Learn practical skills and how to live sustainably by attending these half-day or full-day workshops, usually on Saturdays. Workshop topics range from bee-keeping to making cheese to basket weaving to growing vegetables seasonally.
Spaces fill up fast for these popular, informative and fun workshops. Please book early to avoid disappointment.
For all our upcoming workshops summary and bookings CLICK HERE.
For information and booking on the 2018 Permaculture Design Course CLICK HERE
Saturday, 14 September 2019 from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm (AEST)
Make your own Smudge Stick and Ceremonial Feather Fan
Our mind, body and spirit respond well to devotional spaces. When you create or take part in a ritual or ceremony, something as simple as lighting a candle for yourself or someone else, you allow healing to take place.
Creating a sacred space at home with simple altars, where you place meaningful items like a candle, crystals, stones, driftwood, incense or sentimental pictures, allow a space to soften the psyche.
Smudging is often done before a ceremony, a special gathering or personally to clear energy from a space, items or person.
In this workshop you will make your own smudge stick from a range of herbs appropriate for smoking and a ceremonial feather fan.
All materials will be provided but please feel free to bring your own herbs, feathers or special symbols to use in the creation of these ceremonial tools.
Part of this workshop will include smudging participants and all items used in the creation of your Smudge Stick and Ceremonial Feather Fan.
These items would also make wonderful sustainable gifts for a loved one!
Desi Achilleos has worked as a community artist for over 20 years. She currently works at Northey Street City Farm and completed her Permaculture Design Certificate in 2017.
She has a passion for healing ceremonies, natural fiber art and creating art in community settings.
Cost: $60/$45 Healthcare Card Holder + Booking Fee
Friday, 20 September 2019 at 5:30 pm – Sunday, 22 September 2019 at 4:00 pm (AEST)
Holistic Decision Making with Dan Palmer
Savour Soil Permaculture | 55 Hayes Street | Laidley, Queensland 4341 | Australia
What is this workshop about, exactly? Holistic Decision Making (HDM) is a whole-oriented approach to clarifying and then reliably actualising what is supremely important to you, especially when life gets complex and difficult.
The main phases of its practice are:
· articulating clear intent
· tuning in to what is going on and where things are really at
· deciding and acting accordingly
· seeking and using feedback to stay on the path forward
In doing so, life and life projects start to feel less like that things that are happening to you (or dragging you along for the ride) into things that you are intentionally doing or living. At the same time, you start shedding the parts of your life that are not authentic or don’t really belong and both strengthening and adding those that do. Once you get a taste for it, it is hard to turn back.
If life feels like you have too many commitments pulling you in too many different directions, this workshop will help.
If you have a vague uneasy feeling that you may not be fully living out your purpose, this workshop will help.
If you are struggling with any kind of tensions in working or professional relationships, this workshop will help.
If you are starting any kind of new venture, business or project, then this workshop will definitely, 100% help!
HDM helps you get honest and clear about what really brings you alive, and then helps you honour this such that feeling fully alive and clear on what you are doing with your life becomes normal.
Holistic decision making can be applied to yourself, your family, any business or project you are part of. We apply it to all of these things and more. The practice of learning HDM has two parts:
You will likely leave this workshop hungry to go back into your life and make decisions having seen how they are the only steering wheel you get in this life to move toward what most brings you and your projects alive.
In this workshop you will not only hear about this approach. You will practice it, repeatedly, with much friendly feedback. You will explore and articulate what matters most in the various aspects of your life. You will improve your focus and clarity of purpose as well as learn how to steer directly into the space you most deeply want to be in, and stay there.
Though appropriate for anyone working in any decision-making context, in this workshop, held at a working farm, we both invite and will be sure to cater to small farmers feeling like they’d like a better system for driving their enterprise forward with better decision making.
This workshop will cover:
· The entire approach clearly explained using examples from the facilitator’s lives, games and practical exercises.
· Creating what we call a ‘context’ for yourself, your family or an organisation/business you are part of that capture’s deepest intentions, mission and desires along with what must be done and nurtured to achieve them.
· Using that context to filter decisions and take actions based on their relevance to this context.
· Seeking and using feedback to actualise, maintain, and evolve your context.
Camping available (Bring your own tent and gear ).
Catering provided (Breakfast, Morning and Afternoon Teas, Lunch and Dinner)
Cost: $300/$250 health care card
Limited numbers: 15
Saturday, 21 September 2019 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (AEST)
Inviting Nature to Dinner. A workshop on how to grow food and support wildlife.
Something drastic is happening to nature. Insect and bird numbers are decreasing dramatically world wide and frogs, mammals and plants are going extinct before our eyes. To grow our food we have cleared native habitat, brought in exotic plants and animals, spread chemical fertilisers and toxic pesticides across the land and changed the climate by burning fossil fuels. Nature’s creatures, big and small, are dying as a result of our actions.
Let’s choose a new track. Let’s get practical and local and make our gardens and small scale agriculture places that support wildlife, including insects, in mutual benefit, while growing our food. To do this we need to know which local native plants support which wildlife and how they do so.
This one-day workshop will explore the fascinating field of garden ecology and discuss options and strategies for growing food in ways that include local native plants and support wildlife.
For food growing to be truly sustainable, it has to allow room for nature, wild plants and wild creatures and all their interactions, to co-exist with our gardens and small farms. This workshop will help participants grow food in a way that achieves this.
Cost: $100/$85 Healthcare card
Saturday, 28 September 2019 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (AEST)
Retrosuburbia Unleashed with Michael Wardle & Gavin Hardy
Come join Michael Wardle and Gavin Hardy as we explore practical strategies and real world examples in wanting to grow more food, reduce your energy use and have a more satisfying, fulfilling life.
These and other themes from David Holmgren’s new book RetroSuburbia: the downshifters guide to a resilient future will be explored in this full day workshop.
Northey Street City farm for the last 25 years have been teaching and showing examples of how these strategies can be applied in an urban environment.
Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss various aspects of the book and undertake activities and exercises to help them assess their current situation and plan for the future.
Learn practical and positive solutions for retrofitting our homes, gardens and households and to build resilient, regenerative and abundant homes and communities.
Gavin Hardy is a multi-award winning registered landscape architect, community teacher and master gardener and is the owner of Gavin Hardy Designs. He is one of Northey Street City Farm’s ‘pioneers’, designing, teaching and garden-farming in this remarkable place since 1996. During his career Gavin has designed and collaborated on community gardens and edible landscapes throughout Brisbane and beyond. He is also a qualified engineer and accomplished permaculturist having trained with the late Bill Mollison, and more recently David Holmgren, Robin Clayfield and Robina McCurdy.
Michael Wardle is the adult education coordinator at Northey Street City Farm and he is a father of 4, has worked in schools and the community and is a permaculture educator, designer and consultant for Savour Soil Permaculture. He moved from larger acreage to a more suburban block 6 years ago and has been applying the permaculture design process to his life and new property and has trained with Rosemary Morrow, David Holmgren, Dave Jacke and Dan Palmer”
Cost: $100/$85 Healthcare Card + Eventbrite fee
Satuarday, 12 Oct 2019 9:00am to 4:00pm
Vegan Cheese Making with Elisabeth Fekonia
Come and spend the day with vegan cheese expert Elisabeth Fekonia as she takes us on a journey into how we can make our won vegan cheese. The day is divided into two parts:
Block and wheel cheeze and cultured plant based dairy products 9– 12 pm
Love plant-based cheese but oh soo expensive? Learn how to make your own for very little cost in this 3-hour workshop Permaculture-realfood. This workshop is aimed at the beginner and you will soon see that it’s quite easy to make your own delicious cheese from cashews and almonds All these foods will greatly increase the health of both you and your family as they taste the delicious creations you will soon be making for them. We will have samples for taste testing for all attendees. We will make three hard cheese, cheddar, Brie and Havarti and also make cultured cream cheesze and sour cream as well as vegan butter. Coco yo is tasted and discussed on how to make.
Cultured Vegan Cheeze 1– 4 pm
Learn how to make your own amazing Blue Vein Cheeze, Camembert, Feta, Halloumi, Melting Cheddar and a gorgeous Alfredo sauce. Hands on participation from the class volunteers will show how to make nut based living cheeze from scratch. Includes: E-Handouts with recipes.
Saturday, 19 Oct 2019 6:30 AM – 6:00 PM AEST
Crystal Waters Permaculture Village Tour
Robin Clayfield will welcome you to Crystal Waters Permaculture Village, the Ecovillage that’s been her home for over 31 years and is home to approximately 230 others. The full day tour will begin in the commercial village area of Crystal Waters which has an organic wood-fired sourdough bakery, a commercial kitchen and function centre, a rural bush fire brigade base, the Flower Pot Coffee Shop and various other social enterprises and community spaces.
Robin will explain the foundational Permaculture design which supported people to settle on 640 acres of rural land on separate freehold titles with the village centre and an EcoPark. Much of the story of the development of Crystal Waters, it’s Social Permaculture and dynamics and the evolution it has undertaken will be shared. There will be time to experience the village centre followed by an extensive drive around tour to see the features of the property and visit various residents homes and gardens.
A special feature will be a visit to the home and garden of Morag Gamble and Evan Raymond where they have created a family Permaculture garden paradise complete with chicken systems, terraced gardens and food forests surrounding their owner built home. Morag and Evan are Permaculture teachers with much great wisdom to share.
After Lunch participants will visit the home of Barry Goodman, one of the original designers of the EcoVillage. He will offer an introduction to Permaculture Zone 0, the dwelling. His presentation highlights the concept of fitting the house both into the environment and around the needs of the residents. It will include the various alternative technologies and methods that he has implemented at No 83 as an owner-builder, and the background to the decisions that he made. These include solar electrics, both stand-alone and mains infeed, solar hot water, composting toilet, potable water storage, grey water treatment, use of recycled and seconds materials, all in an unusual house design.
The tour will complete with a visit to Earthcare Farm, a two acre commercial bamboo farm which is one of the licence areas on Crystal Waters, supplying bamboo shoots to restaurants and poles to festivals and other users for shelters and ephemeral buildings.
Saturday, 2 November 2019 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (AEST)
Outdoor Learning and the Curriculum: A Professional Development Workshop for Educators
This practical workshop will demonstrate how the Australian Curriculum cross-curriculum priority area of Sustainability can be addressed while taking learning outdoors. Outdoor learning using experience-based strategies supports children’s emotional well-being and physical health, increases engagement with learning, fosters ecological stewardship and positively impacts on environmental behaviours.
Workshop participants will:
- Learn how outdoor experiential activities can be linked to the curriculum, and be applied to Learning Areas including Science, English, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Arts.
- Experience approaches that support students to increase critical and creative thinking, and have the knowledge, understanding and skills to engage in creating a more sustainable world.
- Take home a resources list, activity descriptions with links to the Australian curriculum, and a certificate for 6 hours of professional development.
While the workshop is focused on primary school teachers, the learnings can also apply to other teachers and educators. The content relates particularly to sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.2, and 3.3 of the Australian professional standards for teachers.
About the presenter: Emma Brindal is the Youth Education Coordinator at Northey Street City Farm, where she runs permaculture and sustainability activities and programs for children and adults. She is also the founder of WiseEarth Education and has been teaching and facilitating experiential learning and environmental education programs for over a decade. Emma has a degree in Environmental Science and is currently studying a Master of Education (Social Ecology).
Registration for the workshop:
Cost: $140 school-funded/waged | $90 student/unwaged (GST included) Includes morning tea. BYO lunch
E: email@example.com PH: 3857 8775
If your school or organisation is paying for your attendance, we can invoice you – email firstname.lastname@example.org to arrange this.
Saturday, 2 November 2019 from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm (AEST)
Nature Mono-printing with a Gelatine Plate
Explore the exciting process of monoprinting using a gelatine plate, where we use acrylic paint and objects to create layered colourful images. The focus of the workshop will be on printing with found garden materials such as leaves and grass stems to create an intimate connection with the natural environment around us.
No printmaking or art experience required. All materials will be supplied. Please wear an apron, comfortable shoes, and a nametag.
The workshop is designed to get people to work with natural materials to create artwork. The process is simple and the resulting prints will give the attendees a new perspective on the hidden or unnoticed qualities of plants.
Cost: $60/$45 health care card
Saturday, 9 November 2019 from 9:00am-4:00pm
Place in the Country with Michael Wardle
Whether your goal is food, homesteading or enjoyment, this workshop offers the open, honest path to creating your own pleasing, productive and sustainable rural landscape.
Suitable for those interested in small hobby farms of all shapes and sizes, this workshop gives you down to earth, practical advice to help you achieve a long-term sense of peace and prosperity on the land.
Michael Wardle is the adult education coordinator at Northey Street City Farm and he is a father of 4, has worked in schools and the community and is a permaculture educator, designer and consultant for Savour Soil Permaculture. He moved from larger acreage to a more suburban block 6 years ago and has been applying the permaculture design process to his life and new property and has trained with Rosemary Morrow, David Holmgren, Dave Jacke and Dan Palmer.
Cost: $100/$85 Health Care Card Holder + Booking Fee
Saturday, 23 November 2019 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (AEST)
The Work that Reconnects
The Work that Reconnects (WTR) is a supportive framework to reawaken our connection to ourselves, each other and the world. It was developed by deep ecologist, scholar and activist, Joanna Macy, as a way to understand people’s feelings and empower them in the age of nuclear proliferation in the late 1970s. In recent years, WTR has become increasingly relevant to other contemporary issues such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution.
WTR provides an opportunity to understand and express both our concerns and our love for the Earth and our societies, and to (re)discover and give shape to our hopes. Through our remembering and reawakening, we are able to go forth with new eyes and renewed purpose to contribute to a Life Sustaining Society.
This is an experiential workshop, involving solo processes as well as conversational and group processes.
Due to the importance of this work at this time and in order to make this workshop accessible to all, we are offering this workshop at the discounted prices of $80 & $50 (concession).
Saturday, 23 November 2019 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (AEST)
Native Stingless Bees with Tim Heard
Learn about bee nesting and foraging, diversity of wild bees, importance of bees in natural systems, traditional and modern stingless beekeeping in Australia and around the world, using stingless bees for pollination of gardens and farms, sugarbag honey, rescuing threatened wild bees and more. Demonstrations cover hive design, splitting hives, extracting honey. If available, we also transfer a colony from a natural location into a hive. Please let Tim know if you have a suitable colony.
Cost: $100/$85 Health Care Card Holder + Booking Fee
Saturday, 9 November 2019 from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm (AEST)
Worm Farming with Hedricka Kwan
Join Hedricka Kwan for this wonderful practical workshop on worm farming. Worms are easy to keep and produce the best fertilizer for your plants. Learn about what makes worm castings and leachate such a great soil improver to any garden. In this workshop you will learn how to overcome common problems faced in keeping a worm farm, worm multiplication techniques and harvest methods. Each participant will bring home some worms to start their own farm.
Fee: $60/$45 Health Care Card Holder + Booking Fee
Saturday, 30 November 2019 at 9:00 am – Sunday, 1st December 2019 at 4:00 pm (AEST)
Introduction to Permaculture
Come to explore an overview of permaculture through the eyes of the ethics and design principles. This course tackles how to grow food, build houses and create communities, and minimize environmental impact at the same time. Its principles are being constantly developed and refined by people throughout the world.
Join us for two days to learn the basics of permaculture design. The course aims to inspire and empower you to use permaculture design in your everyday life.
You will learn the history, various definitions, design process, ethics, principles, other design tools and case studies from a range of applications.
This course will cover:
℘ What is Permaculture?
℘ Permaculture Ethics and Design Principles
℘ Soil Basics
℘ Composting for beginners
℘ Food Production (forest gardens and garden farming)
℘ Basic Design Framework
℘ Integrated Animal Systems
℘ Social Permaculture
Limited numbers to maximize the outcomes of this dynamic 2-day course.
What you get…
℘ Access to awesome online resources to match the on-ground learning.
℘ Practical examples of permaculture in action
℘ Design and gardening strategies to apply in both your inner & physical landscape.
Tea and coffee, will be provided.
Cost: $250/$200 Health Care Card Holder + Eventbrite Fee
Sat, 7 December 2019 9:00am – 4:00pm
Rustic Basket Making Weaving Circle
You can use Rustic Baskets to hold food, mail, pot plants, treasures, pencils and paintbrushes, food harvests, jewellry, make-up, bathroom supplies and for decoration in any spot! Come make one or two in this great workshop, using a range of natural fibres and recycled materials to create a unique piece for yourself or to give as a gift to someone you love. An ancient tradition is to gift your first basket and so this workshop is a great opportunity to give a wonderful gift to a loved one for Christmas as well as make a second for yourself!Please bring your own shells, beads, recycled materials or memento’s to weave into your basket or a sturdy wooden handle if you so choose.
Desi Achilleos has worked as a community artist for over 20 years. She currently works at Northey Street City Farm and completed her Permaculture Design Certificate in 2017. She has a passion for natural fibre art, basket weaving and creating art in community settings.
Cost: $100/$85 healthcare card (all materials included for at least two baskets)
We understand that sometimes circumstances change and participants may not be able to attend a course or workshop that has been paid for.
For workshops (half day, full day and weekend), we require a minimum of 7 days notice for cancellations. We do not provide refunds for any cancellations that are made within 7 days of a workshop. If participants cancel participation in a workshop and are entitled to a refund, they can choose to:
- Receive a refund
- Opt for a credit for another workshop, to be used within 12 months of the initial workshop.
Cancellations of workshops by Northey Street City Farm
- Northey Street City Farm may cancel or change a class at any time, for reasons including but not limited to, lack of participation, inclement weather or facilitator availability.
- Registrants can opt for a full refund, or can use the credit for a future workshop, to be used within 12 months of the date of the initial workshop or course.