PDC 120hrs 2024 Feb to June @Kancoona Farm book via email to Peter
Our usual double certificate PDC Class has moved to Kancoona (1/2 hr past Myrtleford) REGISTER interest by Email to Peter, class is one day per week, day of week will be decided from students preference +2 days are on weekend for extra site visits. This is the base PDC certificate PLUS Intro to Bd , Retrosuburbia & practical sessions such as grafting, Composting & more. over 780 graduates of our PDC so far, a skill in high demand in these times.
contact Peter Direct ( I will set up a "Trybooking soon for this class) it will be held at our new farm in country NE Vic.
Kushala has taken over the 3 PDC's run in melb area in 2023 Peter does 2 sessions on each of these
Monbulk course that partners with Emerald community House, is the same one Peter runs in NE Vic and this class follows the tradition of PDC (this one started in 1994 in these hills) & has run at Telopea Mtn by Pete over last 20 years, use the Vic Curriculum (also used to setup the Diploma of PC) as a past student Kushala has been a tutor on Peters PDC since 2015 and has a Diploma of PC, he has run the Kinglake PDC for last 5 years and now takes over the other PDC's via Emerald & ringwood from Pete the Permie, this course uses the same multiple tutors and visit sites, it covers the full 72hr PDC curriculum expected and has an added component of horticulture subjects necessary for clean food growing (as requested by 750 students over last 20 years), Pete will be back to teach 2 subjects, animals and trees in Permaculture and take you thru his collection onsite.
Permaculture Design Course Sept 2023
Venue - Telopea Mountain Permaculture in Monbulk
Course Duration - 120 hours
Dates - Feb to June
Course Fee -
The Permaculture Design Course (PDC) is a comprehensive introduction to Permaculture
principles and practices, and will give you both tools and resources to become more
resilient, and create opportunities to thrive in these challenging times. You will be exposed
to a wealth of information that you can immediately use in your life.
Permaculture provides a framework for creating an ecological civilisation, where all
aspects are integrated with nature and natural systems, and which provides for human
needs in a way that improves ecosystem health as a whole, and can be perpetuated
indefinitely.
Permaculture goes beyond the concept of sustainability - it introduces a paradigm of
Regeneration, where we can bring renewed vitality to ecosystems, improving the health of
waterways, soils, plants, animals and people.
This knowledge, when applied, will enable you to become more secure, resilient and
resourced in your life in general. You will gain an understanding of systems thinking, and
how it applies to ecosystem design. You will learn ways of partnering with nature to create
natural capital and true abundance.
The course covers a wide range of subjects - from ecological design, to building, to food
production, animal husbandry, community development, interpersonal relationships and
more. The information is designed to be able to be applied directly in your life for practical
benefit and increasing the quality of life for you and those around you.
There are a lot of people struggling in the world right now, and many who have a bleak
view of our collective future - thinking that humans are only a detrimental and destructive
influence on the ecosystem, and the world at large.
In this critical time in our history that we find ourselves in, we have the opportunity to
become a highly beneficial influence on the environment, in our communities, and in our
everyday relating with those around us. Permaculture gives us the knowledge, techniques
and tools to make this transition into becoming beneficial agents for change.
This PDC offers 36 additional hours over the standard 72 hour course, enabling a more in depth experience. It includes site visits to urban and rural examples of permaculture in action.
Upon completion of the course, you will receive an internationally recognised certificate qualification, which enables you to design, teach and use the word Permaculture in your business.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions
Regards
Kushala Prem
0413123847
in future our only PDC class will most likely be 120hrs (16 days)on Thursdays And the 108hr PDCc fun on Tuesdays with some weekend days, so the 120 hr class in addition to our Base 80Hr PDC we will also cover an Intro to BioDynamics & a Full day on David Holmgren's new book Retro Suburbia including urban site visit , plus 3 more site visits and build a Biodynamic hot compost as part of the skills set along with fruit tree grafting. This course is held onsite at the farm in Monbulk (NOT just in a white square room of a Community House or TAFE with no gardens, fruit trees , food-forest or useful animals and Poultry), this is why we have developed this PDC+, it's based on all the requests of over 750 past Permies who have completed their PDC with us, we do cover the curriculum set from Victoria ( worked on for 30 years) that is now the accepted National framework for PDC and what was used to develop the APT accredited Tafe, Cert I to Diploma, this means a possible transition to formal qualifications if you wish too.
Over the last 25 years I have watched the evolving PDC and have seen a transition from people just wanting only straight science (with it's restrictive view points) to an embrace of the other Energies from related disciplines trying to achieve the similar goals of earth rebuilding and regenerative practices to produce food and other human needs.
You can register your interest in this new PDC by emailing me direct to telopeamtn@bigpond.com , bookings are via the associated community house or direct to the tutor if independent ones. All of our PDC versions are based on Design and the skills needed to apply these to Land (or community) So we cover both Rural and Urban design plus Professional Permaculture business & enterprise, and plenty of horticulture skills necessary for the healthy growing of plants and animals. (we are certified organic & Biodynamic on this farm).
To successfully complete our PDC's you need to present a physical design of a property (or business, school or community enterprise) plus design an Element, this is one item expanded (these are the most enjoyed aspect of our class presentations)
we provide you all the notes in this PDC plus all the site visits & all the ingredients for the practical sessions.
Full details of our 2022-23 program will be released via my newsletter.
A Comparative cost for what we will offer is basic 72hr PDC $2800 plus 5 day practical $2800 ( Zatuna Farm 2020),
We will be a fraction of this price & operating on our demonstration farm that commenced in the same year 1994 with 100 years prior productive farming onsite before us growing fruit trees, berries and cut flowers cleanly.
Look out for new news of a residential version of this PDC coming in 2023 held over 16 days but in blocks thru the 4 seasons onsite with a new exciting project.
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So What is a PDC, well in the 1990's Bill Mollison (one of the two creators of the concept of Permaculture) released his "big black book" this was the original curriculum for a PDC Permaculture Design Course, this 72 hour base class we taught all over the world by Bill and those who successfully have completed a PDC. ( now more than a million people hold a PDC internationally and its growing exponentially yearly now in the 40+ years since Permaculture started.
The PDC we teach at Telopea Mtn Permaculture in Monbulk, Victoria, Australia. meets Bill's base PDC but we have recognized a lot has happened since 1991 so our min class is 80 hrs and our flagship one is 147 hrs since 2004, in the bigger class we issue the PDC plus a "Permaculture Skills Certificate" to those who successfully complete their final design to pass the course.
all our courses are based on the VEG ( Victorian Educators Guild) curriculum originally written for South East Australia but is now recognized as a base for all Australia PDC,s and is backed by Permaculture Australia inc.
We currently prefer to teach our classes with a one day per week style rather than a 2 week solid block, it gives our participants time to think about and research each subject before the next week when we move onto a new topic.
I cannot see myself ever teaching a PDC all by myself (as some do) one opinion is not how I want to see my students learn, so we have 10-25 Permies as tutors or visit hosts to meet through your PDC.
We have developed about 50 tutors since 1995 who are often specialists in their subject for design purposes & teaching. Then we have used about 40 properties to select our site visits for that PDC,
So far 6-8 of our past students have started their own full PDC's, some use our bank of tutors to help them teach.
For the first few years we had 20 people all design one property ( over 10ace in size) but we have since changed to letting students select the properties they wish to design.
to call yourself a Permaculturist you HAVE to complete a PDC, this is recognized worldwide as a non TAFE (tertiary) qualification, in Australia it is a pre accredited course.
Once you have completed a full PDC then you CAN use Permaculture in your business name, you can teach Permaculture or complete a Permaculture design for clients.
NB: it is not good enough to call your self a Permie if you have just attended a few Perma-blitzes or read a book or done some stuff online. Others and I have worked for years to establish the "Professional Permaculture" to combat the image of "Just a bunch of hippies" that we endured for the first 30-40 years. All Permies are now reaping the benefits of paid employment and recognition of our Industry especially in education, such as with APT accredited levels of Permaculture certificates Cert I to Diploma now operating over 20 years nationally.
In our last 80hr PDC we will teach soon we expect one design to be completed for the final design presentation to the class, this can be an urban (zone 0-2) or a rural design at least 10acres (zones 0-4)
In our longer 120 hr class we ask for 2 designs to be completed so an Urban (0-2) plus a Rural (0-5) and then each completes and presents to the class an ELEMENT, this is an expansion of ANY subject they wish ( some times its something they are expert in and want to share or its something they needed to research to complete their Design).
The Outcomes of these classes are designed by me to become "useful Evidence" if you are wishing to upgrade to APT certificates & diploma as they may be used as RPL or RCC credits in units (if its your own work) so collaborative work is lovely but not relevant if wishing to upgrade. NB: I have no control over the acceptance of this material in an institution.
To further support future study yearly we run a series of monthly advanced level 3 permaculture topics there are 13 in the fruit tree design & management of Orcharding or Food Forests (edible forest gardens) within Organic or Biodynamic certified systems.
Some years we also run a level 4 Advanced PDC class, pats topics have been design a figgery for a collection of 114 figs, Renovate an older Organic Orchard, in future we will do a 4-6 days Food forest for temperate climates one and then a 2 day design a multi functional Cidery and make your own cider, perry & fruit wines plus vinegars, another one will be a 5-7 days on water design for rural properties.
So how do we see the future of our PDC's in the 2020's ?
We were happy to be able to attract funding (for however long this lasts) from ACFE (Learn Local) for adult education of pre accredited classes, this means our students pay far less than the going rate of a course of this quality, class cost should be $2850-$3300 each but we are running these at $595 to $800 per person. since the Virus experience of shutdowns and crushing of small or Micro businesses I fully Expect we will lose the Vic Govt ACFE funding we have enjoyed for our students who got this as a price reduction since early 2000's, all this Govt borrowing has to be paid for some how and any funding by them will have to be "VOTE Getters". Us training people to be interdependently resilient & financial does not suit the Govt agendas, no matter how much they might say it.
So we have already set up our own independent PDC to run in future with no funding ties and no excessive paperwork this is a little more expensive but under the going rate for our quality course, we also properly pay all involved in our courses so no volunteer tutors or visit sites. To keep the price down all involved have taken a pay cut ( we had given ourselves just one pay rise since 2004) but the freedom from bureaucracy is worth it in my opinion, all admin time is now spent on improvement of our curriculum rather than filling out useless paperwork, much more in line with Bill's original ideal of PDC.
New opportunity only for those who have successfully completed their PDC with Peter & Silvia in past years.
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