In biology there is no free lunch. Since the beginnings of plant and animal life the gift of urine has been a cornerstone of abundance synergy. Come and learn how the eco-san movement is reviving this ancient relationship. We will look at home-scale, humanitarian relief, city-scale and animal husbandry applications.

Peepeeponics: How restoring ancient nutrient cycling relationships with modern technologies can heal the world.

Presented By: Nik Bertulis

Sunday September 18th | 11:20 – 11:40 AM | Solar Panel: El Sol

What are the ways in which we can cooperate and collaborate to make a stronger, more resilient economy? How can we ensure that we are integrating economics within the greater context of life and what is important? Koreen is a businesswoman and farm owner who has collaborated with investors, activists, seekers, suburbanites and many others to create cooperative economics that at its core, focuses on caring for the earth, people, and our future and will share some of the most successful actions she is aware of, and how this can be expanded.

The workshop will focus on building bridges between people with money, and people without it, people from different communities, and on different scales. Koreen will share her own experiences as well as other successful models, in a short, to the point presentation focused on actions that people can do themselves.

Presented By: Koreen Brennan

Saturday September 17th | 3:30 – 3:50 PM | Solar Panel: El Sol

In 2006 Gaia U opened its (virtual) doors to 40 intrepid actionists–ready to self-design and direct their learning and unlearning pathways through documented hands-on local projects while creating regenerative livelihoods. A “revolution disguised as a university” was how one of our pioneers put it. Liora Adler, co-founder of Gaia U with other Gaia U team members have created an informative, engaging and fun presentation to share our achievements and answer the question, “what’s next?”

Presented By: Liora Adler 

Saturday September 17th | 2 – 2:20 PM | Solar Panel: El Sol

Money itself has hidden characteristics that many people are completely unaware of. Yet these characteristics shape people’s behavior in relation to one another, affect social norms, and ultimately influence the culture of communities and society. As a group, participants in this workshop will play a trading game using two types of “currencies”. Afterward, participants will discuss the contrasting social dynamics that they experienced during play and the implications this has on communities and society at large, with respect to the real money we use on a daily basis.

The game and following discussion will illustrate that money itself is not value-neutral, meaning that if we can change type of money that communities use, the culture of the community and people’s interrelationships within it will be positively affected. A type of currency known as “mutual credit” fosters cooperation over competitiveness, and is sustainable because it does not require constant growth of the economy, and the game will demonstrate exactly how a mutual credit currency works in practice.

Participants will learn and feel— in the first rounds of the game— that one type of currency (conventional, nationally-issued currency) creates a culture that is hyper-competitive and makes people feel a constant level of tension and even causes them to behave in selfish ways even when they would rather not.

However, in the latter rounds of the game, using a different type of currency (mutual credit, cooperative currency) participants will realize that this type of money actually creates a culture of cooperation and increases social cohesion.

Mutual credit currencies are specifically designed to foster a sense of community between its users, which is very much in line with the “Building Bridges” theme of this year’s conference. Beyond that, mutual credit currencies do not inherently require an economy to grow, but allow an economy to expand with respect to its community’s needs. This results in more sustainable growth and growth that is in line with nature— as opposed to exponential, over-extractive, consumptive growth mandated by the current money system.

We hope to get all participants and people in general to think about the social impact of the hidden aspects of money itself. Of course, as the Bay Bucks team, we also hope to impassion Bay Area businesses to join our community as well!

Presented By: Aaron Fernando and Mike Lomuto

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Based on Toby’s latest book, The Permaculture City, this presentation shows that urban permaculture is about much more than gardening in the city. Growing food is only a small part of the challenges we face in solving our essential and increasingly urgent problem of coexisting with a finite planet and with each other. The new edge for permaculture—where many visionaries are working right now—is taking permaculture out of the garden and into the city streets, the neighborhoods, local governments, and businesses. What permaculture has taught us in the landscape applies perfectly to our need for community, decision-making, justice, livelihood, water, shelter, and energy. This presentation, filled with inspiring examples of cutting-edge city permaculture from across the continent, will show how permaculture’s toolkit can be readily adapted to meet the social, economic, and other needs of urban, suburban, and small town environments.

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The reality is that we deal with this everyday. We can probably even think about moments of our own experience (or others) where corporations have pitted workers against communities working to protect their health and environment. In this workshop, we’re removing the choice all together to realize what we know is possible: the ability to build resilient communities within a regenerative, life sustaining economy. We’ll use Bay Localize’s Climate Risk and Job Opportunity Assessment in small group discussions to help identify:

• How the climate and energy crisis is impacting where you live

• Actions your community can take to build resilience – by both reducing emissions and preparing for climate impacts

• Green jobs and sustainable business opportunities these actions could create

Learn More About Colin Miller & Corrine Van Hook

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Join Green For All’s Julian Mocine McQueen and Emerald Cities Collaborative’s Tara Marchant for an interactive dialogue looking at deep alliance building with unlikely stakeholders that create effective, authentic partnerships that transform our communities, cities and societies. What practices and strategies are involved in building juicy relationships across sectors and demographics that truly move the needle on issues that matter.  How do we create the emergent future we see from where we sit, together, collectively?

Strategies include: Creating a vision, agreement, listening, setting the container, building trust, flexibility and more!

Learn More About Tara Marchant & Julian Mocine McQueen

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Learn how to incorporate culinary and medicinal herbs in the food forest.  In this interactive workshop, Marisha Auerbach will highlight the medicinal uses, ecological functions, and niche of some of her favorite herbs for the understory in the food forest.  Afterwards, participants will get to play the Edible Forest Garden card game, which Marisha has been developing over the past 6 years.

Learn More About Marisha Aurebach

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The Patrix, that unwanted but prevalent patriarchal matrix that includes (amongst other memes) racism, sexism and classism, sure needs unlearning and chasing away. Increasingly folks in permaculture are on to it and this workshop looks at strategies in use by Gaia U for accelerated patrix unlearning. Together, we will imagine a world without these memes. We’ll keep this light and avoid blaming anyone. Gaia U is hosting an online patrix unlearning, action-research community starting January 2016. It’s free to join at nopatrix@gaiauniversity.org.

Learn More About Andrew Langford & Liora Adler

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It has become clear we face two distinct possible futures:  Economic Transition or Ecological Collapse.  If we stay the current course of a globalized industrial model, collapse is inevitable. The dominant economy asserts that young black men are completely expendable,  mountaintops and the peoples in Appalachia are expendable, that  indigenous knowledge that cultivates our global food & medicine cabinet is completely expendable. We must build a movement transitioning away from this destructive model that directly confronts these realities. Urban Tilth’s Executive Director Doria Robinson moderates a panel with the founders of Daily Acts, Acta Non Verba Farm and Movement Generation in a lively dialogue about creating an intentional pathway – a Just Transition – towards local, living, loving, linked economies, rooted in racial, class & gender justice. They will share their inspiring stories; and discuss their innovative efforts to build this Just Transition Movement in the Bay Area and beyond, from forging partnerships and alliances, building capacity and leveraging resources; to demanding that leadership come from communities on the frontlines of ecological destruction.

Learn More About: Kelly Carlisle, Mateo Nube & Trathen Heckman. Moderated by Doria Robinson

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The first link of a resilient food system is seed- learn about the innovative ways that  people have brought seed back into the commons by creating local exchanges, seed libraries, regional seed companies and farmer breeding projects.  More than just preserving heritage it is about putting breeding work and selection as a core element of developing resiliency. Beyond resistance to the multi national take over of the food system, these projects are creating the alternative we need to reclaim our food system.  

Learn More About: Don Tipping, Rebecca Newburn & Marisha Auerbach. Moderated by Sara McCamant

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Women have been leading and practicing Permaculture for decades though not always on stage many have made their presence and voices clearly heard as teachers, designers, practitioners  organizers and activists. We’ll hear from 7 women of diverse backgrounds, ages and experiences in the permaculture movement. As they share their work, thoughts and experiences on being a leader in the male dominated movement they’ll converse on what has worked well for them and what has been particularly challenging. While they face the same issues all women do in our society there are particular ones we face in the Permaculture community. A resurgence of respect and an acute awareness of the feminine rising up in our society is happening.  Now more than ever people of all genders are recognizing the unique value of female perspectives and leadership. Hear stories and reflections from the wisdom of experience of Kat Steele, Jeannette Acosta, Brandi Mack, Jasmine Fuego, Delia Carroll, Effie Rawlings and Starhawk.

Learn More About: Kat Steele, Jeannette Acosta, Brandi Mack, Jasmine Fuego, Delia Carroll, Effie Rawlings and Starhawk

Gentrification and displacement is a painful reality for many families and communities. Longtime residents of Oakland, particularly its vibrant Black and Latino communities, are being increasingly been pushed out as rents have skyrocketed. Come explore creative, equitable strategies and policies for treating land as our common heritage.

Please join Tara Marchant, Emerald Cities Oakland Director leading Anchors for Resilient Communities – a cross sector table targeting procurement dollars for economic development in low-income communities in the Bay Area; Aaron Lehmer-Chang, co-founder of Bay Localize and a Land Justice Fellow at the San Francisco Henry George School; and Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, City and Regional Policies Director, Sustainable Economies Law Center, for a provocative discussion about how we can develop resilient communities, while not displacing longtime residents.

Learn More About Aaron Lehmer-Chang, Yassi Eskandari & Tara Marchant

Jamaica Stevens ~ Author of ReInhabiting the Village: Co-Creating our Future

What is the Culture of the Modern Village and how are we creating a Global Village? As we become increasingly aware of our interconnection on this one shared home called Earth, there is a compelling call to find our common threads and become the stewards for our collective future.

By sharing practices that include Thinking Global, Acting Local principals, regional resilience, appropriate technology, cultural literacy, holistic health, living economy and more, the call is to empower engagement and participation in direct action at personal, interpersonal, and local community levels while considering our place in the greater web of life. Whether on a Land Stewardship project, or in an Urban environment, together we will explore the intersection of ancient wisdom and modern innovation to foster holistic solutions in our communities.

Reinhabitingthevillage.com

ReInhabiting the Village Project Panel

Join us for a Q & A with the collaborative authors who comprise the “Voices of the Village” featured in the recently launched “ReInhabiting the Village: CoCreating our Future” Book. Sharing perspectives from the 12 themes of the book, this engaging panel inspires how to bring the heart of the Village into our every day lives

Panelist: Samantha Sweetwater, Carl Grether, Matheo James, Melanie St. James

Permaculture is about solutions. This, we know. Describing how they see their own theories of change, many permies, transitioners, and other ‘solutionaries’ sometimes reference Buckminster Fuller’s quote “you never change things by fighting the existing reality. Instead, you build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. Permaculture, they argue, is that ‘new model’.

Yet, if Permaculture is a social movement attempting to fundamentally transform society, is this quote that accurate? Can we change things only by building alternatives, like farms and currencies? Thoughtful and protracted observation of past and present movements for change in society should lead to a design for action where “fighting” what exists and “building” a new model are not counterpoised—but are held as two equally important aspects of a whole systems effort. Confronting power is as necessary as constructing alternatives.

This panel is about exploring the why and how of ‘oppositional’ forms of activism. Why are they so important—if not critical—to Permaculture’s success? How can they be better integrated into the dominant ‘solutionary’ modality of Permaculture? Panelists will cover local struggles for land and agroecology in the East Bay, the largest eco-social movement in the Western hemisphere, and much more.

Learn More About Antonio Roman-Acalá, Joelci Dannacena & Susan Juniper Park. Moderated by: Effie Rawlings

How can yogic practices help cultivate and empower awareness, congruence, intuition and communication?

Relating Yoga is a nourishing synthesis of self care, self expression, and embodied listening. Facilitated sharing with other people interwoven with yogic practices. This is not a standard yoga class!

Enliven your body, mind, and spirit – in community!

While transition is inevitable, justice is not. The scale and pace of the ecological crisis and transition in which we find ourselves demands a radical rethinking of our relationships to place, and to each other, particularly in the urban context. Movement Generation’s interactive, whole body workshop will combine principles and practice from Permaculture Design with social and economic justice organizing. Learn about the implications of compromising the life support systems of Mother Earth on biological and cultural diversity; and in particular for poor and working class communities and communities of color.

A key theme that will be addressed is the role of “reparations” in ecological justice. Reparations can be thought of as “paying for past harm,” but it is also much more than that. We think of reparations as “repairing our relations,” which includes making amends for past harm (i.e. Climate Debt), building healthy relationships in the present (i.e. confronting current inequities) and setting ourselves up for a just future (i.e. building resilient communities). This has particular implications for folks organizing in the “Transition Towns”, Permaculture and “Resilient Communities” organizing spaces in the U.S., where race & class isn’t fully integrated into the organizing culture & approach.

We will also discuss our Permaculture for the People course & model, run in conjunction with the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, that is planting the seeds for a land reclamation movement that will restore our labor to right relationship with Mother Earth. Our vision for fostering a multi-sectoral and holistic movement for ecological justice is rooted in deliberate and coordinated mass action among key racial, economic & environmental justice organizations in the SF Bay Area. Our approach in bringing Permaculture for the People is to make it a step towards this end.

Learn more about Mateo Nube

This is a big conversation about the future of money through the lens of permaculture. Together, through this conversation and many others, we are co-creating the future of regenerative wealth. If money is a medium of exchange and a measure of flow – essentially a math system to track to the movement of goods, resources and energy, then we have the power to design a new system that truly works. Together we can design an new system that makes the existing one obsolete.

This will be a facilitated conversation, bringing the deep knowledge base in the room into a real solution with actionable next steps. Using the principles of permaculture as a guide, we will bring the group through a rapid design thinking process to arrive at the critical elements that comprise a new currency, community investment structure and ultimately an economic growth model that sustains our critical systems on Earth and enhances the wellbeing of all life.

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Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces. Placemaking capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, with the intention of creating public spaces that promote people’s health, happiness, and well being. Each presenter will share some examples of placemaking from different places with pictures, stories, lessons learned and plans for the future/ growth with the projects. This is a great time to start developing plans and ideas for your neighborhood and ask our panel of experienced placemakers on tips and tricks for successful community building techniques for a happy place.  

We are showcasing: Portland City Repair Project as well as Revitalization efforts Katrina was part of in the Mississippi Delta last year, where the economy is the lowest in the country. We will also have PLACE for Sustainable Living of Oakland share where they are with advocating for the city of Oakland to adopt placemaking ordinances as Portland and many other cities have done.  Sebastopol’s progress on this after their very successful and 1st VBC will be great to hear as well.

With: Katrina Zavalney, Veronica Rameriz & Lindsey Whited

Why is everyone talking about Awakening of the Divine Feminine?  Ultimately, it’s about realigning the human species with life itself.

For over 10 years, I’ve been asking the question, “What is a sustainable person?”  In other words, what kind of people do we need to become in order to cause a regenerative civilization?  I believe we need to be people who have a greater space within ourselves for the feminine aspects of consciousness, creativity and action.

Whether you are in a female or a male body, how you show up as a leader and co-creator radically shapes the outcomes of your leadership.  People who know how to engage both masculine and feminine quadrants of their psyche simply have a better chance of building a world that works for all.

• Learn a new map for your feminine and masculine essential energies that empowers and inspires more of you to show up in leadership and life
• Explore the 5 Pillars of Feminine Leadership: Non-Urgency, Beauty, Co-Creation, Listening, & Emergence
• Work with Samantha Sweetwater to expand this map to include YOUR vision of Feminine Leadership for both men and women in a world that works for all

Learn More About: Samantha Sweetwater