Questions/Contact: ptm2017italy@12pdesign.net
Registration HERE
Permaculture Teaching Matters (PTM) is an international teachers training course offered in English and Italian, organised by the Accademia Italiana di Permacultura and the Istituto per la Ricostruzione del Castello di Chucco – Zucco.
Join permaculture teachers Alfred Decker, Anna Bartoli and Alessandro Ardovini for six days of intensive training that will provide you with an invaluable toolkit to use in the classroom, as well as life in general. Together, we will facilitate internationally renowned teacher Rosemary (Rowe) Morrow’s Permaculture Teaching Matters course, which draws on her decades of permaculture teaching experience. Whether you’re already a teacher, or thinking of becoming one, the PTM course is designed to turn teaching into a transformative and fun exchange. Classrooms (indoor and outdoor) will never be the same again!
This course is for PDC holders in any of the following fields…
…teachers and students of architecture, landscape design, school/community gardeners, local government community development officers, ecology and other disciplines including geography, regenerative agriculture and agroforestry as well as permaculture design. If you’re looking to do any type of sustainability or permaculture education/communication, this is the course you’ve been waiting for.
The PTM training is designed for those who want to teach based on Rosemary’s participatory learning methods that will change the way you think about education:
– Move towards a permaculture teaching career
– Empower others with life-changing skills
– Learn to pass on knowledge of permaculture theory and practice in ways that create real change in your students, and activate entire communities.
You will walk away from this course being able to communicate clearly and confidently with any group of people. And you’ll join a learning community of teachers full of inspiration, mutual support and on-going learning.
You will learn how to:
- Design a short or a long course
- Develop clear course outcomes and ethics
- Adopt appropriate body behaviour and use nonviolent communication
- Design effective learning resources
- Organise classroom and learning environments
- Use teaching aids effectively
- Work with a broad range of people from different cultures and backgrounds
- Draw on strategies that promote thinking and integrate practical experience
- Deliver clear explanations and concepts
- Explain the structure and function of the Permaculture Design Course
- Give effective and engaging digital presentations
- Debrief, appraise, and apply other teaching techniques
Who is Rosemary “Rowe” Morrow?
Rosemary is known and loved worldwide as a permaculture teacher, practitioner, and activist. She has travelled the globe for four decades, often in countries shattered by war and disasters, sharing her passion for permaculture and social justice. Her belief is that access to useful knowledge is a basic human right.
Several years ago, Rosemary decided to focus on teacher training courses in order to have a “multiplier effect” believing that the bottleneck keeping permaculture from growing more rapidly is not a shortage of curriculum and experience, but rather a shortage of competent permaculture teachers. So she created this PTM course to give people the skills and confidence needed to take the big step from being a practitioner to becoming a teacher.
She is the author of the Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture, the Earth User’s Guide to Teaching Permaculture, The Family Seedsaving Book, and A Good Home Forever, and the co-founder of the Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute.
The PTM Teaching Team in Italy
- Alfred Decker’s passion in life has been ecological and social justice activism, of which permaculture has played a central part. Since his first PDC in 1998 in California, Alfred has been involved with social movements and projects throughout Europe and the Americas. He is the founder of the 12 Principles Permaculture Design consultancy, Permacultura Barcelona and the Forest Gardens project at Can Masdeu; and was a member of the European Permaculture Teachers Partnership and the Permaculture Council of Europe. In 2014 he completed a post-graduate diploma in sustainable architecture and renewable energy (Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales). Alfred holds a post graduate diploma in sustainable architecture and renewable energy (Centre for Alternative Technology). After taking a permaculture teachers training with Rosemary Morrow in Austria in 2011, he undertook a two year mentorship and later co-taught six courses with Rosemary, ultimately earning a diploma in Permaculture Education & Community Development in 2013 through her organisation Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute in Australia. He also co-edited her course manual “Permaculture Teaching Matters” and organised a successful crowdfunding campaign to create a PTM digital platform. Alfred has taught widely throughout Europe and currently lives with his partner Daniella Querol on a smallholding in the Montnegre i el Corredor Natural Park north of Barcelona, Spain, where they are creating a permaculture demonstration site and educational project called Can Comú.
- Anna Bartoli, PhD, theoretical physicist, iris-analyst, professional naturopath, herbalist and secondary school teacher. In March 2009, she decided to attend the Permaculture Design Course with Stefano Soldati because of her passion for nature and because the ecological activism of permaculture seems to correspond perfectly to her way of thinking. In August 2009 she subscribed to the Italian Permaculture Academy Association and in April 2010 she became secretary of the association. Subsequently she consolidated her knowledge and experience in permaculture by attending the permaculture teacher’s training course with Rosemary Morrow in Austria. Afterwards, she designed and developed a personal project of 3,5 hectares in Riale Zola Predosa, near the city of Bologna, in which are designed a food forest, an orchard in olive trees and a varieties of different vegetable gardens. In April 2012, she presented and discussed her work in permaculture and received her Diploma in Applied Permaculture by the Italian Academy of Permaculture. Anna participates actively in the dissemination of permaculture through the secretary’s activities, teaching PDC courses (since 2012, she can count 18) with her colleague Elena Parmiggiani and other Italian permaculturists and their participation in the EU Leonardo project European Permaculture Teachers Partnership from 2012 to 2014, and was also a member of the Permaculture Council of Europe. Another of Anna’s new challenges is to share her knowledge and experiences and best practices, and transmit the permaculture design principles and life vision through an international teachers training course in Italy according to Rosemary Morrow’s teaching.
- Alessandro Ardovini is an Italian with nomadic attitudes who’s been a permaculturalist all his life, even if he’s only known Permaculture in recent years. He is an eclectic person, a feminist, a linguist, a language teacher, an interpreter, a translator, a blogger. He tries to “be the change he wants to see in the world”, and acts to inspire other people. In 2011, Aless started teaching Permaculture (in Galician, Italian, Spanish, English and Catalan). He’s been learning, experimenting, teaching and sharing in the Permacultura Barcelona association and its food forest project in Can Masdeu (Barcelona), in various places in Italy and Spain, and in every place where he’s gone since 2012. He taught 4 PDCs, various Introductions to Permaculture, plenty of short Permaculture “Tasters” (“degustaciones”) and more practical courses on water management and soil regeneration, food forests and vegetable gardens. Between 2013 and 2014, he was involved in the European Permaculture Teachers’ partnership (EPT); helped organize the activities of the European Permaculture Convergence 2014 and the Spanish Permaculture Convergences in 2015 & 2016; and is taking part in the creation of the national Spanish permaculture association Permacultura Íbera. He’s also part of the European Permaculture Network and is working towards the creation of a Mediterranean Permaculture Network
Course Requirement
We require all students to have completed a PDC (anywhere in the world) before the course starting date.
Course Convener and Venue Convenor
Accademia Italiana di Permacultura
The Italian Permaculture Academy was officially founded as a non-profit organisation in 2006 with the purposes of :
- promoting and disseminating the principles and spirit of Permaculture
- assist the educational processes of students that wish to obtain the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design
Currently the Italian Academy has about 290 members.
Istituto per la Ricostruzione del Castello di Chucco-Zucco
The Institute for the Reconstruction of Chucco-Zucco Castle pursues since 1983 a multidisciplinary and interactive international project aiming at turning an historic site reduced in ruins into a container of scientific, cultural and recreational activities of the contemporary world, based on the exploitation of local resources.
The Cucagna castle, built in the 11th/12th century, is situated on a hill in the forest, about 30 min. walking distance from the small town of Faedis, Italy. Cucagna is a building site, unique example of philological reconstruction, open to young professionals of all the world interested in historical architecture, restoration and reconstruction, archaeology and history of art, traditional working techniques and materials.
Courses will take place in the castle and the nearby medieval hamlet of Stremiz.
PTM Dates
Begins: Dinner on the night of Monday, May 8th.
Ends: Certificate ceremony on the afternoon of Sunday, May 14th, followed by optional Party and “No Talent Show”, and breakfast the next morning.
PTM Fees
The course fee is 500 Euros.
There are a number of scholarships available for Italian teachers, based on a contribution from the last PTM course in Italy 2016, in order to support the development of permaculture teaching in Italy.
Your fees include:
- A life-changing learning experience
- Lodging in shared bedrooms
- Delicious and nutritious organic food: self serve breakfast, dinner, lunch, and morning and afternoon tea breaks
- Digital resources
- A Permaculture Teaching Matters Certificate
- A new generation of permaculture teachers and doers for you to join!
- A free copy of Permaculture Magazine
- Option to buy Rosemary’s Earth User’s Guide to Teaching Permaculture at a 30% discount from the publisher. Books may be ordered with registration. An invaluable friend to the experienced and novice teacher alike
- Option to buy a copy of Rosemary’s Permaculture Teaching Matters Manual at the cost of printing