Adult Learning principles are used to make the information in the course accessible to a diversity of learning styles.
We also explore and make use of:
- Goal setting and review
- Analytical thinking
- Permaculture Principles as a thinking and design tool
- Ongoing Community
The 10 topics covered over the course are…
- Water
- Bio-diversity
- Energy
- Transport
- Community
- Waste
- Gardening for Food
- Healthy Home
- Healthy You
- Living Simply
The Sustainable Living Course was designed by Kath Moller and Claudia Laviolette adapting and based on their training as Living Smart facilitators. The Living Smart program was developed at Murdoch University in Perth to help people live more sustainably. You can read more about Living Smart at:
We find Permaculture a helpful way to approach thinking about how we live. It is a design system with principles, thinking tools, which can be used to help generate local solutions to global problems. It encompasses the built, biological and behavioural fields. Permaculture applies to growing food and much more widely to all aspects of living in ways that are sustainable (that is, they can continue). Holmgren Design – Permaculture Innovation and Vision | Permaculture Principles, Courses & Tours | Sustainable Living
Although moving to a small place in the country is a romanticized ideal, It is not realistic (nor sustainable) for everyone to move to a rural property. We don’t need to live in splendid isolation. Complete self sufficiency is a bit of a myth. There is a lot of unused potential in existing houses, gardens and public spaces in towns and in cities. It is much better to build community where we already live, and learn a mutual inter-dependence which is much more resilient. We can make things better for the world around us (including other people) and for ourselves too, by living simply, using what we have, and what we know now, right where we are!
About the Videos:
We video our presentations. Registered participants can watch each session again and access other resource materials in a password protected space for their course here on our website. We want the course to be accessible to all participants at each session, and to re-view afterwards.
We also value your privacy. Participants will only become visible if they put themselves in front of the cameras. We think it is reasonable to expect people to take responsibility for their own location in the room.
Footage of activities focuses most on what our hands are doing.
If you want to opt out of being seen in the videos and photos of the course:
1. Answer the opt out question when you register and wear something easily recognisable (tell us what it will be eg wear a hat indoors) so we know to edit your image out of visible footage.
2. For most of the sessions, sit at the table that is out of camera view. You will leave your seat and move around the room for some activities. When we review the footage, and we see a person wearing that pre-arranged signal, we will edit out that part of the vision before we upload the video.
*We edit videos before uploading them, and remove as many extraneous inputs as possible while ensuring the content from the presentation is still audible.
*We upload our videos to Youtube in an unlisted, unsearchable space. This means that only those with the link to the sessions (which we will send to participants in each mid-week email) will have access to view it.
*Only the presenters and registered participants will be able to access the password protected section of our website for their course, where materials and videos are uploaded for each session. They will remain accessible after the course finishes, and until space limits on our website force us to take down old things to make room for new ones.