The Permaculture Action Hub at Symbiosis is the beehive of networking, discussion, skill-sharing, workshops, and talks on the regenerative ecological systems and community organizing methods that will bring us into a more just and sustainable world.  From exploring soils, water catchment, food growing, natural building and alternative energy to illuminating social design, building the commons, direct action, and decision making, the Permaculture Action Hub is the space to build a movement capable of taking on the great challenges of our time and discover a better way of living together.

This year, the Permaculture Action Hub will feature renowned teachers, organizers, and designers, as well as a number of demonstration systems detailing ecologically regenerative ways of attaining our food, water, and shelter.  Alongside the Permaculture Action Hub, make a visit to the Placemakers Teahouse, have a cup of tea and talk with your fellows about what’s occupying your mind, or swing by the BioRegional Hub to connect directly with people from your geographical region who want to create new projects, take action, and get organized, whether by starting a community garden together or mobilizing your neighbors to completely change the local economy.

What does a better world look like to you?  How will we grow our food, gather our water, build our shelter, and get from place to place?  How will we make decisions, come together in community, and resolve our disputes?  What will it take to shift the entire trajectory of the current dominant paradigm?  The Permaculture Action Hub is your place at Symbiosis to figure that out.

Coordinated by Timo Granzotti and hosted and curated by the Permaculture Action Network, this is the space where we plan to take our dreams into reality through action.

Featuring workshops with Dr. Vandana Shiva, Erica Wohldman, Ryan Rising, Timo Granzotti, and workshops on urban agriculture, the community-led food movement, direct action for ecological justice, finding and using plant medicine, and much more.

See below for our full schedule of workshops in the Permaculture Action Hub at Symbiosis 

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Permaculture Plaza at Symbiosis 2016  

In ‘The Village’, across from the humongous HUB stage at Symbiosis, you’ll find the Permaculture Plaza nestled between the Nourishment Nook and Healing Huts along the shore of the peninsula.  This is the center of activity, learning, and networking for the regenerative community movement we are cultivating together, including a full schedule of workshops, demonstration systems, skill-shares, networking sessions, and much more.  

Within the Permaculture Plaza find:

• Permaculture Action Hub:  our main workshop and skill-share tent.  Find talks by Vandana Shiva and Erica Wohldmann, direct action trainings for social and ecological justice, workshops in rainwater catchment systems and soil building, solar cooking and appropriate technology skill-shares, and much more.  Scroll down for full schedule.

• PlaceMakers’ TeaHouse:  across the Permaculture Plaza from the Permaculture Action Hub, next to the Nourishment Nook, the PlaceMakers’ TeaHouse is our anchor for creative, convivial chill space; a place to relax, reflect, discuss and digest.  Cultivating a more intimate relationship with our earthly home, we’re offering light sessions on community life, restoring our relationship to place, and the permaculture neighborhood.

• Networking Node:  the center of connection within the Permaculture Plaza, come under the shade of our open canopy to meet folks interested in similar projects and passions as you, and to network with people who live in the same BioRegion you came from.  With BioRegionally-based info boards up 24/7 for you to interact with, as well as guerilla workshops and facilitated networking session, this is the spot to find your comrades.  

• The Closed Loop System:  Set up by the Jenkstars straight from Building Man festival, a system demonstrating alternative energy, appropriate technology whole-systems water, solar, humanure, and other energy flows.  

• Tiny Home:  Come check out the demonstration tiny home; learn to live in less space with more connection.  

• Solutioncraft Sun Oven:  The humongous sun-oven large enough to cook for a village will be cooking up pizzas, veggies, and other dishes.  Come have a bite.  

Schedule for Permaculture Action Hub

Friday 9:45-10:45am  Urban Agriculture & Permaculture Projects: How To Get Started w/ Carrie Lierl

Come join urban permaculture practitioner, Carrie Lierl, for an optimistic discussion about the practical potential for community-led urban agriculture and permaculture projects! With an emphasis on the specific skillsets, tools, and foundational knowledge you may need to both successfully self-start and self-maintain your own urban agriculture or permaculture project, Carrie will discuss some best practices and lessons learned from the shared experiences of herself and other urban permaculture practitioners who have set out to restore urban landscapes in the name of promoting sustainable food production, ecological health, and community solidarity. Some other central themes of this discussion will include: making things work within the system (while simultaneously working to change it!), generating value from waste materials, and tapping into the productive potential of both micro-climates and social anomalies.

Friday 11am-12pm  ReHydrating The Earth: Rainwater Catchment w/ Lydia Neilsen

Friday 12:15-1:15pm  Plant Life as a Model of the Original Gift Economy w/ Matthew D. Segall, PhD
POSTPONED to later in the weekend; check the Networking Node schedule at the
Permaculture Plaza for the time and day

Friday 1:30-2:30pm  The Community-Led Food Movement w/ Jasmine Vassar MPH

Looking to get more community buy in for your project? Come joins this interactive workshop focused on org awareness and techniques for community engagement.

Jasmine (Jazz) Vassar, is a Bay Area educator who is passionate about bringing knowledge of health and wellness to families. With a degree in nutrition and certification in yoga, she has taught various workshops ranging from yoga, nutrition, food justice, and life skills.

Friday 2:45pm-3:45pm  Myco-Food Forestry w/ Ry N Flint

Come explore some of the mysterious realms of symbiotic fungi and how they live with their plant hosts. Stack some functions! Learn how to integrate mushrooms and fungi into your perennial food forest environment. Your host Rye N. Flint, co-owner of the oldest Truffle Farm in America, will walk you through your very own garden of eatin’.

Rye N. Flint resides in an blue oak, gray pine Savannah in Northern California. He surthrives in an self built $300 off-grid tiny home. He has a B.S. in Soil Science, a permaculture design certification, and is co-owner of the oldest Truffle farm in America. Rye gives talks and host workshops on rewilding and food forestry and many transformational festivals and events, lead walks through the natural areas in Northern California, tying in stories of our past with how we can live more natural lives in the present.

Friday 4:15pm-5:15pm Designing for the Movement w. Ryan Rising & Jasmine Fuego

How can the lens of permaculture – the mimicking of nature’s patterns and principles – inform the way we design both the ecological systems of food, water, and shelter that give us life, and the social systems of how we make decisions, come together as people, and build resilient communities?

How can we take effective action to create viable life-affirming alternatives to the extractive and exploitative systems that we seek to replace.

Ryan Rising and Jasmine Fuego of the Permaculture Action Network will start this session with an introduction to permaculture design and lead into a conversation that takes its application beyond forest gardens, rainwater catchment systems, and natural building to how we can cultivate effective collaborative groups and communities capable of taking action towards realizing a more just and regenerative world.

Ryan and Jasmine will also touch on the work of the Permaculture Action Network over the last two years of organizing over 50 Permaculture Action Days across the country after concerts and before music festivals where hundreds gather to directly implement regenerative systems in their communities.

Step into this in-depth session on ecological design, regenerative living systems, how to take direct action for a just and sustainable world, forming healthy collaborative groups and community organizing.

Friday 5:30-6:30pm  Wild Foods: 6 Months Living in the Forest w. Erica Wohldmann

Spending time in nature has countless benefits to psychological and physical health. In this talk, Erica Wohldmann will share some of those benefits, as well as a few of the lessons she learned while living in the forest for 6 months on wild food and medicine. Learn how to be a forest dweller in the urban wild.

Saturday 9:45-10:45pm  Plastic Planet: A Not-So-Symbiotic Relationship w. Genevieve Abedon

We live in a culture addicted to convenience that is resulting in a plastic planet. We are working against nature, not with her. This is not quite the permanent culture we have in mind. Come learn about the extent of our plastic pollution problem as well as the many opportunities we have for solutions using various permaculture principles as our guide. Let’s bust myths, learn the facts, and get creative with reducing our plastic footprint for the sake of the planet, all of her creatures, and the return to symbiosis.

Genevieve is a recovering plastic-aholic. Motivated to be part of the solution, Genevieve changed her ways dramatically by refusing all things plastic and has now devoted her career to the matter. Genevieve works with the Green Team for various events, including Symbiosis in the past, and has sailed across the North Atlantic Ocean researching plastic pollution with 5 Gyres, so has seen first-hand just how pervasive plastic pollution is. Music, nature, animals, good food, friends, family, traveling, and community feed her soul.

Saturday 11-12pm  Solar Cooking & Appropriate Technology w/ Brennan Blazer Bird

Appropriate cooking technology harnesses renewable energy to cook meals that are healthy for our planet and us. Solar thermal energy is a readily available and renewable way to cook our food; dehydrate our fruits and vegetables; and pasteurize water. When sunlight isn’t available, rocket stoves use a fuel-efficient combustion chamber to minimize the amount of firewood needed for cooking. Come learn how to build and use these technologies as we cook and enjoy a fossil-fuel-free meal in one of the largest solar ovens in the world!

Saturday 12:15-1:15pm  All Plants Are Teachers: Learning From & About Plant Medicine w/ Erica Wohldmann

Long before the days of modern medicine, people used plants to prevent and cure diseases. This wisdom was passed down orally from one generation to the next, but as indigenous cultural values have been replaced with western ideologies, many of these practices have been forgotten. In this talk, Erica will discuss traditional uses of locally available plant medicines for healing mind, body, and spirit.

Saturday 1:30-2:45pm  Art Drives Culture: Creative Revolution in the Modern Age w/ Prescott McCarthy

In this lecture we will discuss the importance of an idea and the path to making it into a reality. We will look at the bigger picture of Art in our world and the way it drives the societies we live in. From Davinci, to banksy, to Bucky.  We are surrounded by the ideas of others. The goal of this workshop will be to inspire you to take the wheel and start driving your next big idea.

Saturday 3-4:15pm  Permaculture & Power: The Logistics of Liberation w/ Ryan Rising

What is it really going to take to liberate ourselves from the exploitative, extractive systems we are living within?  How can we re-inhabit space, and see that re-inhabiting of space as one of the most revolutionary acts we can take?  How can we interact with the material infrastructure of our world to collectively slow and stop the mechanisms of ecological devastation and human harm? Power is logistic.

Saturday 4:30-5:45pm  Direct Action for Social & Ecological Justice w/ Krystof Lopaur

Our destructive, unjust, and unsustainable society is the product of social and political mechanisms that are continuously working to reproduce it. Permaculture reminds us that another world is possible, but how can we overcome these obstacles to transform our communities and our planet? This workshop will offer lessons and strategies from contemporary and recent social movements, including the movement to end police violence and racism.

Saturday 6-7pm  The Soil Story w/ Kiss the Ground

This workshop will explore how soil — the thin layer of the Earth’s surface — can play a role in reducing and sequestering carbon emissions and balance our climate. Focusing on techniques of regenerative agriculture, it will explore this topic from a microscopic level to the global scale and also present solutions and ways to get involved. Please join us for an in depth look of the story of soil, the living, breathing entity that sustains us all!

Matt Finkelstein is an regenerative/organic farmer and educator. He has spent the past 10 years dedicated to cultivating and empowering a deeper connection with food and nature. Matt has also been involved in the transformational festival community for several years, contributing to building projects and production. Currently, Matt is based in Los Angeles, where he manages the garden for Kiss the Ground while also running a school garden program and managing a private farm.

Sunday 9:45-10:45am:  Seed Bomb Making Skill-Share w. Natalie Flores

Embrace your inner rebel and come participate in the flowering of your communities, one bomb at a time. Clay, soil, water and wild flowers.. what else do you need~?

Sunday 11:00-12:00pm:  Herbal First Aid Kit: Medicine Making w. Kouros Alaee

Sunday 12:15-1:15pm:  Restorative Justice: An Alternative to Zero-Tolerance & the Punitive Justice System w/ Alexa Levy

Introduction to Restorative Justice: Learn what Restorative Justice is, what makes it a possible solution, how it works, and hear a personal story of how restorative justice transformed a public school classroom.

Alexa Levy is an educator, public school teacher, permaculturist, fighter for restorative social and ecological justice, and an artist. Over the past few years, 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 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 cares deeply about educating youth, and shaping her skills through situations and people that surround her. Alexa’s desire is to create positive solutions, to nurture and guide youth towards self-empowerment to take action all over.

Sunday 1:30-2:30pm:  Open-Source Closed Loop Systems: Solving the Problem of Food, Water and Shelter w. Scotty Soltronic

The future is here, intelligent closed loop living systems.

Scottysoltronic is one part artist, two parts inventor and three parts mad scientist. He is the co-founder of the JenkStars, the Center for Art and Sustainability, and the creator of the Solar Saucer, Sol Blossom and Sol Sister Mobile Solar Powered Art Installations. Scotty has been coast to coast powering events and talking to participants about Art, music and technology. Scotty is a full time artist and lives in Utah with his son.

Sunday 2:45-3:45pm:  Indigenous Agroforestry w. Timo Granzotti

Sunday 4:00-5:00pm:  Permaculture Year One: Evolving Our Farm, Our Business and Ourselves w/ OurPlace Kauai

We’ll be sharing our year-long permaculture journey on a farm in Hawaii. We have been place-making a farm cafe, as well as helping our friends’ ranch blossom into a permaculture food forest. After taking the Elemental Alchemy immersive course at Symbiosis, we learned many different concepts that have since transformed into projects at home and at our business. We hope to inspire you with how much change can take place in just a year!

Kimmy Lyon and Michael Blow operate a permaculture farm cafe in Hawaii.

Sunday 5:15-6:45pm:  Conserving BioDiversity; Producing More Food w/ Dr. Vandana Shiva

Schedule for Networking Node

Fresh off the heals of the North American Permaculture Convergence, and with space being co-facilitated by the impact center-mapping group NuMundo, come find people in your BioRegion who want to take action with you in similar areas of passion, and find networking sessions and additional sessions.  

Friday 12:15pm Yoga for Anatomical Empowerment w/ Leah Van Winkle

Saturday 1:15pm Networking Session for Activists w/ NuMundo

TBA  Adapt:  A Permaculture Game w/ Bridget O’Brien