| Location: | Lanjaron, Granada, Spain |
| Client: | Finca Verde Community |
| Start and end of planning dates: | June 2022 – |
| Type of project: | David Holmgren’s domains: Land & Nature Stewardship 12 categories: Permaculture Design consultancy: Site Development |
| Design process: | Dragon Dreaming |
| Design goal: | To clarify the vision of the community and synthesize this into a permaculture design plan for the property |
| Design Status: | In progress |
Synopsis
Anton and I have moved into the farmhouse in December 2021. Since then we had on and off discussions as to:
- what type of activities we would like to see happen here
- how we can share the land with others
- how we manage the current cash crops – the olives and the almonds
- what type of equipment we should be buying
- where new buildings could be put
- how we want to feel while we live here
- how to make this project regenerative and financially sound
- how will we make decisions
Whilst all these conversations are useful it was worth noting that we felt that we still didn’t have an overview of it all, so this design looks to give us birds-eye view of the project and the fundamental basis on which we can build on. In particular none of these conversation were in any way recorded to we rely on memory which is often faulty.
To make this a truly co-creative process the design employs different tools at every stage of the Dragon Dreaming process to invite input from the community members.
Dreaming
Dreaming from an individual perspective to a group perspective.
In order to hear and understand where we are individually, we give ourselves permission to speak out our dreams.
In this case, since Anton is away in England whilst I am here in Spain we do this virtually by adding making a vision board and answering the question: “What would this project have to be like that afterwards you can say, you could not have spent your time in any better way?“ From: https://dragondreaming.org/dreaming/
On the vision board is a permaculture flower of domains and the invitation is to link these vision statements to one or more relevant domains. The reason for this is that this project stems from the roots from which we arrive here from the adoption of the Permaculture Ethics and therefore we integrate these at the basis of our activity.
From this individual exercise, we can extrapolate commonalities within our vision and these are then used to create a joint vision – a dream manifesto that can be reviewed and changed as an anchor to which we can always return for sensemaking later on. It is also a document that can be shared externally with people who become involved with our project temporarily or for the longer term.
For screenshots of the complete process you can look here.
From the shared vision we identified which UN SDGs we will be working on.
Mapping
There are various maps that apply to this design including:
A topographical map of the area
A satellite view
Wind map:
Zone map:
Catastro / Land Registry maps:
Southside map
Planning
Edward DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats:
| Hat | Commentary |
|---|---|
| Process | What different types of processes do we want to manage the project? |
| Facts | How do we see information being a part of our activities? |
| Creativity | What role does creativity play in our projects? |
| Feelings | What feelings do we want to encourage whilst being here? |
| Benefits | What benefits would our activities here create and for who? |
| Cautious | What challenges may we be faced with? |
Evaluation
Have the design objectives been met?
| Overall design | |
| Vision Board co-creating of the shared vision exercise | What went well? What could have gone better? |
| The Six Thinking Hats | |
Reflection
22nd June 2022: I have sent Anton a link to the Miro for the shared vision exercise. I am looking forward to seeing his answers and hope that we will have a strong overlap.
21st August 2022: It has taken considerably longer than expected to progress in this design, primarily due to us being very busy but also because we have not prioritised this as a task.
4th December 2022: There was a break in this design whilst we focused on paid work and the harvest and with Anton being away so today I started again with the collective reflection on the six hats.
Resources used for this design
European Wind Atlas: https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/112135732/European_Wind_Atlas.pdf
Permaculture Principles: https://permacultureprinciples.com/principles/
Permaculture Domain Flower: https://permacultureprinciples.com/flower/
Dragon Dreaming: https://dragondreaming.org/dreaming/
Edward DeBono’s six thinking hats: http://www.edwarddebonofoundation.com/Creative-Thinking-Techniques/Six-Thinking-Hats.html