Intro to Permaculture pithiness help

Hi All!

I've been asked by a local conglomerate here in Cape Breton to do a permaculture workshop of some kind and thought an intro would be a good place to start. I know there's interest, but also confusion around the topic.

I have a couple of weeks to pull it together. With the brain fog struggles I'm still having because of long covid, I'm a bit trepidatious, but will perservere and come up with something. It's only 2 hours, after all. Which may be more difficult that having a whole day, with this subject, haha.

Which brings me to the purpose of this ask. For the poster, I offered, "join Laura in exploring the principles of permaculture and how they could affect your garden, community and life!" Ah, vagueness. Apparently too vague.

The organizer wants a sentence that tips the hand a bit more. People are asking things like, I just bought a new place, could this be for me? I am old and decrepit and scaling back, could this be for me? I am young and naive and enjoy standing on my head, could this be for me?

Of course we know permaculture is for everyone, but to come up with one sentence that invites anyone with a generic enough reason that could apply to everyone is tricky. This is something that will be in written promos, not just an easy answer she can give to people that call up to register, so not a paragraph-length sentence. I might be able to get away with two short sentences.

I have a couple of idea fragments including ideas of resilience and mimicking nature, but they haven't yet congealed into a final a-ha!, so am eager to hear suggestions. Suggestions for actual workshop content beyond the ethics and principles also welcome.

The last few years have been rife with unexpectedness of the not-so-pleasant variety; I've been so busy in survival mode that I haven't had what's left of my brain steeping in thoughts of permaculture, my bad and more's the pity. I was actually gobsmacked to be asked to do this at all and don't want to let down the team.

AtDhVaAnNkCsE,
Laura

Maybe this is an example of the problem is the solution or the answer is in the question. At any rate, asking for help seems to have greased the gears a bit and this just popped into my head:

Permaculture is a design system that’s scalable and resilient because its action is rooted in the observation of nature. It can be learned by anyone and applied to anything.

I was going to try and fit in a bit about imagination being the only limiting factor, but then... didn't.

Still eager for suggestions/comments!

Hi Laura, good luck with the workshop. i like your summary - I seem to remember liking the idea of Permaculture cutting down the work of gardening....
You might find the elevator speech thread of use.

Thank you Nancy! Ima head over there now and see if anything helps me tweak my response in a good way before I send it off tonight.

The other angle is historical -- many of the techniques described in traditional homesteading and permaculture reflect the way people farmed and grew their own food for centuries. And they did! And it worked!

Your great-great grandparents knew this, and did this, and the fact that you're here is pretty good evidence that it's effective.

The newfangled "modern" chemical approach, not really widespread until post-WWII, is not the only way to do things.

The old ways were proven effective, and they didn't rely on supply chains that stretched across the globe. I mean, we know that supply chains never fail, right?

Resilience means having options!

Good points here, Douglas - thank you!
Observations I believe will appeal to the folks I expect at the workshop.