by Alejandra Garcia | Mar 20, 2026
Project Description
Hold practical spaces to address, transform, coordinate and weave stronger strategic relationships within the permaculture network to broaden access and impact of commons resources.
Expected Outcomes
A more coherent movement and stronger network, including more widely shared resources and collaboration agreements.
Open Collective
Aimee Fenech, Jyotsna Maan, Charlie Wilson, Alejandra Garcia
Group Accountability Officer: Alejandra Garcia
by hansryding | Mar 20, 2026
Project description
Research and development of ethical digital products for the colab and allied networks.
Aimee Fenech, Anton Oussik, Dominik Jais, Alejandra Garcia
Group Acountability Officer: Alejandra Garcia
Prototyping, Next Steps Project, GROW project
by charliewilson | May 30, 2023
Research into and development of permaculture-themed virtual 3D worlds for the open source Mozilla Hubs platform.
Rakesh Rootsman Rak, Ewan Findley, Jemma Findley
Reporting Officer: Ewan Findley
Prototyping, Emergent festival, Next Steps project
- Phase one: research & planning (May-Jun 2023)
- Identify affordances, limitations and potential for the Mozilla Hubs platform
- Explore and identify suitable permaculture themes and concepts based on the above
- Develop these ideas into more detailed virtual world plans
- Phase two: Development (Jul-Aug)
- Build the worlds defined in 1.3 (above) using open source tools such as Blender and Spoke
- Phase three: Publishing and Launch (Sep)
- Publish the developed worlds with a Creative Commons CC-BY 3.0 license using Spoke
- Share this via CoLab Slack, newsletter and website article
- Present and demonstrate the world(s) to permaculture educators at the in-person Educators Gathering in September 2023 organised by the Permaculture Association. This will be demonstrated on phone, desktop and VR headset, along with an introduction to the Hubs platform and the metaverse as a concept.
- Ongoing: learning & reporting
- Document learnings along the way
- Share progress and learnings on CoLab Slack
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- Updated aims due to lack of funding through the Emergent festival –
- The project can continue as planned within this budget. Proposed work within this budget is as follows:
Jemma, Rakesh and Ewan have two 1.5 hour meetings (total 9 hours work at suggested hourly rates).
Rakesh 3 x 25h = £75
Jemma 3 x 25h = £75
Ewan 3 x 22h = £66Total £216
- These meetings will cover the first two items from phase one:
Phase one: research & planning– Identify affordances, limitations and potential for the Mozilla Hubs platform
– Explore and identify suitable permaculture themes and concepts based on the above.
- By the end of this the outputs will be;
- – notes documenting the process
– recordings of the sessions that can be shared with CoLab and our educator and permaculture networks
- The remaining budget will be used to edit the notes and recordings to make sure they are useful for distribution for others to learn from.Ewan 0.5h x £22 = £11I will seek further funding for continuation of the work, with the aim to complete a usable prototype for testing and sharing.
Project Update September 2023
Further funds of £380 have been allocated to the project from the Emergent Festival
– Based on 17.3 hours at £22 per hour
– With additional aims now within the scope of this project:
development of a first iteration prototype virtual world that can be contributed to the commons, uploaded and used by anyone. The theme and concept for this world will come from the second team meeting.
November 2023 Update
We have successfully completed some limited R&D around how the spatial/3D social platform Mozilla Hubs might be used for permaculture people, for example in events or education. From this research a prototype 3D world was developed using the FOSS tools Blender and Spoke. The permaculture themed world includes several areas that users can navigate around including; a presentation stage, a breakout room, a campfire and a lobby. The space has been deliberately designed to be largely event-agnostic, so that it can be more easily used for a greater variety of scenarios.
by charliewilson | May 22, 2023
The Permaculture Convergence Website will provide a history of permaculture convergences in the world. It will capture resources and promote support services to permaculture convergence organisers.
Project Aims
Bring to life a website to celebrate past convergences and offer support to future convergences.
The grant helps to support the website development, cover domain, hosting and project costs, micro enterprise development and service design.
Capacity+ team: Kate Swatridge, Luis Tiago
Next Steps team (current team): Aimee Fenech, Ewan Findley, Xavier Bruzaud Grille, Candida Shinn, Daniel Mello Mattos
Reporting Officer: Aimee Fenech
Network Weaving, Next Steps project
We will to create a system that would make it easy for any individual, community or initiative to find accurate and up to date information about the various convergences we had until today online.
We will try to recover the lost information and provide a long term safe digital place to host that content.
We will also support the digital circle to spread its work and sustain in the long term for this digital infrastructure, finding ways of extra funding (donations ).
We will also continue to support the creation of new relations with those who are already in the movement.
We will continue weaving the work that the permaculture research convergence proposal group has done.
A website to catalyze collaboration in the international permaculture community, gathering online content of the permaculture convergences existing local, regional, and at a global scale. It will contribute as a online hub to support permaculture by mapping the diversity of content existing past convergences, has a historical hub and enableling new visions for future convergences.
objectives – next steps project 2023
1. Receive a handover from the previous team about work already done.
2. Put together a strategy on how to approach this project and define/update objectives for year 1.
3. Identify costs for the services needed from the Digital Circle during this first year.
4. Put together an MVP for the website.
5. Put together a micro-enterprise development strategy document.
OUTCOMEs – next steps project 2023
objectives – next steps project 2024
1. Develop a Business strategy and implementation plan to continue the work beyond funding
2. Develop a Counseling prototype service within the micro-enterprise.
3. Maintain the website content including events and it’s infrastructure.
We have setup a partnership with the convergence research team, we will publish research and resource materials on our website: https://permacultureconvergence.org/ and open up an ongoing survey to keep collecting valuable data for the research team.
We have ramped up our communications effort to publicize our project and reach a wider audience and the CoLab using the linkedin channel: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pccolab/
Maintenance on the website and features enhancement continues with the addition of new events to the calendar and the history of convergence timeline.
December Update:
We have set up new pages on our website including Resources and Research in collaboration with the Convergence Research Team. On the CoLab LinkedIn we have been promoting upcoming convergences and adding Permaculture Convergences coming up in 2025. You can learn more about our project here: https://permacultureconvergence.org/
objectives – next steps project 2025
In 2025 the Permaculture Convergence Aggregator merged with the Convergence Research Team.
The convergence research team joined the permaculture convergence team to bring together an updated history of permaculture convergences and practical resources for event organisers. We have also made an effort to contact event organisers with limited success. Website visitor numbers have been steadily growing as more people become aware of the project.
by charliewilson | May 12, 2023
Provision of tech services, hosting and access to ethical tools
Ewan Findley, Aimee Fenech
Reporting Officer: Aimee Fenech
CoLab maintenance, Next Steps project
1. Put together the invoice for existing services due for renewal in 2023.
2. Maintain services up and running, run updates, backups, troubleshoot as needed
– this includes Nextcloud accounts for Next Steps Project teams and other CoLab working groups
– keeping perma.earth up and running including troubleshooting, maintenance
– keeping slack up and running or an alternative communications tool
– keeping up existing email addresses used by colab communications
3. Increased digital tool awareness for CoLab participants.
We have developed a secure and resilient way to manage our team’s logins, account credentials and passwords so that we can manage this as a team through our asynchronous part time working patterns.
We have new exciting offerings in the form of FOSS applications that we need to make widely known through the CoLab and associated networks so that we may all benefit from this.
We’ve successfully provided fast support to CoLab members who rely on digital circle services.
1. Put together the invoice for existing services due for renewal.
2. Maintain services up and running, run updates, backups, troubleshoot as needed
– this includes Nextcloud accounts for Next Steps Project teams and other CoLab working groups
– keeping perma.earth up and running including troubleshooting, maintenance
– keeping slack up and running or an alternative communications tool
– keeping up existing email addresses used by colab communications
3. Increased digital tool awareness for CoLab participants
We have a member of the team stepping back and another one being onboarded.
We continue to provide the CoLab with services including emails, web hosting, nextcloud and openproject for funded projects. After a review of the performance and user feedback we will be discontinuing openproject and will be testing a new tool in the coming quarter before we make the switch to leantime.
We have been assisting the communications offer and the communications and engagement team in their efforts to update the website.https://perma.earth/
• Put together the invoice for existing services due for renewal
• Maintain services up and running, run updates, backups, troubleshoot as needed –
◦ this includes Nextcloud accounts for Next Steps Project teams and other CoLab working groups
◦ keeping perma.earth up and running including troubleshooting, maintenance, hosting transfer from Collective tools to DC Services
◦ keeping slack up and running or an alternative communications tool
◦ keeping up existing email addresses used by colab communications
◦ keeping up baserow for NS project
• Increased digital tool awareness for CoLab participants (includes demos)
• Team reporting
September Update
We are continuing to provide the services to the CoLab.
Final Update
We continued providing digital services that met the needs of the colab striving for a high ethical standard while maintaining great value.
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