July 31st – August 3rd at Sunrise Ranch, Loveland, CO

For information on just the Permaculture Action Day on August 3rd click here

You can also learn more about the course on the ARISE website

Join Ryan Rising and Alexa Levy of Permaculture Action Network, water systems expert & certified permaculture design teacher Avery Ellis, Sunrise Ranch’s own permaculture designer Patrick Padden, biodynamics practitioner Stone Hunter, and other guest instructors for a detailed and holistic program that combines ecological design science, community organizing with an action-based focus, and the many facets of permaculture.

With a focus on catalyzing social transformation, you will learn techniques for regenerating ecology and explore community building through action-oriented organizing.

With experts in their respective fields teaching Natural Building, Rainwater Harvesting, Earthworks, Forest Gardening and more, this course will leave you with the practical tools to actually start building the world you want to live in. This course will lead into an on-site Permaculture Action Day before the Arise Music Festival and will explore how large, temporary human gatherings can catalyze long-term positive impact on the land.

Course: Monday, July 31st 8am, to Wednesday, August 2nd
(Early arrival camping and dinner is available on the night of July 30th for an extra fee)
Action Day: Thursday, Aug 3rd

The course will include three days of full-on permaculture education and community building, including:
-permaculture design process
-rainwater harvesting and earthworks
-introduction to permaculture
-natural building and appropriate technology
-regenerative tools and techniques
-permaculture gardening and food forestry
-applying ecological principles
-social permaculture
-community organizing methods
-soils and composting

Attendance is limited to 30 participants! Secure your ticket today!

Cost: $379           Register Here! 
Ticket includes:
-A three day permaculture intensive course followed by a Permaculture Action Day, all on the festival site at Sunrise Ranch
-Festival Early Arrival Access (with first choice of camping for the whole week)
-Three organic meals per day, Monday through Wednesday (breakfast included on Thursday, Aug. 3, but not on Monday, July 31)
-On-site camping

Arrival and check-in: 8-9 a.m. Monday, July 31st (early arrival on July 30th is available for $75 extra).

First session begins at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, July 31st.

All participants in the Action Course and Action Day must depart the west side of the valley by 3 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 3, and may enter the festival with an ARISE Festival wristband.

For info on the Permaculture Action Day on August 3rd, click here.

Ryan Rising
Ryan Rising is a community organizer and permaculture educator based out of the San Francisco Bay Area and co-founder of the Permaculture Action Network. After a decade of local organizing around direct action, food justice, ecological design and community space, Ryan organized the Permaculture Action Tour for music producer The Polish Ambassador in the fall of 2014. The tour visited 32 cities across the country, holding a Permaculture Action Day in each one and bringing together up to 400 people at a time to implement projects including public food forests, edible gardens, natural buildings, urban farms, and greenhouses. The tour was so effective in moving thousands of people into regenerative work and movement building for the just transition that an organization of local chapters throughout multiple bioregions, the Permaculture Action Network, arose from it.

Ryan focuses on creating community access to land for local food growing and regenerative living—connecting people to take direct action and transition to a resilient way of life; and social permaculture—the ways we make decisions, build resilience, resolve conflicts, and organize in community.

Ryan has taught numerous courses and workshops, including the Elemental Alchemy Permaculture Intensive before Symbiosis Gathering in 2013, 2015, and 2016, Permaculture Design Courses across California and Tennessee, a month-long Gaia Education certified Eco-Village Design training in Nicaragua, and numerous Permaculture Action Courses and workshops. Ryan also sometimes guest teaches at University of San Francisco, San Francisco State, and Laney College. A certified permaculture designer with a degree in Peace and Social Justice Studies, he also co-founded a regenerative, productive urban farm in the East Bay and the Omni Commons—a community space and education center in Oakland, CA. For more information on Ryan’s work, see the Permaculture Action Network website.

Avery Ellis, Ecological Designer & Aquaponics Specialist
Avery Ellis, owner of Colorado Greywater, is a sustainability specialist and ecological designer. He has a Masters degree in Ecological Design through SFIA and a BS in Biology & Sustainability through Stockton College. He is also a Certified Permaculture Designer and Teacher and a Certified Greywater Installer. Having spent many years pursuing his passion for sustainability, he now focuses on designing ecosystems that serve humanity by mimicking natural processes.

His passion for Sustainable systems became a life direction after a semester abroad, where he undertook an in-depth study of sustainability at an International Eco-village in Auroville, India. In this intensive course, he explored permaculture design, renewable energy systems, grey water treatment, organic food production, and sustainable building methods. Upon completion of his Bachelor of Science degree, he continued to explore various aspects of sustainability while gaining experience in the field. He worked at an organic farm harvesting culinary herbs, he spent a year as a solar installation specialist, and he was a supervisor for a recycling company, intent on net zero waste.

With all of these skills adding up to a cumulative understanding of sustainability, he decided to continue his education at the San Francisco Institute of Architecture, where he enrolled in a Masters of Ecological Design program. This course has been instrumental in his knowledge of sustainable and regenerative design. As a thesis, he designed and built a small scale aquaponics system for his home, as a model for home-scale food production. This system, along with others he has designed and built, produce organic vegetables and fish year round. As the field of aquaponics develops, he invites each new system as a design challenge and as a sustainable solution for humanity.

Patrick Padden
Patrick Padden, a graduate of Colorado State University, studied natural systems building design in Namibia and urban food forest implementation in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2007. In 2008, Patrick obtained his permaculture teacher’s certificate from Sandy Cruz and Becky Elder of the Permaculture Institute. Patrick received his design certificate from the International Permaculture Design Course in Harare, Zimbabwe, and attended the International Permaculture Convergence in Malawi in 2009.
Patrick is a practicing permaculturalist and permaculture educator and leads the Permaculture Design Certification Course.

Alexa Levy
Alexa Levy is an educator, public school teacher, permaculturist, organizer, and an artist. In various positions, she has dedicated her life to working with underprivileged youth as a facilitator of learning, offering them tools to becoming their best self. She started a Permaculture program at a Middle School in Oakland, where together she and her students learn about growing food, creating regenerative systems, art, current events, social justice, and practice restorative justice. She has been exploring alternative avenues of education in search of piecing together an “Educational Utopia” where justice and compassion are at the forefront.

She has taught in over seventy public schools, knowing thousands of children by name in New York City, and Oakland, California. Alexa is a core member of the Permaculture Action Network, a non-profit organization that mobilizes audiences from cultural events to take direct action at Permaculture Action Days, as well as host courses and create educational hubs at events. She has been a part of creating the organizational development and structure, as well as organizing Permaculture Action Days, facilitating youth workshops, and offering workshops in Permaculture Action Hubs at festivals.

Stone Hunter
Stone Hunter is a biodynamic farming practitioner and consultant at Sustainable Settings Ranch in Carbondale, Colorado. Born and raised at Sunrise Ranch, Stone attended River Song Waldorf School and later graduated from the International Baccalaureate program in Fort Collins, Colorado. After attending Evergreen State College and working on permaculture-based projects in Costa Rica and Panama, he began farming in 2013 at Happy Heart Farm in Fort Collins.

In 2015, Stone began working at Sustainable Settings, where he completed a two-year North American Biodynamic Apprenticeship Program training with experience in dairy cattle operations, holistic grazing, grain cultivation, draft horse implementation, stone masonry, CSA gardening, green construction, natural beekeeping and more. Currently, Stone works with Sustainable Settings emphasizing the application of biodynamic techniques and permaculture designs, composting and livestock management, while he also teaches gardening at the Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork.