A great Permaculture convergence is mindful of it’s impact, well-designed and has the potential to set high standards and be inspiring.
“Just Add People”
The Permaculture movement is growing. After 40 years it continuing to attract a lot of interest. Conferences and convergences are a rich intellectual exchange and have unique needs with a local cultural experience.
A great Permaculture convergence is sensitive of it’s impact on the host site and the host team. Permaculture delegates have left their own sites and usually want to help. Give them a way to assist with the host team and site by building good water management systems, minimise energy use, compost waster, contain rubbish, and harvest from wild foods. And enable delegates to assist with chores. A permaculture convergence has the potential to set high environmental standards.
Charismatic and Practical Leaders
PEOPLE CARE is essential. One of the biggest challenges with a big one-off international or national event is that the system needs charismatic leaders. However, often it is the support team that needs our nurture. WORLD PEACE begins within the individual. When we ensure dependability, flexibility, self-determination and comfort of delegates we can facilitate harmony in the movement internationally. As we do in permaculture design, we can develop systems to encourage feedback during and after the process, we can pass the outcomes on to the next team and build a good set of protocols and processes.
The permaculture movement embraces diversity and flexibility. Diversity can be demonstrated in the venues and culture, pioneering of conference styles and tools (database, planning methods and organisational structure). We can set a clear targets, build shared tools, create effective feedback mechanisms and have the skills to create the optimum venue. Flexibility can be activated when we offer choices such as practical experiments (e.g. demonstrations or workshops on bio-char, native foods, pruning, grafting, building with bamboo, seed winnowing etc) in one of the concurrent streams.
Recommendations for Organisational Structure
Show Unique Bio-regional Colours
Be special by offering regional experiences. eg. Have regional food, regional music and best of all have great tour sites and well organised tours. These are the highlight of a convergence for many of us. Include Tours at the end of the convergence to highlight regional best practice.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
Be savy. Given that most people listen at more than twice the speed at which the presenters can talk, then the presentations need to be clean, smart and substantiated. A lot of people complain that they felt they were a. being lectured at and b. being treated as children. We shudder when people say things like “trust me”.
Personally, I find the notion of hosting a bunch of pioneering, highly observant and politically motivated people a little bit alarming. How do we create a space that makes us all feel able to participate, all valued and all heard??
Here’s an idea – if someone is going to present in Spanish – ask them to have their image text in English and vice versa because not everyone had access to the translation earpiece. Self determination another powerful tool. Search for venues where people can choose to visit other shops/cafes if they need water or food. We wouldn’t put animals in such confined quarters and expect them to be productive.
PROVIDE A CREATIVE FRAMEWORK
Structure versus Flexibility. There seems to be a struggle in some of the elders thinking that they want the process to be organic and flexible and informal and yet, it needs to be functional, efficient and supportive to the delegates. So, it can have the structure of a tree. This way, the framework is responsive to the environment. And so, the framework is strong with traditions, branching with new ideas and embraces open spaces.
Have a timetable and stick to it. It costs everyone a lot of money to attend the an international event. The small players matter. They are innovators and deserve respect.
Accept venue limits and and be firm. It would be pure greed and lunacy to expect the event-management and other participants to cope with an influx.
Managing Numbers:
There is an International Women’s Music festival in the UK where the queues are made fun by entertainers. Women stand and chat to one another and get entertained as they pass through. The entertainers are given priority. And they get to ‘jump the queue’ when they are needing to be served, and the other participants respect and support that.
Queue efficiently
As for queuing, yes, a queue is efficient for the kitchen staff but simply not possible for all participants. Some people burn very quickly (especially my red-headed family and friends). Also, some people need to sit because they have injured a leg, feeling poorly or simply elderly.
Inclusivity
Being inclusive means we need to devise systems that accommodate all walks of life (excuse the bad pun). Also, some people of different cultures and different degrees of social ability ignore the etiquette of queues. There are always going to be people who push in and this creates a feeling of disharmony. Australians would rather starve than queue and so, they go hungry and then complain or simply walk off. Many Asians will indeed starve rather than loose face. Londoners, in particular have a culture of immensely quiet tolerance and willingness to be polite as long as the system seems to be working. Boisterous behaviour in some ill-content delegates could get your valuable volunteers in a fractious mindset.
So, ensuring that there is an efficient system is essential and bonuses can be supplied eg. most people can be entertained and distracted even if they think the distraction is quaint, or silly. Shaded seats can be arranged to the side of the queuing area. light refreshment can be offered while people wait. Luggage and other heavy items can be accommodated by lockers. Wheel chairs can be supplied.
Managing numbers
For meals, everyone can be allowed in and seated and wait at their table. If there are more people than there are seats, allow each group a time slot. We don’t have to leave people standing and waiting. Food can be offered in shared platters or each group of people can be invited to the buffet. This reduces waste (Permaculture people rarely serve themselves food they don’t eat and if a table doesn’t eat all their platters of food, then it can be shared with others table).
BE CREATIVE
Expect the unexpected. Small disasters occur with ticketing systems, bad weather, occasional thieves, and sickness. Ensure there is first-aid. Giving participants choices. The program builds resilience and flexibility by including a variety of activities. Especially ones where people can get their hands dirty and make stuff. Encourage interaction. Give participants a chance to get in and help. And most of all, remember to thank everyone.
BE DEPENDABLE
Many conferences disappoint when the organisers try to keep adapting the schedule to solve errors or accommodate requests.
If you need to change things, find a way that does not involve the delegates having to change their program. Ie. Move equipment around rather than change the speakers from an advertised time-slot and venue. “who moved the goal posts?” is a constant despair of delegates at the poorly organised events. In terms of people hours: wasting the time of one hundred delegates is more costly than spending the time of one good program manager and a small team of strict time keepers.
Adhere to The Program
Program errors will snow-ball. One error by a time keeper will be felt throughout the whole day and across all the streams. Some details are essential for the smooth running of a convergence.
Treat the program with great respect and care. Spend time with the team to analyse the program and check it works.
The program, once in place, is like a delicate web of events – moving one strand may have far-reaching effects. If you have to change a presenter’s time avoid moving there time slot earlier, put it later. Then, if the information was not received by the interested parties, the change is still able to be communicated and acted upon. There could be a presenter who raised money, left his farm and family, caught a plane at midnight searched for a bus, couldn’t afford a taxi, had his wallet stolen and phone goes flat but runs to the venue in time for his special opportunity, only to discover it was moved to an earlier time slot or is now cancelled.
The permaculture community as a whole suffers when people are disappointed. Even if they don’t voice their disappointment. It is highly likely that we will loose valuable energy because everyone wants to feel valued and able to make a difference.
Summary
In Permaculture, the international community must strive to be as dependable and as resilient as a forest. The convergence is the structure from which we can develop ideas, we can voice concerns, find solutions and grow in the comfort of good ethics and like-minds. The best convergences are inclusive and fill us with inspiration.
Thank you
Michael Pilarski, Andy Golding, Narsanna Koppula, David Curtis (Co-ordinator of Eco-Arts Conference in Australia), Dr Naomi Van Der Velden, Prof Stuart Hill.
This is a document for discussion was prepared by April Sampson-Kelly