Hi all! So long before I got involved in
permaculture, I had success producing Minecraft videos on YouTube. And after doing my
PDC and doing some consulting/teaching, I've LOVED teaching new people about
Permaculture design principles and core ethics. So I decided to try teaching them by applying them to the video game of Minecraft. The game has
enough flexibility and semi-realistic farming elements that tons of
Permaculture TOTALLY applies to normal gameplay. And oddly I've never seen anyone apply them; which seems like a huge missed opportunity since Minecraft is being rolled out more and more as an education tool for children (just to be clear, I have seen people use Minecraft as a sort of 3D design studio for their real life
permaculture projects, but no one ever applied permaculture to Minecraft as a game).
And if I'm being totally honest, because my wife and I don't have access any
land where we live, doing Permaculture in Minecraft together is a fun way to pretend and practice for our own future home while we save up to move to our own place. (That, and our window garden, haha)
I'm specially excited about a "Permaculture in Minecraft" YouTube series because the kids who spend a lot of time watching video
games on YouTube probably have the least exposure/access to permaculture education and would benefit most by it. One of the things my
PDC teachers taught me is to seek out the most vulnerable people in your community and demonstrate Permaculture with them. So far I've produced 3 episodes of "Permaculture in Minecraft" where the viewer and I focus on People Care, multifunctionality, the
Fukuoka method, valuing renewable resources, Earth Care, and all that good stuff.
My wife and I also try to make our YouTube channel something healthy for modern day children to watch. We often record our Minecraft commentary sitting
side by side with a webcam, so that kids watching can get just a little more face-to-face interaction with real people and exposure to real human body language (that they might otherwise be deprived of while immersed in technology). I use a webcam for this reason even on the more technical / tutorial videos (which is actually counter-cultural in the Minecraft YouTube community!). We also make videos just showing healthy non-technological living (ironically) like going camping and cooking together.
I wanted to share a link to the video series here cause I figure lots of "Permies" might be interested in something like this. Maybe you have kids or know kids that you'd like to share it with. I think it could be an exciting and surprising way to show them how cool and useful Permaculture is. Maybe you'll enjoy the series yourself! Or maybe you just want even more proof that Permaculture applies to nearly every aspect of human culture, haha. Either way, here's the most recent "Permaculture in Minecraft" episode:
My wife and I hope you like it. And if you want to support us on this
project, please consider sharing the video series with someone and leaving a "like" or a comment with your thoughts. So thanks! and happy designing!