Permaculture people…
Five women making things happen
YVON CHOUINARD, the blacksmith, climber and surfer who launched the Patagonia adventure equipment company said this:
“To do good, you actually have to do something.”
I think Yvon’s statement well-fits these women at A Peace of the Garden, the community garden at Launceston’s Northern Suburbs Community Centre. Why? Because they have enacted what Yvon said by also enacting Bill Mollison’s (Bill was a biogeographer who co-invented the permaculture design system) dictum of:
“Work where it counts… work with those who want to learn”.
Working where it counts
Since its inception in Tasmania, women have played leading roles in the permaculture design system as educators, designers and communicators. They continues to do so. This group of five continues that tradition.
How is working where it counts enacted by these women? Let’s go across the photo from left to right, back row to front row to answer this question:
- Back left we have Grace Walch, who is doing her pHD at Swinburne on bioegional systems and non-monetary economies, who has worked in youth training in intentional communities in Ireland and Israel and has taught in two Permaculture Design Courses organised at Launceston’s Northern Suburbs Community Centre by local permaculture activist, Jo Dean. Grace was in Launceston for the annual Agricultured festival which toured the garden. Her studies may prove of interest to permaculture practitioners, given permaculture’s past involvement with bioregionalism as an approach to landuse planning and with non-monetary economics such as the Local Exchange and Trading System in the 1990s that permaculture popularised.
- Second along is local woman, Jo Dean. Jo is an energetic woman who works with immigrants and refugees in community gardens, with school gardens as outdoor classrooms as Launceston coordinator of Tasmania’s 24 Carrot School Gardens Program, and who offers the Permaculture Design Course in Launceston from time to time. She also happens to be Tasmanian co-ordinator of the national network, Community Gardens Australia.
- At back row right is another Tasmanian, from Penguin, further along the Bass Strait coast. Caroline Smith has for many years worked in education in international development and is associated with projects in the Pacific. She has taught on permaculture design courses and holds the new Flavours of Launceston recipe book (free download), a Community Gardens Australia initiative bringing together the ethnically diverse foods of Launceston community gardeners.
Let’s move to the front row:
- At left is Fiona Campbell from Tasmania’s southeast coast. Like Jo presently does, Fiona taught the Permaculture Design Course in Sydney before she became Randwick City Council’s sustainabiliy educator where she developed a more than decade-long commuity resilience education program and developed Randwick Environment Park, including the Permaculture Interpretive Garden, a teaching venue. She is a member of the TerraCircle international development team and worked with Solomon Island communities and the Kastom Garden Association. A practicing permaculturist since 1985 who did her design course with Robyn Francis from Permaculture College Australia, Fiona designed the Flavours of Launceston recipe book and associated website and supports Community Gardens Australia with their website.
- Naomi Lacey from Darwin sits next to Fiona. Naomi started her involvement in community gardening in the Northern Territory and became the state coordinator for Community Gardens Australia. She is now the organisation’s national president and is actively developing the organisation and taking it in new directions. She was in Launceston to launch Flavours of Launceston and to check out local community gardens.
Inspiration to action
Again and again in the social movement around permaculture we hear of the necessity to take the design system into mainstream society so as to stimulate the changes we need to steer a course through the challenges of the Anthropocene (and also Teaching the Anthropocene). By working where it counts, with people who want to learn and who can best benefit from permaculture, and by creating a presence within mainstream institutions and organisations, that is what Grace, Jo, Carol, Fiona and Naomi are doing.
Not that many years ago in the permaculture conversation on social media we saw claims that women were underrepresented in permaculture. The conversation faded away. This is not the situation in Australia, as was pointed out during that conversation. A far-reaching survey in 2015, I think it was, by the UK-based Next Big Thing, a permaculture organisation, disclosed a rough gender balance within permaculture across different nations. These five women represent the leading role of women in permaculture.
What do they have in common? They are all women for whom the permaculture design system is core to their motivation. As design course graduates they acknowledge what Bill Mollison’s meant when he said that “We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities” as they go on to surmount them. Opportunities, they know, come and go, so in taking note of Seneca’s suggestions that we “sieze what flees” they grasp opportunities as they surface and turn them from ideas into on-the-ground actuality.
