work. By working in different sized groups, participants will realize that these groups serve different needs. Participants will explore ideas around power, authority and hierarchy. This can help to create a constructive and radical approach to transforming power dynamics.

OUTCOME

A microsolidarity programme following the cohort model: https://www.microsolidarity.cc/practices/how-to-run-a-practice-program

Instead of using the Case study model using Deep listening framework from Deep Adaptation