Today we are sharing both audio-only and video versions of our recent online session, Ecological participation (guiding child-led learning in a forest). Once again the format is a one hour presentation by Magpie and Blue Wren (with cameos by Woody and Lilly Pilly), followed by 30 minutes of goodly question time.
Hello Dear Readers, we are excited to offer our first online course and to share with you an invitation we’ve received to travel to the UK in August.
The University of Edinburgh has invited Patrick to examine a doctoral thesis and for Artist as Family to present The New Peasants and host a Q&A for students. While we ordinarily do such gigs via the internet, an opportunity to return to our ancestral places of origin to meet audiences and share story and food will be a joy we haven’t in the past permitted ourselves, due to the environmental and monetary costs. However, we are hearing the call and responding with intention.
Some of our ancestors come from the Luddite Triangle in the mid-north of England as well as from Scotland and Ireland, and Meg was conceived in a caravan in Wales.
While travelling we would like to screen and Q&A The New Peasants at community gatherings in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland, and in order to fund such a story-sharing adventure we are offering the following online mini course.
Here are the four sessions on offer, which you can either join without paying or by donation. To register, please click on the links below. You are most welcome to book all four sessions or just the ones that speak to you.
Session 1. A ceremonial approach – guiding men’s, women’s and grief circles, vigils and other community ceremonies. July 2 (7pm – 8.30pm AEST) Join Patrick and Meg as they offer their experiences and processes for hosting community gatherings centred on deep listening, soul communing and connecting with the sacred.
Session 2. Ecological participation – guiding community forest education and wild play groups for children. July 9 (7pm – 8.30pm AEST) Join Patrick, Meg and Woody as they offer their experiences and processes for stewarding a bush school.
Session 3. Community sufficiency – living within gift, non-monetary and subsistence economies. July 16 (7pm – 8.30pm AEST) Join Patrick and Meg as they share all the ways they have unchained themselves from monetary incarceration and co-crafted local gift economies, starting with a few households and growing it to over 80 households over two decades.
Session 4. Joyful resistance – online house and garden tour (the nuts and bolts of our systems). July 23 (3pm – 5pm AEST) Join Patrick and Meg as they walk you through their home and garden, explaining all the main hubs that have enabled their transition.
If you can’t make any of these sessions, not to worry, as they will all be recorded and made available online. And if you can’t make the sessions but you’d like to donate to our August travels, or to our work more generally, you can do so here.
If you are in the UK or Ireland and would like to host a screening/Q&A or another type of speaking event with us in August, please feel free to get in touch.
Over the years people have enjoyed our travel writings, so yes we will be blogging our adventure again this time.
Whether you are fast approaching winter or summer solstice, we wish you warmth, the possibility of connection and we trust you are filing you baskets.
A two-day intensive with Artist as Family – May 18 & 19 at Tree Elbow University
Come and spend two days with Artist as Family at our home, Tree Elbow, in Central Victoria, in beautiful Djaara Country.
Share our harvest abundance, learn our alternative economic lifeways, experience our processes and observe the many relationships we’ve cultivated in order to turn our backs on industrial capitalism, while leaning ever further into what we call, ‘a flow of gifts economy.’
Artist as Family is just 20% reliant on the monetary economy. This weekend is offered for you to understand how we’ve crafted such a radical, economic-freeing lifeway for nearly two decades.
These knowledges are what we ordinarily share with our volunteers over the duration of a week, however this course is for people who are more time restricted; people who are looking to dive deep into the many knowledges and actions we employ to practice subsistence permaculture. While most of our teaching is non-monetary, we are offering this course to those with money who are looking to transition away from full money dependency, to become more economically resilient.
Over the weekend you will learn about biointensive food gardening, temperate food forestry, walked-for food, medicine and energy, custodial forest practices, gift economy relating, managed herbivory, animal-centric poultry and bee systems, simple engineering, dynamic composting and grey water systems, salvaging and repair practices, community sufficiency, and most importantly our relationship with Mother Country.
The course runs from 9am Saturday 18 May to 4pm Sunday 19 May. All meals provided. Please note, this is not a residential course; you will need to find your own accommodation for Saturday night. There are many short term accommodation options in this region. We are experienced guerrilla campers, so if camping is your preference, we know of many spots you can pitch a tent nearby.
While with us, you will need only a backpack, water bottle, journal, pen, and camera. If you need to bring your phone, please keep it on silent during the weekend or better yet, use the time as a digital detox.
The course is designed for adults but older teenagers are welcome too. There are three scholarship places available for young adults (under 30 years of age), so please get in touch to learn more.
The food you will be eating over the weekend will be Artist as Family’s neopeasant produce, therefore mostly a locavore, organic diet. It will mainly cater to gluten free and vegetarian diets, though there will be animal fats, meat and spelt sourdough options too.
At dinner on Saturday night, we will be joined by permaculture elders David Holmgren and Su Dennett, and you’ll be able to yarn around the fire with them.
The course is suited to anyone wishing to transform their cultural and economic paradigm, those who are curious about alternative economic models that are lived not just theorised, and anyone who wants to deepen their permaculture knowledges.
The course costs $250 and includes all meals.
Please get in touch with us if you’d like to book your place or find out more.
We look forward to sharing our home, life and learnings with you,
