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This is a dive deep course to social permaculture. This is a course for people who already have a grasp of permaculture and want to dive deeper into techniques and elements of social permaculture through theoretical and practical sessions.
It is not either or, it is both and more. This course is not only for people who have already done the intro course, you can follow either only this course or follow both courses parallel.
Prepare yourselves for diving deep into how to access land in warzones, how to (re)connect deeply with yourself and
By Dahlia Barakat
In the South of Lebanon, land is not merely a resource; it is a language of belonging. As a woman rooted in these landscapes, I witness the erosion of our communal heritage under the weight of crisis and displacement. This presentation is an invitation to look beyond modern borders and return to the wisdom held within our own vocabulary, the Masha’a (the commons), the Waqf (the sacred trust), and the Hima (the protected).
Through the lens of social permaculture, I share a roadmap for activating four critical spaces: communal, religious, private, and the densely packed soil of refugee camps. This is more than a technical plan for food sovereignty; it is a reclamation of the relationship to the earth. It is a call to heal the bond between the displaced and the host, transforming neglected plots into resilient hubs of life that honor our indigenous roots while securing our collective future.
Dahlia Barakat (Lebanon)
Dahlia Barakat is an environmental designer, visual artist, storyteller, and seed keeper working at the intersection of land, ecology, culture, and community. She has been part of Nohye El Ard Community Garden since its beginnings in 2020, contributing to its collective, educational, and agroecological work. She also facilitated children’s learning activities with Jibal during Farm Days. Dahlia is currently an active member of Sila, collaborating with flower and herb growers and contributing to community-based media and storytelling.
Dahlia’s practice is grounded in an ongoing inquiry into land accessibility, belonging, and the relationships that connect people to each other through land. She explores the philosophical and cultural dimensions of ecology, how land holds memory, knowledge, identity, and collective histories, and how we can learn from the land itself through observation, cultivation, traditional knowledge, and lived experience.
Her current work also explores collective dreamscape drawing as a way of thinking about belonging in a time of fragmentation and uncertainty. Through shared maps and imagined landscapes, she creates spaces where people can bring together fragments of place, memory, feeling, and hope, asking what it means to belong to a place, to each other, and to a shared future. Across her projects, Dahlia brings together visual communication, ecological research, and community practice to explore ways of remembering, sharing, and caring for the places we inhabit.
By Patricia Cañas Rios and Kirsty Heron
This activity is based on Deep Ecology and Joanna Macy’s ‘The Work That Reconnects’, also known as ‘the work of despair and empowerment’ or ‘psychological peace work’
Drawing on Deep Ecology, systems theory and spiritual traditions, the Work That Reconnects builds motivation, creativity, courage and solidarity for the transition to a sustainable human culture.
Where we’re coming from…
We begin by acknowledging that we are living through a crisis – both local and global – that is affecting all life on the planet. You may have been concerned about and involved in the ecological, social and economic crisis for many years; or perhaps only recently. Feelings of fear, worry and helplessness can be overwhelming and paralysing.
Where we’re heading…
The main aim of ‘The Work that Reconnects – Deep Ecology’ is to help people discover and experience their connection with one another and with Nature, to inspire them and help them recharge their energy, so that they can do their bit towards creating a culture that supports life.
Some of the Circle’s objectives are:
* to provide participants with the opportunity to experience and share with others their inner responses to the current state of our world.
* to reframe their pain for the world as evidence of their interconnectedness within the web of life, and therefore of their power to participate in its healing.
* to provide ways in which participants can experience their interdependence with, their responsibility towards, and the inspiration they can draw from past and future generations, and other forms of life.
* to enable participants to embrace the Great Turning as a challenge they are fully capable of meeting in a wide variety of ways, and as a privilege from which they can derive joy.
* so that participants may support one another in clarifying their intention and affirming their commitment to the healing of the world.
The Work That Reconnects has inspired thousands of people to follow their hearts and work together for the sake of life on Earth, despite rapidly deteriorating social and ecological conditions. It has also inspired people to co-create experiential practices that support group work.
This activity is based on ‘The Work That Reconnects’, the work of Joanna Macy, an eco-philosopher, activist, writer and workshop facilitator. During the workshop, we will carry out exercises developed by Joanna and used by thousands of people around the world. For more information about it, please visit the websites:
www.workthatreconnects.org ; www.joannamacy.net
Patricia Cañas Rios
Diploma in Social Work. I have worked for more than 15 years in the Management of NGOs, social, environmental and volunteer work organisations (local and international): ARCI Chieti-Italia, Acudim, Sunseed, Cultura de la Tierra. Currently I’m coordinator at Semillistas reforestation project and local yoga teacher.
I first knew this work in 2010 at a “Transition Towns” workshop, and it touched me deeply.
In 2013, I began—together with Kirsty Heron—to facilitate workshops and retreats in Spain, to delve deeper into this work, and above all, to share this deeply healing practice.
Since then, I have facilitated in-person and online workshops alongside Kirsty, Visiones para la Tierra, and other colleagues.
Kirsty Heron
I live in Scotland by the sea. My work is around community climate resilience and I’m interested in both the practical side of that such as food growing, and also how we emotionally and psychologically respond to the poly crisis. I’ve been facilitating the Work that Reconnects since 2012 in many settings including permaculture courses and with climate activists; the hope and sense of connection with all life that are so special in WTR influences all my work with communities and gives me a framework for personal and peer support.
By Mali Boomkens
In this interactive session, you will be introduced to “Dragon Dreaming” (DD) – a participatory project design and team-building method that was first developed by the Australian community activist and deep ecologist John Croft and his late wife Vivienne Elanta. Spanning several decades, John Croft has worked with indigenous peoples, and rural and urban communities all around the globe, in the areas of community development, community education and project development. He was particularly intrigued by the question and underlying reasons of why some projects happen to be so successful, whereas others can fail so badly.
With the development of the DD project creation framework, particularly deep inspiration was taken from the Nyoongar’s (an Indigenous Australian community in Western Australia) dream and storytelling practices, and intricate wisdom and understanding of the life on earth. The Dragon Dreaming Institute describes the method furthermore as “…inspired by social and environmental activism, the new physics, Gaia and Earth sciences, living systems and chaos and complexity theory, and the ancient sustainable wisdom of indigenous cultures and Australian Aborigines.”
The framework serves the creation of any kind of collective dream project, as long as it simultaneously fulfils the three core ethical principles of Dragon Dreaming being 1. personal growth, 2. community building and 3. service to the earth.
As a group we will travel through the four phases of dreaming, planning, doing and celebrating with the aim to experience a bit of the process, to gain a new perspective on creating projects in a fun, horizontal and holistic way, and, hopefully, for you to leave with practical confidence to introduce Dragon Dreaming in your own communities, neighbourhoods and social circles.
To get inspired, you can have a stroll through the website of the Dragon Dreaming Institute:
https://dragondreaming.org/
Mali Boomkens
Mali (35) is a permaculture practitioner, facilitator, and educator whose journey began with university studies in forest and nature conservation and sustainable tropical forestry. After graduating with a strong understanding of the socio-ecological challenges of our time, she went looking for more hopeful, solution-oriented pathways and found them in permaculture, community living, and cultural regeneration.
Between 2015 and 2019 Mali lived in an off-grid ecovillage on a big squatted land in The Netherlands, where daily life became a living laboratory around permaculture, regenerative food growing, natural building, and intense community processes. This led her to explore social tools for healthy forms of communication, decision-making and conflict resolution (i.e. sociocracy, process work, Dragon Dreaming and NVC).
In the years that followed, Mali hit the road in Argentina and eastern Europe, volunteering and working in ecological projects and communities, while studying and teaching permaculture design. In 2024 Mali settled down in the mountains of Asturias, Spain, where she and her Argentinian partner are now stewarding a 0,8 ha permaculture homestead and helping to bring back life to a once-abandoned hamlet together with other likeminded families. There she also forms part of the Anima Mundi team, a local association with the aim to create a residential home for people with special needs in a nearby, abandoned village.
Her most recent work is centered around writing, coordinating and facilitating projects for young people, youth workers and activists on regenerative living, nature connection and sustainable activism, amongst others in collaboration with the Yes to Sustainability network and NextGEN – the youth branch of the European ecovillage network.
By Christos Kontomanos
Let’s be honest: most modern jobs and conventional career paths are trapped in a degenerative loop, quietly eroding our social ties, local ecosystems, financial stability, and personal well-being. So how do we pivot? How do we build practical alternatives that actually help us grow, revive local and global communities, re-align our relationships, and foster truly fair economies?
While no one has a magic wand, this session dives into what a regenerative economy can actually look like in practice. Spoiler alert: our economy at Cob Ecovillage isn’t a flawless, perfectly finished regenerative model—far from it! It’s an ongoing process of learning, adaptation, and continuous improvement over 26 years of trial and error.
Using Cob in Larissa, Greece, as our messy, beautiful case study, we’ll unpack the real-world experiences, frustrating hurdles, and inspiring outcomes of maintaining a complex, evolving social and economic structure. Furthermore, we’ll dive into our most recent ongoing experiment over the last two years: expanding beyond the ecovillage borders to integrate with, revitalize, and co-create resilience alongside the local, semi-abandoned village. Come for the honest stories, stay for the hard-earned lessons!
Christos Kontomanos is a regenerative agriculture agronomist and practicioner, educator, and Permaculture designer, as well as a member of the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA). After studying Agronomy in Thessaloniki, he turned his focus toward practical, ecological alternatives for land stewardship and food production.
In 2018, Christos arrived at the Cob Ecovillage in Nessonas, Larissa, serving as a catalyst for converting the project into a fully lived-in ecocommunity. Since 2019, he has developed and led Cob’s agricultural initiatives on its 1.6-hectare pilot regenerative farm. There, he experiments hands-on with biointensive market gardening, agroforestry, syntropic farming, and soil regeneration to build productive systems that balance food, ecology, and financial viability.
Beyond practical land stewardship—which includes launching CSA models and local veg-box distribution systems—Christos designs and consults for projects and farms in transition, connecting soil health directly to local markets and ecological restoration. He has trained hundreds of participants across Europe through 8 PDCs, 14 introductory seminars, and numerous Erasmus+ programs.
Currently, his primary focus is on facilitating the stabilization and enhancement of Cob’s social, functional, and economic structures together with the rest of his passions.
By Delfino
This is a deep dive to the art of facilitation, the art of holding the space for a group by taking care of the people of the group, assisting them reach their goals and taking care of the process. This is an informative session by the professional facilitator Delfino, which will guide you through experiential knowledge about facilitation and his work. This session is targeting people who already know what facilitation is and aims in guiding people to facilitate themselves with some processes with tips and experiential exercises.
More info about his work (GR https://facilitation.gr, IT https://facilitarte.org/facilitazioni/ , ES https://iiface.org/facilitacion/ )
Efstathios Mavridis “Delfino”
My ongoing experience living in a collective—which has continued since I was 15 and continues to this day—has led me to explore the human and energy sustainability of organizations. The search for real alternatives and my life journey led me to the Lakabe ecovillage, where I lived in community for 12 years. For the past 10 years, I have been consistently guiding groups, and for the past 7 years, I have been a certified IIFACe trainer. In addition to the basic IIFACe training, I have been trained in—and continue to learn about—various approaches and tools such as the ZEGG Forum, Transformational and Systemic Coaching, the Art of Process, bodywork, dream work, and clown improvisation, without ever intending to stop learning and growing as a person and in my role as a facilitator. For the past four years, I have also been guiding processes on a personal and relational level, and I have developed my own approach to addressing challenging situations and contributing to their transformation into opportunities.
By Natasa Chatzioanou and Lisselotte Wuitte
What does it really mean to move from the city to the countryside? How can we be participants rather than consumers in these new landscapes?
Transitioning isn’t simply a change of place, if not a deeper transition in how we live, relate, work, care and belong. In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore urban-to-rural movements through the lens of social permaculture, Transition Towns, bioregionalism and the commons.
We’ll look at real experiences from our speakers as well as look at an example of a transition town in south Spain, Almocita. Together, we’ll explore the social, economical, ecological resources that are available, challenges and obstacles that these transitions face, how we can work together and design relationships that regenerate both people and places. To end this deep dive series, we invite you to a space to question, share, connect and find common ways to design more regenerative ways of living.
