When I first moved to Florida in 2008, I didn’t know anybody and didn’t have a community. I had one friend, who happened to know a lot of people who were interested in sustainability and alternative health, and wanted to introduce them to permaculture.
She started holding “salons” on Sunday afternoons, where I would talk about permaculture and we’d do something in her garden. This quickly morphed into a community wide skills-share activity, where we would visit a different person’s house each week to see how they were implementing a sustainable technique of some kind.
We got to see someone’s veggie oil van conversion, which he used to travel all over the country by collecting oil from restaurants for free. We got to learn to carding wool and create yarn from it, prune trees, make a rain barrel, cook vegan, build a solar dehydrator and more.
Carding wool.
This activity accomplished many things -- it allowed us to meet people with similar interests, it raised our awareness of the resources within our community, it educated us, it brought together a wide diversity of people in the city of all ages and cultures, it gave us opportunities to help each other install gardens, and it was a deciding factor in me relocating to Florida permanently.
We ended up with a core group of five people who did all the organizing. We put out one very simple newsletter per week describing what we did last week with a couple of photos, and letting people know where to go the next week. This took less than an hour.
We soon had over 500 people on the list and between 20-40 people would show up each week. There was a core group that showed up regularly, but a number of new people were there each week as well. At the meetings, we’d ask who else had a skill to share and book the next week or two or three. And the truth is, so many of us do have some sort of regenerative skill to share! That was the beauty of this activity.
Solar dehydrator project.
We were asked by the city (via one of the attendees who volunteered for the event) to participate in their Ciclovia event. From that, we met one of the city planners, who got so excited about what we were doing that she asked to partner with us in holding monthly “salons” where we would brainstorm to address problems and opportunities that the city was experiencing. That was deep and rich, and we got to know each other even better.
This again morphed into Create Clearwater members being asked to join the green steering committee for the city, for City Parks, and to be part of focus groups in making decisions regarding the development of the waterfront. I ended up traveling a lot after that and wasn’t able to stay involved; our influence with the city was limited as we were all very busy and didn’t formulate a design or plan to maximize yield on that front. But the possibilities were clearly there.
Some of the results of this 18 month long project were:
I would open my door some days and find a basket of fresh picked fruit or veggies or other little gift on my doorstep. I started doing that for others too.
For years afterwards, various people I didn’t recognize would occasionally approach me at the local health food store and proudly start discussing their garden and food forest. So I know people started gardens because of this activity!
Based on reports from my friend, who kept ties with many attendees, she estimated that at least 100 gardens were started as a result.
Several green businesses were launched as a result of our events, including two edible landscape businesses.
Some local businesses started collaborating together more closely.
Hundreds of people were introduced to the concepts of permaculture, in a community where it was previously unknown.
We created a “Green Guide Tampa Bay”, an online database of all the green businesses in the area. Someone else later took this project on and we moved on to other things.
I was able to launch my own successful permaculture design and education business.
Launching our Green Guide and my permaculture partnership at the time, at a local green expo.
City officials and others learned about permaculture.
A number of close friendships and business and romantic partnerships were created out of the meetings.
A local time bank was launched.
People experienced a sharing economy, where we charged for nothing, but shared our skills and other resources to help each other become more educated, regenerative and resilient.
Tree pruning project.
I left town after 18 months, and when I returned a year later, I tried to restart the activity. It just wasn’t well attended at that point. I started asking people why not? Their response? We got what we needed out of it - we have a stronger community, more know-how, a greater understanding of resources. Several members had done the permaculture design course and were doing their own community projects.
I realized that it had served its purpose within the ecosystem (at least the ecosystem I was connected to), and created the conditions for other things to grow in its place.
One important lesson I got from this is that timing is important. If a community activity isn’t taking off, it could be that you just aren’t reaching the right people or something else is wrong with the design of it. Or it could be that it isn’t the thing that the community needs right now.
Survey, ask people what they have attention on.
There are many versions of skill sharing actions - larger events such as Reskilling or Earthskills events, Maker Faires, and other events. They also tend to build community and relationships. There is something about skill sharing that lends itself to this very nicely.
A Maker meetup, where community members including children, can learn basics in electronics, welding, repair, reuse, craft skills and much else. This one is in Idaho, but they happen all over the world.