Guest Instructors
K. Ruby Blume
K.Ruby Blume is an educator, author, gardener, beekeeper, artist and activist, with 20+ years experience gardening in an urban setting. Ruby holds certificates in permaculture design, massage and coaching and has studied botany, pollination ecology, and herbal medicine. She has extensive experience in the arts and is known for her work as founder and artistic director of the art for justice project, Wise Fool Puppet Intervention. In 2008 she founded The Institute of Urban Homesteading, to teach adults urban agriculture and heirloom kitchen skills. She co-authored the book Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living with Rachel Kaplan, authored Everyday Cheesemaking and has been featured in a wide range of periodicals including Urban Farm Magazine, Mother Earth News and Bee Culture Magazine. You can find her at www.rogueruby.com and www.iuhoakland.com.
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Kat SteeleKat Steele is a permaculture activist, designer, educator and founder of the Urban Permaculture Guild in Oakland, CA. She facilitates workshops on ecological design, sustainability, facilitation, permaculture and holistic healing. Kat speaks publicly about eco-social design, city repair, social permaculture and the power of placemaking. She has played a leadership role in developing women's permaculture gatherings and support circles.
Trained in Ecovillage Design with the Findhorn Foundation of Scotland, Natural Building with Kleiwerks International, and Permaculture Design with the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, she also holds an MA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University. She is the former Sustainable Development Manager for the Esalen Institute in Big Sur California and now resides in Oakland, California where she co-teaches Permaculture Design in the Landscape Horticulture Department of Merritt Community College. She is recently engaged in counseling and coaching via the Interchange Counseling Institute and continues to be devoted to promoting inclusivity, localization, personal and community resiliency, believing these to be key strategies towards sustainability and "thrive-ability". Reach her at [email protected]. |
Kelsi Anderson
Kelsi Anderson is an ecological artist, land steward, and earth dancer. Her work focuses on creating regenerative health and dynamic relationships between the earth, people, and community. Her medium is the earth and through art making, nature connection, and movement, Kelsi offers opportunities for people to awaken, engage, and strengthen their enlivened sense of selves in their interior and exterior landscapes. She works with site soils and earth pigments to create paintings, murals, prints, and sculptures. She also works in earthen clay plaster, cob, and other natural building materials. She offers earth art workshops, has artwork for sale and commission, and can be reached at www.kelsianderson.com.
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Christina BerteaChristina studied social psychology many decades ago and has worked to shift the culture toward more just and sustainable practices ever since. In search of a trade, she became the first woman in California admitted to a four-year plumbing union apprenticeship. As a contractor, she plumbed many “green” straw-bale and rammed earth residences and in 2007 joined the Greywater Guerrillas, now Greywater Action. She teaches hands-on greywater and rainwater installation workshops, professional installer trainings, and directly installs systems. She currently hopes we humans will gracefully re-enter the nutrient cycle, offering what passes through our bodies back to the earth in the highest form possible: thermophilically composted poop. She works as an artist in mediums from glass to carved stone, exploring how art itself can serve as a change agent and how artists can present sustainability as irresistibly imaginative and fun. Her way is by creating playful functional art that enhances awareness about water: whimsical rainwater catchment sculptures; dramatic urine diverting toilet seats; children’s play equipment that pump water. http://weadartists.org/artist/christina-bertea, http://greywateraction.org
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Pandora ThomasPandora Thomas is a passionate global citizen who works as a teacher, designer, writer and speaker. Her work is rooted in a desire to reconnect humans to our ancestral legacies of earth care, by bringing people together in natural settings and fostering community resilience and healing. She is a certified green building consultant, credentialed multiple subjects’ teacher and studied at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs, Teachers College, and Tufts University. Her writing includes a children’s book, various curricula and a greenbuilding manual for youth. She is a sought after speaker on several topics ranging from permaculture design, diversity, social justice, women and youth leadership, and sustainability.
She has worked with groups as diverse as Iraqi and Indonesian youth to men serving in San Quentin creating inspiring and hands on programs around biomimicry, sustainability, and outdoor and environmental education. Pandora co-founded Earthseed Consulting LLC, a holistic consulting firm whose work expands the opportunities for sustainable living for diverse communities. Her most recent projects include co-founding the Black Permaculture Network, working with Toyota to design and currently serving as a coalition member of the Toyota Green Initiative, which supports African Americans in understanding the benefits of adopting sustainable lifestyles and co-designing, teaching with and directing Pathways to Resilience-a permaculture and social entrepreneur training program that worked with men and women returning home after incarceration. She has studied four languages and lived and worked in over twelve countries and her other achievements include presenting at Tedx Denver and SF, and being awarded fellowships to Columbia University, Green For All and the Applied Research Center. |