— Permaculture

Green Building

Permaculture / Practical Sustainability / Organic Course

We hear a lot these days about environmental problems – but what of solutions? This innovative and pioneering full time course is about practical sustainability, ideas and skills to enable us to make our lives and our communities more abundant and harmonious with the environment. It covers a range of practical modules that include:

Course Content

Permaculture Design: Permaculture is the design of sustainable human settlements, covering all aspects of sustainable living, from natural building and gardening to waste water treatment and renewable energy. Practiced around the world, it gives you a tool kit for implementing a more sustainable future.

Sustainable Woodland Management: How can we design woodlands to be productive as well as pleasant places to be, good for wildlife and hosts to a diverse range of livelihoods and activities? This course will transform your ideas about what woodlands can be.

Natural Building: Can we create beautiful homes from natural materials, designed to be energy efficient and in harmony with the landscape? We can, and this practical course will look at why and how you can build with a range of natural materials, as well as looking at building design.

Organic Production Principles & Food Production: These modules compliment permaculture design, offering a very practical approach to organic gardening. These combined modules will deal with: organic standards, soils and fertility, pests and diseases, the organic market, cultivating and manuring, weed control, health and safety, growing vegetables, herbs and fruit.

Wall building

Natural Nutrition: is designed to provide the learner with knowledge of the composition of food and an understanding of how food affects an individual’s personal well-being. We’ll look at the nutrition we need for health and vitality and we’ll discuss the various options for obtaining this nutrition, while maintaining permaculture ideals, to this end we have included a culinary dimension to the programme.

Craft: Students are provided with a taste of a number of traditional crafts, such as jewelry making, basketry, cooking & baking and yurt making.

Community Leadership is about learning how to be confident in front of other people, as a team member, team leader or group facilitator. This approach to leadership means that it is a role that everybody can temporarily take on, rather than a person in a position of authority. The emphasis is on participatory group processes and decision making. This module leads to a skills demonstration in group facilitation.

Conflict Resolution raises awareness of how conflicts unfold, how they can escalate and strategies to de-escalate them. Topics include Active Listening, Basic Agreements, Effective Feedback,
‘I’ Statements, Rank Awareness, Non-Violent Communication and Mediation – the art of helping others managing their conflicts. This module leads to a mediation skills demonstration.

These two modules cover the people’s aspect of sustainability. The skills of non-violent conflict resolution, negotiation, team-working and participatory group facilitation are important in every area of life. Sustainability activists need to be particularly well versed in these skills if they want to be agents of positive change in the current times of transition.

Permaculture/Practical Sustainability Application Form Year 1

Permaculture/Practical Sustainability Application Form Year 2

Building with earth

The course is a mixture of classroom-based talks, practical activities, site visits and group work. The practical aspect of the course involves the development of the college grounds along Permaculture lines. Last years students built a straw bale building, planted edible hedges, made a pond and created living willow sculptures. The emphasis of the course is on practical solutions that students can take away and integrate into the greening of their own lives or of their own communities.

The course is useful to anyone interested in landscape design, organic horticulture, community development, environmental education or community composting and can lead to work in any of these areas. It is a unique training in that it provides a discipline for assembling the many aspects of a sustainable society in a way that no other discipline does. It is an area in which interest is rapidly growing in Ireland.

Course Tutors:

Graham Strouts has been working in Permaculture, landscaping and woodland management for the past 15 years. He lives on a small holding in West Cork where he is developing a food forest and tree nursery and has built a small cordwood roundhouse. He has wide experience of teaching environmental and craft projects to children and adults and holds the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. For further information see www.zone5.org

Paul O’Flynn N.C.H. N.C.A. has 23 years of practical experience of arboriculture, landscaping and commercial cut-herb and salad production. He is a passionate advocate of sustainable food production. Along with his work at Kinsale FEC he also teaches gardening in Cork with autistic children and in Mallow with special needs groups.

Yurt

Thomas Riedmuller originally from Germany, has been in Ireland since 1998. He is working as a Teacher, Communication Trainer, Mediator and Natural Builder, specializing in conflict resolution and group facilitation. Since 2001 he has been actively involved in Primary and Secondary Schools in West Cork teaching creative and non-violent ways of communicating and dealing with conflict. He has taught evening classes about Leadership at UCC and training courses for teachers and youth workers. Since 2004 he has been teaching the FETAC modules ‘Community Leadership’ and ‘Conflict Resolution’ which he designed himself on behalf of FETAC. As a mediator he is also helping individuals, couples and organizations sorting out issues and dealing with conflict. Thomas is a member of the Mediators Institute of Ireland. He is also a co-founder of The Hollies Centre of Practical Sustainability, www.theholliesonline.com

Bridget Lehane teaches Ecology Field Studies, Plant Science and Soil Science. Bridget is  a native of Cork county who graduated with a BSc in Ecology & subsequently a PhD in Freshwater Ecology from the National University of Ireland (Cork).  Worked in freshwater fisheries research with the Central Fisheries Board in conjunction with the Office of Public Works Environmental Maintenance Programme & Conservation Fish species projects before diversifying in Inshore Fisheries Development with Bord Iascaigh Mhara (The Irish Sea Fisheries Board).  Postgraduate Diploma in Education at the National Univerisy of Ireland (Cork) completed.