April Sampson-Kelly is the co-founder and Managing Director of Permaculture Visions, a world-wide non-government , self-funded and self directed permaculture teaching project. In 2015 she was awarded the honour of being a Permaculture Elder (APC12 Tasmania).
April is passionate about collecting and sharing permaculture information and experiences with people of all backgrounds to demonstrate how isolated people and marginalized land can be become abundant producers.
She has a lively history of educating and entertaining people with a strong academic background in Science, Analysis and the Arts [Ass. Dip in Performing Arts (APCA), Bachelor and Masters in Creative Arts; and Post-grad Dip in Biomedical Science].
April grew up in a very energetic, artistic, crafty, musical and political family. Her childhood was spent close to nature in a lush garden and the bush. She has continued this lifestyle by developing the biggest permaculture food forest in her region.
Performing, drawing and photographing impulsively, she values the arts to “keep her happy and able to tackle dark realities of human greed and climate change”.
Her work in the arts has enabled her to explore a wide range of teaching strategies. “A picture tells a thousand words, yes,.. and a schematic tells a thousand more…the arts can empassion people and invite them to engage in confronting political issues.”
The charter of Permaculture Visions, begun in 1993, is to serve help people in isolated (physically or socially) communities become productive through permaculture strategies. Permaculture Vision’s use of student-focused learning enabled the teaching project to flourish.
She is inspired by the potential of online training and mentoring to meet the urgent needs of indigenous and isolated people worldwide and values the re-education of woman as a powerful key to addressing destructive capitalism. April supports quiet achievers, the people who live each day aiming to reduce their consumption and increase their contribution to the production of regional food, knowledge and wisdom. April’s has trained many of the finest permaculture leaders in the world. April has developed the following initiatives:
- Alternative economic trading systems (being regional co-ordinator for LETs Illawarra), gift economy and social enterprises.
- Development of productive international trade for permaculture projects
- Nurturing and hosting permaculture trainees
- Delivery of Face-to-face and Online Permaculture Courses
- Established an Ethical Social Enterprise
- Pioneering online training methods
- Designs for a broad range of clients from .06acre to 6000 acres.
- over 20 years experience implementing a large food forest
- Artworks, Lectures and workshops on permaculture at festivals, conferences and convergences
- Her permaculture illustrations have been used internationally and her images consistently rank in the top 10 online.
April and her partner, Paul Kelly, and visiting adult sons, live in their large mature permaculture system in a rain-forest valley close to Wollongong, a small coastal city in NSW Australia.