There was a definite upbeat mood at the PAB AGM on 15 October at the Green Wood Centre in Telford, a feeling that we are ready to spread permaculture ideas and practice more widely. Getting agreement to becoming a charitable company is a vital step as far as the trustees are concerned, allowing us to support well-designed, major local projects without worrying that we will be personally liable if disputes arise and costs incurred. I admit I was nervous about the discussion on this matter. Despite the sound ‘people care’ argument for the move, it has taken us years to get it past some members, who are wary of any mention of words like ‘company’ or ‘business’, for reasons I understand and have some sympathy with. But the discussion we had was lively and constructive, as if even the purists recognise that it is poor ‘people care’, and therefore poor ‘earth care’, to resist drawing the mainstream of society in our direction such that we can make a real difference. What is not clear – yet – is how the breakthrough we are fully expecting will come about.

One route that appeals to some permaculture activists involves focussing on solutions to climate change and ‘oil peak’ (predictions that reserves will run low over the next few decades), problems which, it is hoped, will oblige society to embrace sustainability and localisation. But doesn’t that risk repeating the generally off-putting ‘doom and gloom’ messages of the environmental movement of 20-30 years ago? Rather than presenting permaculture as a rescue package, can we not show how it might offer a better quality of life? A discussion session in the afternoon of the AGM made a start by exploring ‘community building’, permaculture style.

The thought that led to this discussion topic is that people need people more than anything else in the world. There is a practical aspect to this, in that we need each other to meet our basic needs. More crucially, we need each other to determine who we are; identity comes from society. In primitive communities, people cooperated directly to get food, make shelter, ensure protection and survival. Perhaps in such a situation, individuality has little meaning beyond one’s role in the group. In today’s society, cooperation is largely indirect and remote, mediated by money, and yet each of us still needs to belong, and one solution is to identify with others of a named group, to adopt what has been called a ‘categorical identity’. Examples include: ‘I am a mother’, ‘I am a Moslem’, ‘I am British’, ‘I am a teacher’ and so on. (‘I am a permaculturist’ has not caught on in that way; there’s no such thing as ‘permie pride’.) So vital is identity that people may defend the group they identify with against others, even when their group is scattered worldwide and consists mainly of strangers. Particular categorical identities may not cause wars, but they can be exploited by the powerful to get people to kill and to die.

The alternative to ‘categorical identity’ is ‘practical identity’. This is identity as a member of a group of people who live or work together to meet their physical as well as emotional needs; a modern, perhaps more complex, version of the primitive community. If successful at sustaining the group within the resources available locally, such a community grouping need not be aggressive towards others, but could extend to cooperation between groups to meet certain needs. Practical identity will be inherent in any substantial permaculture implementation, and if this is a crucial human need not easily met in the best way in modern society, it is a benefit we could be telling people about. The question is, how?

What was fascinating about the discussion on ‘community building’ on the afternoon of the AGM is that everything in life seems to be related to community and identity. We built up a spider diagram of implications and suggestions as fast as our scribe could scribble. The discussion shot off in all directions, had to be reined in back to what community building, permaculture-style, has to offer. Some of the thoughts we shared were general, such as confidence building, skills sharing, role models, human scaling, bioregionalism, community space, collective control, and various aspects of design. Other points were more specific, such as offering ‘Café Nights à la Organiclea’, which was about shared food and organising hosts and venues. There was also my own suggestion about the PAB building what might be called a ‘Permanet database’.

If you put the word ‘community’ into a search on the PAB web site, you get over 200 hits related to initiatives on traditional permaculture lines. Many are community gardens and allotments and other local food schemes, others are about recycling, co-housing, eco-villages, intentional communities and so on. Such initiatives stand out against conventional life; they are alternative, even when they are moderate and non-confrontational. So what would need to happen for the residents of a village, a town, or a district of a city, to become a permaculture community at a deeper, more comprehensive, level?

Looking at the stages of a permaculture design, one of the first things to do is survey the site, walk around it, barefoot perhaps, and see, feel and record what’s there. One useful resource for a community building project would be existing local links. So my suggestion is that the PAB asks our members, and others who may read our newsletter or visit our web site, to tell us what groups they have contacts with where they live. Such groups could be gardening or allotment clubs, environmental pressure groups, peace groups, conservation associations, religious congregations, political parties, women’s organisations, sports clubs, local history societies, schools and colleges, adult education facilities, and so on. Our members may have occasional contacts with one or more of these or be actively involved. They may be known in these circles as permaculturists, or they may not, and I am not suggesting members join groups to proselytise. In our AGM day discussion, someone jokingly used the word ‘infiltrate’, but it’s not that either. I just feel that to get a picture of the network that, through our members, we are a part of, could lead to permaculture ideas and design approach, our services and associations, being useful in all kinds of ways we have never thought of, and could even be the first stage of transforming some of this country’s commuters’ dormitories and ‘sink’ estates, into self-reliant, sustainable, integrated, genuine communities.