Robyn Francis Europe Tour 2015

Landed in Frankfurt early this morning after a long grueling flight half way round the planet. All my bamboo* carbon credits for flying this year are consumed by this journey, but as with nearly all of my travels over the past 3 decades, this journey has a purpose and will hopefully sequester many times the energy consumed as a result of my work. (*the bamboo growing at Djanbung sequesters the same amount of carbon emitted if I take 1 return flight to Europe or 2 shorter flights to Asia each year)

In two days I’ll arrive in Iceland to co-teach a PDC with Albert Bates from the USA. While there’ll be participants from other countries and climates, the unique sub-arctic climate of Iceland will present some interesting challenges for permaculture design with it’s exceptionally short growing season. I’m looking forward to learning more about Iceland from the inside and local perspectives on its politics.

From Iceland I’ll be traveling to London for IPC-12 to join up with hundreds of permaculture delegates from around the world. IPC-12 begins with a 2-day public conference promising an exceptionally diverse and inspiring program of presentations. This will be followed by a 5-day Permaculture Designer’s Convergence where we get together to “talk shop” about the movement, take stock of where things are and how we can more effectively harness our collective energy to tackle the challenges of the future. This IPC is dedicating substantial time to our collective visioning under the theme of permaculture’s “Next Big Step”. The IPC convergence organisers have invited me to give a brief history of the early milestones of permaculture and some of the critical factors contributing to its growth and adoption throughout the world.

My last engagement on this journey will be in Berlin to conduct a 3-day Social Permaculture and Community Facilitators Masterclass. I’m really curious about visiting Berlin as my previous visit was in 1986 when the Wall was still intact. There were some inspiring Eco-city projects underway and under construction, so I hope to revisit some of these plus other new initiatives.

Look out for my updates on Facebook and I promise to write some blogs for this website reporting on the journey.