Cultivate News - Summer Activities

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	Newsletter 38 \| January 2018 \| www.cultivate.ie \| Contact Us \| Facebook \| Twitter

	Dear Cultivators, Summer has arrived! and here is a quick overview of our upcoming activities... In this Update: Permaculture Design Certificate Global Green Convergence Sustainable Living Festival European Day of Sustainable Communities GROW Webinar (Thursday June 29th) - Your Soil Your Data SpeakEATsy on Tour Cloughjordan Community Amphitheatre

	Permaculture Design Certificate Course - August 11th-20th, Cloughjordan Accredited by the Permaculture Association UK, this is now Cultivates’ longest running course, with over 200 alumni from all over the world. We’ve had students from Italy, Bosnia, Japan and last year Tanzania! This year is no different, with our latest students travelling to Ireland from New York. Also coming from the States is the founder of the Ecovillage Training Centre at The Farm, Tennessee - our guest tutor Albert Bates - pioneering Permaculture veteran, and author of The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change, and The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook (which has been a wealthy influence for one of our course sessions ‘Permaculture Kitchen’). Albert will be leading one of his unique biochar sessions as part of the PDC this year, along with his other exciting sessions! The highlight of biochar lies in its potential. Not just to sequester carbon for hundreds or thousands of years, but to improve soil fertility while doing so. See Albert’s blog for a collection of interesting resources - including a recent video from a biochar workshop. Aranya will host our Wednesday morning slot with his design process philosophy, he is a great advocate of simplifying the design process and making it easy to understand and accessible to all. For those of you interested to know more, pick up a copy of his book, Permaculture Design ‘’While there are plenty of excellent books already written about permaculture, I hadn't found one that really explained the design process in a step-by-step fashion from start to finish. This was a gap I initially filled on my design courses with a set of worksheets, which were then tried and tested by 15 groups of design course students over 18 months, before being turned into this guide.’’ Aranya Contact us on pdc@cultivate.ie to book a place, and please share this information with anyone you know that may be interested. back to top

	Global Green at the Electric Picnic The eclectic Global Green sustainability collective will once again be bringing the conscious heartbeat of the festival to life. Pop-in to the pop-up eco-village of activists, artists, makers, musicians, foodies, slam poets and hackers that offer great local food and radical ideas for a community-led, fossil-free future. Debuing at this years Global Green will be the infamous SpeakEATsy marking the start of Cultivate’s Convergence Festival 2017. back to top

	Convergence 2017 Inspiring Stories and Compelling Conversations for a Community-Led Transition to a Low Carbon and Healthy Society. Convergence brings people and ideas together. Since its beginning in 2000, the festival has featured some of the most inspiring thinkers and doers both from Ireland and abroad, and championed the changes needed to create a sustainable economy, a healthy society and a flourishing environment. Convergence 2017 will feature 5 capacity-building workshops across the country for community champions, conferences on co-housing, citizen engagement and sustainable communities, and 3 salons on the green and collaborative economy. This year Convergence will... highlight the potential of community-led action on climate change, wellbeing and sustainability encourage public participation and increased citizen engagement in local community initiatives illuminate stories that help inspire a community led approach and make visible possible pathways for others to follow develop the capacity of green ambassadors/ community champions/ place makers/ social innovators build bridges between sectors as well as increasing cohesion between local initiatives promote Irish community projects across Europe emphasise Sustainable Development Goals and climate targets In the spirit of collaboration, we would like to invite local stakeholders, national organisations, researchers and agencies to contribute and get involved in a programme designed to enable a community-led transition to a low carbon and healthy society. If you would like to discuss getting involved, support any element of Convergence or host an event, please get in touch at convergence@cultivate.ie Full details and schedule will be posted on www.cultivate.ie back to top

	European Day of Sustanable Communities Promoting citizen-engaged, community-led transitions across Europe Cultivate are active members of ECOLISE, which acts as a shared platform for learning across Europe. It encourages action and advocacy of community-based initiatives on climate change and sustainability. Cultivate’s Davie Philip has been active with the communication team of this initiative for the last 2 years and is now a Council member. Through its activities, ECOLISE facilitates exchange, cooperation and sharing among stakeholders across Europe, and to strengthen the collective influence of its members in EU policy making. http://www.ecolise.eu The first ever European Day of Sustainable Communities will showcase the contribution that community-led initiatives on climate change and sustainability are making to support EU policy goals in these areas. The Convergence event ‘Citizen Engagement Conference’ will connect, through video conferencing, to the launch event in Brussels on 22nd September. This launch event will open a dialogue between policymakers and grassroots movements on how best to support citizen and community-led initiatives in building pathways towards a low-carbon, ecological future. The Convergence Festival will encourage Irish participation with this European wide initiative. Register your community event here www.ecolise.eu To have your event added to the Convergence 17 programme send the details to convergence@cultivate.ie back to top

	GROW Webinar - Your Soil Your Data, Thursday 29th June, 12.30 - 13.30 A citizens' observatory for growers, researchers and decision makers. Cultivate is excited to be a partner in the GROW Observatory, a European-wide project engaging thousands of growers as citizen scientists. The project is an innovative approach to creating a community of citizen growers, gardeners, small scale farmers, scientists and policy makers. This community will work together to learn from each other, provide growing and policy advice and contribute data on local soil conditions, to help validate climate change adaptation models generated by satellite. Do you grow your own food? Have an allotment? Own a small farm? Are you involved in a community or school garden? Are you taking practical steps to regenerate the soil for future generations? GROW provides an opportunity to develop and share your knowledge and skills. Join us on Thursday 29th June, from 12.30 - 13.30. This webinar will explore and discuss some of the results provided by participants in GROW’s recent MOOC course, as well as considering the wider importance of soils and cultivation techniques. Although we are sharing these results now, we would love all those who are interested in soils, growing food, and citizen science to join us. This is only the beginning of the GROW journey. During the webinar we will be taking your live questions specifically about soil, sites and growing practices. The webinar is free but registration is required through this eventbrite link. For full information check the facebook event page. back to top

	SpeakEATsy on Tour Along with many elements of Cloughjordan road-tripping to the Picnic, this year we’ll be bringing the esteemed SpeakEATsy on tour… making it’s debut in Global Green and then touring around the country to highlight community, local food and nuggets of inspiration that can help us all in the transition to a healthy, sustainable future! Do you have a community, a venue or a location to host a SpeakEATsy? We’re looking for collaborators and want to work with local food producers and communities to ensure the shared, community meal component of the evening. Sharing dishes with a story to tell - dishes that speak to how food should - and can - be. Bringing a dish turns audiences into participants. Get in touch with davie@cultivate.ie or oliver@cultivate.ie to chat about hosting an evening of conviviality and community back to top

	Cloughjordan Community Amphitheatre The Cloughjordan Amphitheatre, created using the subsoil from the excavation and construction phase of the Ecovillage, has been in full swing! Already we’ve been graced with performances from a Norwegian Youth Orchestra and a local brigade of Hitchhikers… guiding us through the wonders of the Galaxy in honour of ‘towel day’. More arts, cultural and wonderfully whacky events to follow... Details at http://cloughjordanarts.ie back to top



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