Tara Marchant is re-defining herself, like many others, in the emerging Green paradigm. As the Local Director for Emerald Cities Bay Area – Oakland Council, Tara is working across a host of stakeholder organizations (public, labor, community and industry and workforce development) to bring a collective effort to retrofit our urban core. In doing so, create high road job and build our democracy, reduce energy use and direct investments to our local communities. Tara also created and was the program manager of the Green Assets Program at the Greenlining Institute, where alliances, advocates and elected officials contributed to California’s Climate legislation AB 32: an ambitious climate framework for pricing Green House Gases (GHGs) and pricing carbon.  She holds a permaculture credential, and longs for a big garden to produce food and develop urban food systems that are sustainable.

Tara graduated from Yale University with a degree in Theater. Her first love was performing. Yes, as a little girl, she sang, and twirled and made up songs.  As she explores what her expanding role is in healing of Pachamama, she recognizes that it involves music and song and narrative: which are universal and necessary for the health of the human ‘body’ on this planet called earth.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Music of the Movement – Singing our Community into Life (Circle Songs Around the Fire) 

Permaculture is “site specific”. Are the important characteristics of “a permaculture garden” circular lines, or things that might be more difficult to express in sound bites? We’ll take a participatory look at what are likely to be common characteristics for most permaculture gardens, no matter what the climate or resource base may be. We hope to help participants achieve clarity in how to take their garden to the next level, whether they are already gardening or planning their first.

A 20 minute intro: wild gardening defined, including ethnobotany and crop diversity, native allies, staple crops, hand tools, nitrogen and micronutrients, and compost, then ten minutes for feedback and questions, then the group will physically layout a small intensive garden using a proven fast, foolproof method. Then we’ll process the whole thing, taking the permaculture principles as a guide to review.

Presented By: Rick Valley

Permaculture has a lot to offer the ecological restoration movement (and vice versa). What would a permaculture approach look like? How can permaculture contribute to grassroots earth repair movements? Let’s set up a working group to work at and after the Convergence.

The goal is to build bridges between groups working on ecorestoration. nationally and internationally. In cities, rural, etc.

Presented By: Michael Pilarski

While working in groups can be fun, it’s not always easy. How do we cultivate effective groups without replicating hierarchical structures or spending too much time on group process? Designed for anyone working towards positive social change, this participatory one-hour workshop will provide you with some of the perspective, knowledge, and tools you need to collaborate with others in a more skillful way.

This workshop will be a highly-condensed version of a two-day training in Effective Collaboration that was developed by the permaculture-inspired Transition Network to provide local initiative leaders with the skills needed to build resilient communities. Some of its main themes include incorporating diverse perspectives to generate collective wisdom, understanding power dynamics to deal with conflicts more constructively, and emphasizing practice as a way to integrate theory. Both the Transition movement, in general, and this Effective Collaboration workshop, specifically, are powerful tools for spreading permaculture ideas and practices far beyond the choir.

Presented By: Don Hall