Chris lives at Applewood with his partner Looby and children Shanti and Teya. He has taught permaculture in the UK, Europe, Nepal, India, U.S.A. and Mexico. He is also a senior level tutor for apprentices working towards their diploma in applied permaculture design with the Permaculture Association Britain.
He has lived and worked in Nepal since 1985, starting his career as a VSO volunteer in a community forestry programme in Nepal after graduating in Forestry in the UK. Based in the remote western district of Jajarkot, he quickly realised the shortfalls of international development and so in 1988, when he came across the concept of Permaculture, he embarked on an ambitious alternative. Starting with a local friend, £500 and an acre of degraded farmland in the district centre of Jajarkot he founded a demonstration and training centre which grew organically into the Jajarkot Permaculture Programme (JPP), a diverse array of projects spanning 4 districts, 65 villages, 8 resource centres (working farms), 120 staff and volunteers, and a membership of 12,000 farmers which successfully spread new ideas in line with existing cultural traditions.
He stayed with the JPP until 2001 when he started to work with community groups which were spawned from the original programme. In 2001 he co-wrote and published the Farmers’ Handbook in Nepali, a compendium of over 40 farmer-friendly techniques and approaches based on best practice learned in Nepal, but applicable globally. He directed the Nepal programmes for a UK charity from 2002 to 2008, working in the districts of Surkhet and Humla, one of the remotest and most challenging areas of the country. He currently works with a 3rd generation progeny of the JPP, the Himalayan Permaculture Centre (HPC).
His experience and passion have been designing, setting up and managing resource centres that are working demonstrations of applied permaculture as well as training venues, and aims to develop Applewood in a similar pattern, making its resources available to as wide a group as possible. From this springboard is the vision of collaborative design for abundant and regenerative settlements as models for around the globe, for ever.
Mapping Permaculture Convergences – Andrew Langford
Andrew (Andy) Langford was born in 1949 in Totnes, England. He entered the cornucopic world of permaculture in 1986 after a mixed career as a junior factory manager, an artesan shoemaker, a shepherding smallholder and bunch of other rich working experiences. His modest contribution to a small part of the permaculture phenomena was to become the first British permaculture teacher and the organiser of the infant Permaculture Association of Britain, initially with the help of Jolyon Fillingham and later with George Soble and Patsy Garrard.
Following his leadership stint with the PCA of Britain, starting around 1993 Andrew led a team of British permaculture people following Bill Mollison’s instructions to develop Permaculture Academy’s around the world resulting in the early versions of the action learning based Diploma of Applied Permaculture Design (DAPD), a design in its own rite that has influenced Diploma designs in several European countries and the USA.
In May 2004 the DAPD caught the attention of Liora Adler of the famed Caravana Arcoris de La Paz during a Global Ecovillage conference in Scotland who proposed using the design as the basis of a university. Andrew agreed and together, Liora and he formed Gaia U International. After a thrilling 20 year run and the untimely death of Liora in May 2024 Gaia U has recently passed into the capable hands of the talented Jennifer Morgan in Tennessee, USA who had been with us from the beginning.
Andrew has necessarily became a fluent, self-initiating transitioneer and action-learner in a generally successful attempt to ride the cultural chaos arising from the destructive decades of neoliberal capitalism and is now roaming the West Coast of the USA and Mexico seeking to weave webs of actionists working to rehydrate these fire and flood prone dryland zones.
Andy is Chief Executive of the Permaculture Association, the UK charity that helps more people do more permaculture. He was once a fine art student studying sculpture at Leeds Polytechnic, but soon after came across permaculture and fell madly in love with its blend of ethical purpose, design principles and practical action. You can generally find Andy behind a computer screen, behind the handlebars of his bike or picking fruit on his allotment in Leeds. He is an active teacher and Chair of Leeds Permaculture Network and part of the Imagine Leeds team, developing a city scale initiative that is inventing new ways to get people inventing and co-creating a zero carbon, nature friendly, socially just future.
Mapping Permaculture Convergences – Robin Clayfield
Robin Clayfield is a Permaculture Pioneer and acknowledged Permaculture Elder who’s lived at Crystal Waters Permaculture Ecovillage in SE Queensland, Australia since its inception in 1988. Over 43 years of living and evolving Permaculture has seen her become an international educator, group facilitator and best-selling author specialising in creative, interactive facilitation, group leadership, Permaculture, Deep Ecology, Social Permaculture and social change. Her legendary book ‘You Can Have Your Permaculture and Eat It Too’ has sold over 6000 copies and ‘The Manual for Teaching Permaculture Creatively’ that she co-authored is used in over 80 countries and supports Permaculture teachers to make learning fun, empowering and memorable.
Robin has developed her own learning methodology which embeds Permaculture at its foundation and has created many educational card games, community governance and decision making resource kits, learning resources and facilitation support tools to equip educators and group leaders globally. Robin has attended every Australasian Permaculture Convergence (APC’s) and five International Permaculture Convergences (IPC’s). She is preparing to attend and present at the IPC in Thailand in November 2026.
Robina McCurdy is a professional community development facilitator, Permaculture educator, organic gardener, and a pioneer- resident of 40 year-old Tui Community & Trust in rural Aotearoa/New Zealand. She is also the founder of The Institute of Earthcare Education Aotearoa.
Globally, since 1992, she has facilitated community-building in 10 different countries. Her community facilitation work encompasses ‘midwifing’ new initiatives, squatter settlement re-development, long-term conflict resolution, the training of community leaders as ‘cultural change agents’, participatory planning of orphanages, mentoring of new ecovillages, social renewal of existing ecovillages, and strengthening the community culture within existing organizations.
During this time, she has produced a range of environmental education resources and participatory processes for decision-making and collective action, culminating in the publication of her community facilitation manual, ‘Grounding Vision, Empowering Culture’. She is currently working on her Food Sovereignty Facilitators Manual, due to be published in Spring this year.
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