A Circular Story of Connections in 6 Points
This is a circular story of connections in 6 points.
Many members of the EPT are involved in this story.
Aless(andro
Many members of the EPT are involved in this story.
- During one of the meetings of the EPT partnership (Denmark?) Davie Philip talked about a course format that he uses a lot: a very short introduction, just a couple of hours or even less. He called it a Permaculture taster and said —or maybe it's just myself elaborating— that it's a good format to spark people's imagination and curiosity about Permaculture. The idea of a taster really appealed to me, being Italian, since in Italy food is at the center of culture.
- After the last meeting of the EPT (Bulgaria) we had to organize the EuPC, which was bound to start two days after the EPT. Martin Giannini, which unfortunately had to leave before the EuPC, gave us a great introduction to the Open Space Technology (OST), the approach that was chosen to organize the EuPC. One of the fundamental concepts of OST is that one doesn't have to know everything about a specific subject they want to talk about; one just has to take the responsibility to hold a space so that people can join and talk about that subject.
- In October, Jillian Hovey contacted Alfred, Antonio and myself saying that she would come to Barcelona at the end of November, together with Ana Huertas. Jillian would be with Ana in Montpellier (France), Ana was coming to Barcelona for a Transition meeting and Jillian could come too, before heading for North America. She said she was thinking about doing “a workshop on the Saturday and/or a slide show that night”. Alfred moved to Mallorca, Antonio was teaching in southern Spain, but offered her a place to sleep and I reserved a couple of spaces in the city center for Jillian. A week before she was due to come, she sent me and email saying that she wasn't coming to Barcelona anymore. This story follows in 'Step 6'.
- The librarian of my town (Ceccano) is my mom's friend and I worked in the library for 3 months in 2004. When I went to Ceccano in September, my mom and I went to the library. Franca (the librarian) asked me if I could give a lecture about Permaculture in the library, because nobody knows what it is. When I went back to Ceccano for Christmas, I did a Permaculture taster ('Un assaggio di Permacultura') at the library. It turned out very well and there were many people: relatives and family friends, but also curious people I didn't know before. Also, another friend of my mom's is a high school teacher and she came to the taster with a group of 15-20 students.
- Maia, is a friend of mine from Barcelona and we are both part of Permacultura Barcelona and of the Permacultura Barcelona Teaching Team. She is Italian too and from my same region: Lazio. While Ceccano lays 90km south of Rome, Rieti (her town) is 80km north of Rome. For Christmas she went back home too and she had to come close to Ceccano to visit a good friend of hers. Together, we did another Permaculture taster in Ceccano, at Tolerus, an association I am part of which deals with ecology and education. It was another success and people from afar (1 hour by car) came to the taster. Also, before coming back to Barcelona, since Maia and I had to take the same flight we taught another Permaculture taster in Rieti, a beautiful town I never had the chance to visit before!
- Jillian and Ana came to Barcelona on Saturday January 17th. Jillian had to take a plane for the Gambia at 18:45. I was at the Food Forest (Bosque Comestible) in Can Masdeu and Jillian and Ana arrived in Can Masdeu around 2:30pm (lunchtime). The Food Forest and Can Masdeu are projects that those of you who came to Spain for the EPT meeting know. After lunch I explained the project, we talked about why their coming in November didn't work and I told Jillian that when in November she told me she wouldn't come anymore I decided to see a solution in the problem of having 2 spaces in the city center and nobody to occupy them. I told her that I made a call on Facebook, saying that there would be two events about Permaculture and resilience and I took the responsibility to hold the spaces. Many more people than I thought showed up and various of them were in Can Masdeu with us that same day. They were participating in the Food Forest, a project which was slowly dying before new people decided to join in. I also told Jillian about Davie and the Permaculture tasters and Italy. Jillian said that this is a beautiful story of connections and that it was worth sharing with the EPT community, maybe in the Newsletter, or maybe using this mailing list. She said that maybe this could be a good way to reactivate this valuable source of connections to share information, or inspiring stories between us in a quicker way than the always valuable Newsletter.
Aless(andro