Here you can find linked a sample timetable (in PDF) of a 12-day Permaculture Design Course, as delivered by Graham Bell at The Red Shed - Garden College, in Scotland over 6 weekends.
Graham Bell also writes below about his ideas for a successful Permaculture course. He's been teaching permaculture over 25 years.
We work off this as a basis: Agreed curriculum and a timetable which we hope delivers Poetry, Inspiration, Love and Longing. But competent starting points. This timetable is adjusted for every audience we teach.
You always have to tailor the end result to the participants. So, for example, we tend to be swayed to the climate zone we are in. But you also need to teach what happens in other climate zones, but biased to the needs of the people you have there.
72 hours is a tiny amount of time to deliver the core curriculum. So don’t try and fill people full of facts. Inspire them to learn more and give them a basic understanding of how it all fits together.
Here is a PDF the core curriculum v 1.6 as produced by the Education Working Group of the UK Permaculture Association.
It’s all about empowerment. But we can’t empower anyone. All we can do is create the right environment for them to empower themselves. Hungry people seek out food. People hungry for knowledge seek out just that.
I love to teach here in Garden Cottage where people can SEE twenty five years of experience. But there’s a power to the course and the curriculum so even folks who have no site and precious little experience seem able to inspire others. I have views on the justice of effort and rewards but that’s another matter. In the words of Bill Mollison: “I don’t think I can save the world on my own. I think it’ll take three of us.”
by Graham Bell
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