Permaculture Works Back Catalogue - Crowdfunder 2024

Helpful and nurturing relationships are the foundation of successful permaculture. And when enough of those relationships network together we call that community.

The Permaculture Association and its thousands of members around Britain and across the planet have been fostering healthy communities for four decades. This issue is a celebration of the power of those communites.

Click to read on desktop

Click to read on mobile

Caring is at the very centre of a permaculture life. From paying attention, to actively supporting and serving, the word care has so many meanings that bring permaculture to life. This acts as the guiding ethic for everything we hope to achieve by engaging in regeneration and positive change in our lives and landscapes.

In this issue we explore the power of organised movement building, soil and wildlife care in growing, the importance of sharing our permaculture work widely, the UN’s “century of care” and its implications for children; creativity and care at the end of life; the critical role of self-care within activism; and the incredible capacity for human care in times of conflict and uncertainty.

Roots in all their symbolic and pragmatic meaning are carriers of information, takers and givers of nourishment, through-lines into ancestry, perennial wisdom and learning. Roots are storehouses of energy, shelter in tough times, and solid security tying us to the land on which we depend. Without a deep connection to our roots we have no capacity for growth and flourishing and so we honour them in this issue.

Perennial vegetables, historical connection to land, indigenous perspectives, integral permaculture, designing farm-scale projects, returning to our roots in the pandemic and the history of the Permaculture Association are just a few of the subjects in this edition of our membership journal.

99 percent of work is not fit for purpose. Not fit for people nor planet.

In this issue, we explore the possibilities of work if visioned and designed through the lens of permaculture. What is meaningful and necessary work? Where should our energy and our skills best be used and shared? How do we put our working life into alignment with the needs of all other life while still earning a crust? What does and should money have to do with our labour? And what positive and radical solutions are being designed by our community of permaculture thinkers and doers? Creative responses that restore the eco back into the economy by creating livelihoods that heal and regenerate ourselves, our communities and Earth.

At every turn the acceleration is intensifying: abrupt climate disruption, financial disparity, political and social polarisation, ecocide. And yet this acceleration is not limited to destructive forces. The rate and rise of ecologically minded and actively engaged citizens has also taken a recent and dramatic upward curve. The popularity and urgent necessity of permaculture has never been greater. 

We explore new ways to consider our design work, the radical redrawing of political roles, ancient wisdom from the forests, different approaches to motherhood, the power of citizen science, and the alchemy of biochar amongst many other topics.

The Permaculture Association is working to bring about radical positive change to the current disastrous status quo. We are a strong and successful network of committed thinkers and doers using powerful ecological design tools to regenerate our homes, communities and landscapes.

This is the first issue of our newly designed members’ journal. We showcase the work our staff, trustees, membership and wider permaculture community are doing to create the world we all wish to inhabit. We explore the head, heart and soul of a life in permaculture from the very personal to the truly global.

This journal is a reflection and record of all our endeavours, our achievements, our hopes and fears, and of course our ambition to create a brighter future for us all.