2017 Workshops
Click on the Workshops Below for More Info
With keynotes speakers, workshops, skills shares, & panel discussions from leading resilience thinkers and doers; a model resilient community; live music; camping; child and youth programming; and plenty of opportunities for co-inspiration and cross-pollination… the Building Resilient Communities Permaculture Convergence will bring together leaders, permaculture designers, transition organizers, activists, young people, homesteaders, designers, social entrepreneurs, and others who are passionate about shifting the paradigm and joining together to cross-pollinate, skill-up, synergize and celebrate!
Check out our workshops themes and topics below, followed by a list of workshop titles and descriptions.
Ecological Vitality
This workshop will teach participants how to craft the best diet for their being. We will look at constitutions, lifestyles, medical issues, geographical locations, and belief systems to help each individual learn what will support them at this stage of their life. Also covered some of the basic of how to grow and prepare some of the most important foods. This workshop will teach participant how to craft the best diet for their being, and grow and prepare the most …
Empowering Pregnancy & Birth
Know how you came here, your birth rights in and out of the hospital setting, and tools to make pregnancy and birth a naturally smooth process. Open to all Genders~ we all came through this process. How are we bringing the next generation onto this planet? Come to learn pregnancy & birth information all beings should know. All Genders encouraged to come…everyone came from this process! What you most likely didn’t learn in school about pregnancy & birth. Simple tools …
Food Forest Gardens
Grow your own! It doesn’t get more local or fresh than your own yard. Want to create a personal Garden of Eden for you, your clients, or your community? Want to eat fresh, local, organic produce while reducing your environmental footprint? This workshop will focus on the how-to’s of creating a beautiful, functional and food-generating garden, no matter how much space you have. There will be an emphasis on incorporating ecological principles, such as soil building, using perennial edibles, and …
Foraging Adventures
Foraging connects us to abundance and brings us into meaningful relationship with plants and people. It also releases feel-good chemicals in the brain. We will talk story and ethics behind gathering wild foods as well as learn the nutritional and mental health benefits. Freshly foraged foods will be available to sample as we dive deep into this ancestral art form. Learn wild food collecting (for urban and rural settings) and sample fresh fruits as we discuss how foraging boosts overall …
From the margins to the center: Role of youth in the Next Economy
Reflection and conversation on the importance of intergenerational collaboration in order to create the world we all know is possible. In this workshop participants will hear of innovative businesses that are being developed and founded by youth. We will explore the value of intergenerational collaboration and how adults can be better allies to those that will inherit our planet and it’s systems. Participants will engage in reflective & team building activities and explore the resiliency of our young people and …
Good Fungi, Happy Plants
Learn how to promote the beneficial fungi called mycorrhizae to increase the health, quality, and yields of vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Mycorrhizae can increase yields by as much as 1500%. They are an important part of the soil food web. There are ways to promote the growth of this beneficial fungi without having to buy costly inoculants. A vibrant, healthy soil food web is essential to a productive permaculture garden or farm. There are amazing beneficial fungi that promote the …
Green Your Grow
Green Your Grow: 1-Day Intensive on Holistic Cannabis Cultivation Thurs, Oct 5| 10:00am – 4:30pm| Yurt – Instructed by Max Meyers Pre-Registration Required: $75 – $195 suggested donation (Discounts for FULL Convergence Tickets) Includes delicious vegetarian lunch Ready to Green Your Grow? Are you interested in learning how to grow clean and green Cannabis? Would you like to improve the quality of the cannabis you grow by moving beyond organic? Want to learn how to produce it using more sustainable, …
Herb Spiral Garden
Join Bloom and Anahata, co-founders of Blooming Biodiversity, in the Solar Living Institute’s Spiral Garden to build a beautiful Herb Spiral! Herb Spirals stack many functions, and are a key ingredient in the Permaculture garden. Some plants grow best with more sunlight; others like to chill in the shade. Some plants like to grow at higher elevation, others like to be closer to the ground. We will discuss the Social and Environmental integration of the relevant Permaculture principles embedded in …
High efficiency greywater systems as a game changer for widespread adoption
How to design high tech and low tech greywater systems, new technologies allowing for integrated control and management systems for greywater, rainwater and freshwater irrigation. High efficiency greywater systems as a game changer for widespread adoption of greywater irrigation as a core element of green infrastructure. Training new greywater professionals in this rapidly growing sector of water conservation technology. Greywater systems are a highly practical, multilaterally beneficial pillar of the broad spectrum permaculture design palette. Participants will learn both the …
Hip Hop is Green
Since 2009, Hip Hop Is Green (HHIG) has been a health & wellness leader through our live events which includes the Hip Hop Green Dinner and 10th Element of Hip Hop Symposium & Concert. We represent a health and wellness movement that informs, inspires and introduces new products and ideas to youth and families in urban areas. We are pioneers in this new Green Age of Hip Hop and we make being healthy cool to young people. Hip Hop encompasses …
How to Assess & Design a Healthy Home Environment
Due to the rising toxicity levels in the environment around us, along with the associated rise in cancer rates, Angel Rodriguez will be providing a workshop to help participants learn how to assess and evaluate their home environment, and design their home for optimizing health, minimizing toxicity, and creating a LifeStance that is as impenetrable as is possible. Angel holds a Masters degree in Sustainable Communities, a Bachelors degree in Holistic Nutrition, is State certified and licensed in all aspects …
How to Design New Social Architectures
Understanding the principles new social architectures are based on, and then having a go at designing some of these new systems. We look at the process of designing/inventing social architectures like World Cafe, Nonviolent Communication, Timebanks, and Sociocracy. The underlying principles of new systems will be sketched. We will work together to brainstorm/tinker with social, economic, and governance structures for your projects and the world. This teaches people that they are not locked into the given ecosocial structures. And …
Implementing a Full-Scale Design, Sivananda Yoga Farm
In this workshop Colin and Phillip will talk about the challenges in implementing a Permaculture design at the Sivananda Yoga Farm in Grass Valley, CA. They will review the design elements, the invisible structures, the 5 zones, as well as touch on the importance of spiritual practice in any well-rounded Permaculture design. This workshop will use the Yoga Farm as a model to tie in larger themes of self-sustainability with ecological resilience. The Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm is working on …
Indigenous Rising
This workshop will discuss how to best support Indigenous peoples rising to address issues of land and food sovereignty, natural resources, and cultural restoration.and how to engage others across the boundaries of culture, class, and community. This workshop is inspired by the rise of indigenous peoples for the protection of our sacred waters. Its facilitators have first hand experience in organizing and activating for standing rock and for the California waters where the salmon will run. They will share how …
International Permaculture CoLab – Advances of the Next Big Step
Following the update at NAPC last year on the mutli-year, Permaculture Next Big Step process initated at IPC Cuba in 2013 this workshop presents the design for the Permaculture CoLab. The Colab uses sociocracy, leaderfulness, slicing pie, patrix busting, constellation organizing, open badges and enspiral modelling to create an international, virtual community of practice intent on bringing significant additional coherence to the world wide permaculture community. Friday Oct 6| 3:30pm| Hops Tipi Presented By: Andrew Langford …
Intuitional Literacy 101
Through simple personal practice, collective council, and experimentation, Amutabi Todaii and Amani Will of the Creative Liberation Network work with you to recognize, honor, and deepen our relationships with the intuition. We unpack intuitional literacy as both a manifestation of, and catalyst in supporting decolonization and the return to the wisdom of the body, the emotions, the awareness, lineage, interdependence, the earth, and something beyond. Saturday Oct 7| 3:30pm| Mediterranean Garden Presented By: Amani Will & Amutabi Todaii …
IUD Awareness – Are They Really Safe?
Learn about the problems being caused by using IUDs (a popular birth control method). IUDs (Intra Uterine Devices) are currently being heavily promoted to women all around the world as the “safest and most effective form of birth control”. Unfortunately, the potential risks and adequate informed consent in regards to the myriad of life shattering “adverse effects” which these devices are causing is not part of the “promotion campaign” and doctor themselves are often ignorant of what can happen. Hundreds …
Kombucha and Jun: Brewing and Flavoring Tips to Take Your Brew to the Next Level
Kombucha, and its lesser known honey-based cousin jun, are brewed by thousands at home but many brewers can be frustrated by the resulting beverage: the taste is off, there’s little or no carbonation, and it is nothing like their favorite store-bought brand. In this workshop, Douglas Reil will cover the basics of brewing but focus on some key tips and techniques to making top level fermented beverages at home. The workshop will also contrast kombucha techniques with that of jun, …
Makin’ It Happen, Cooperatively: Pathways for success in Intentional Communities, Worker Co-ops, and other collective projects and endeavors
We all know that creating a world that works for all people and the planet will take an unprecedented level of cooperation. Easier said than done when the dominant social and economic structures, not to mention our own condition, is geared against this. This workshop will explore the ins and outs of successful group endeavors and enterprises, including intentional communities, worker co-ops, and other collective and community based projects. We’ll look at the interwoven set of interpersonal, cultural, and structural …
Mantra Sound Healing
Mantras are sonic formulas chanted that allow us to purify the mind, protect from negativity, and generate energy for healing. This workshop will introduce the lay person to simple Tibetan Mantra and give more advanced practitioners a deepening experience into the application of mantra for fulfilling one’s highest purpose in this life. Madhu will lead several mantra practices to benefit all sentient beings and use modern looping technology to enhance the mantras by creating live soundscapes. Joining our voices in …
Midwifing the New Earth
Our Sacred Future Lies in the Hands of an Awakening Generation of Light-Leaders Oct 5th, 12:30 pm – 4:30 pm – With Maria Owl Pre-Registration Required $45 – $95 suggested donation (Included with FULL Convergence Tickets) Workshop Description Have you ever felt like you are here to participate in something big? Like you are a piece of a larger, intelligent whole that is on the verge of waking up? Do you ever wonder what your role is in the “Great Turning”? …
Midwifing the New Earth: Unplug from Old Paradigm Conditioning and Claim Your True Power to Create Reality
[img_text_aside style=”1″ image=”http://permacultureconvergence.com.webserver.vera.asdf456.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/EagleAndCondor-300×238.jpg” image_alignment=”right” headline=”” alignment=”right”] Maria Owl will be guiding a 4-hour pre-convergence deep dive, using the wisdom of quantum physics and energy medicine to support you in reclaiming your sovereignty and innate capacity to create reality. Through meditation, energy-body recalibration, and community ritual you will align with your deeper purpose and calling which is and always has been embedded in your DNA. This workshop will culminate in an hour-long Birthing Ritual, where we will anchor in the new …
Moon Blood Empowerment
When we live in alignment with these changing seasons within our bodies, we live closer to the earth’s natural flow, and create more ease, strength, adaptability, and empowerment through our attunement to the changing, cycling needs of our bodies and of the world around us. Presented by Abigail Hinds …
Music As Medicine In Our Time
Lydia Violet (of Ayla Nereo band) will lead us through an intimate experience with Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects (WTR), a set of teachings and group exercises that help build inner resilience, fierce compassion, wisdom, and creative responses to challenging eco-socio-political times. As we move through both the dangers and awakenings we currently face as a people, we learn tools, meditations, and concepts that we can rest into, connecting to our desires to be effective allies to both planet and …
My Biome and Me: Healing Fermented Foods?
The human gut biome is home to a diverse ecology of viruses, bacteria, yeasts, fungi, etc. If balanced, the mind/body is vital and healthy, with glowing skin, abundant energy and a generally positive outlook on life . When some of the more parasitic species dominate, food cravings, fatigue, depression, insomnia are some of the possible side effects. We will look at the effects of modern food production, pollution, modern medicine and other factors that influence our biome. We will also …
Network workshop
How can permaculture build more of a unified movement? How can we scale up and replicate our amazing projects and programs in Northern California? Join the NorCal Resilience Network for a strategy session about movement building, a new Network with the intention of building a coalition in Northern California to broaden support for our movement and build capacity for our grassroots efforts. Learn about our successes and lessons learned during our past few years of organizing, and join in an …
New Systems for Urban Agriculture
Today more people live in cities and they have inherited poor design and crumbling infrastructure that needs to be maintained, Their is also a lot of possibilities with the new systems being built. What does it take to turn some of the cities problems into solutions and how do we convert these landscapes, buildings and infrastructure into ones that are regenerative and living? In this session you will be exposed to innovative solutions of growing more food in the city …
Ocean Farming & Restoration
Restoring California’s majestic giant kelp forests will sequester carbon, increase biodiversity and create blue green jobs. Over 95% of California’s kelp forests have disappeared in the past 150 years. We will explore re-planting our native kelp forests, state coastal regulations, coastal native tribe participation, cutting edge projects including Bren Smith’s GreenWave and Marine Permaculture, potential markets for kelp and sea greens and how vibrant kelp forests support aquatic life bio diversity. Saturday Oct 7| 3:30pm| Yurt Presented By: John Roulac …
Permaculture 101
An introductory class on the ethics, principles, and techniques of permaculture. We will go over the history of permaculture and how to integrate it into cities, landscapes, businesses, and homes.This class will give people a better understanding of the basics of Permaculture and how to apply it to all areas of their life. Permaculture has become a catch phrase but many people may not be aware of the origins, the ethics, or the principles. Most people I talk to think …
Permaculture Gardening – From Biointensive to Natural Farming
Learn to apply Permaculture principles and ethics to gardening! You’ll never know what is possible until you know all your options! Explore the full spectrum of options from biointensive to natural farming, organized and explained from a principle-based perspective to facilitate easier adaptation, observation, and improvisation. Presented By: Matt Powers …
