We’re excited to share the interactive Permaculture in Ontario Map. Watch this brief video for a quick introduction and a quick visual tour of what’s happening in Ontario. The video also shares a couple of useful tips on how to use the map.
Features of the map include:
- Regional view, where you can see multiple projects in a particular region;
- “Map” view (beta, see picture below), to find projects near you + zoom into an area and see projects in relation to each other;
- high resolution open source images that you can download;
- project circles that you can click on for more images, contact information and project details;
- ongoing intake of new projects – submit a project here.
Methodology & early results
The map was created from content submitted to the Regenerative Bioregional Community of Practice & Landscape Survey. The survey was generated in Fall 2018 through a collaborative design process in the emerging Southern Ontario permaculture community.
The survey launched on Dec 21st, and a call for submissions went out through leaders and champions in Southern Ontario from Jan 14 to 24. Fifty submissions were received from Dec 21st, 2018 to Jan 31, 2019.
Most submissions are now on the map, but we chose to exclude those with minimal detail and no images. New and updated submissions, as well as new pictures, are welcome, and we’ll continue adding these to the map as they come in.
We chose to ask open-ended survey questions instead of getting people to select predetermined permaculture activities from a list. This design strategy gave people the space to describe in their own words what they were doing and to observe the pattern in language use. In these early moments, here’s how people have described key aspects of their projects:
The choice to ask open-ended questions made the submissions complex to analyze, so exactly what we’re learning and seeing is still unfolding. We’re aware that we might have skewed people’s choice of language because of the way we worded our questions. Despite these imperfections, we chose to proceed with a “good enough” version of the survey. Our aims were to begin to reach out to people, learn where they are, and see images of what they are up to. We wanted to do this first survey in time for the Guelph Organic Conference at the end of Jan 2019, when a number of us would gather.
Our approach has other gaps and challenges. For example, we chose to reach out broadly, in that we asked people who are working in ways that are regenerative or in alignment with permaculture practices to submit their projects and, in turn, to see themselves as a part of a community of practice. This approach, while not “pure permaculture” as it was originally intended, arose out of the many conversations over the last year about the value of working and aligning with people who are working regeneratively, but who may not self-identify as permaculturalists. For a list of the types of approaches that align with permaculture, click here.
We were also not able to reach out to the North or to track activity north of Timmins in the early days of the survey. We also have much work to do to connect with Indigenous communities and other places where regenerative cultural and agricultural work is being done. And there’s work to do to clarify what we need to know from each other.
First yields
With acknowledgement that this is a simple sketch of a survey and map, and an evolving project, here are some of the yields we see from the survey and mapping:
- We have begun to understand who we are and where we are;
- People who practice or who are wanting to connect to permaculture projects and practitioners are better able to see and find each other;
- We have generated a public catalogue of images that express permaculture in action and the context in which it is being applied—the catalogue allows people to search for relatively local images of an idea;
- Permissions have been granted for all images to be in the public domain, and a photo credit and titles are provided alongside the images, so you can use the photos regardless of who you are—farmer, teacher, designer, etc.
- We can begin to see how mature permaculture landscapes are;
- Each submission also has a one-line description and a more detailed description;
- We have tracked who would like to mentor, be mentored, learn, teach, find design clients, work on a project, and stay in touch. (We’ve not uploaded all this information yet, but we’re working on it!);
- Kumu, the map’s platform is profiling the map on their Gallery, in the company of esteemed organizations and projects, such as Humanity United, Stanford University, Hewlett Foundation, Gates Foundation Partners.
Feedback and next steps
We’re looking for people to help us engage anyone we’ve missed who should consider taking the survey. We’re taking note of the places and people we should know about and connect with, whether or not they choose to be on the map. We look forward to engaging in many further conversations to connect and align with others doing permaculture and regenerative culture and agricultural work.
Have feedback or want to join in designing the way forward? Connect here.