New permaculture magazine publisher visits the Eastern Suburbs
…by Russ Grayson
CHECKING OUT the PIG (Permaculture Interpretive Garden) and the Barrett House community sustainability hub in Randwick this week was publisher, Robyn Rosenfeldt.
Robyn was shown around the sites, which are Randwick City Council initiatives, by council sustainability educator, Fiona Campbell, and by the author of this article. At the PIG she met council’s sustainability unit manager, Peter Maganov, and staffers Helen Morrison and Natalia.
BOLD NEW VENTURE
Robyn, a softly spoken women who totes a serious and chunky Canon 5D camera, is a Pambula resident on NSW’s South Coast. There, she edited the Bega Valley magazine, Sustain, which promoted local community initiatives and businesses. Sustain gained wide circulation in the region and was important in stimulating the idea of sustaining the local economy.
Her new venture is called ‘Pip’ and it will be an Australian permaculture magazine published both in print and digitally.
Permaculture, for those who don’t know, is a design system for sustainable living that is based on design thinking and is practiced in many different ways. It includes food systems, energy and water efficient housing and the creation of communities through mutual assistance. Permaculture is an Australian invention that went global, the product of Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.
“Pip will be the magazine for the Australian permaculture community”, said Robyn.
“It will be a venue that connects people where they can share ideas and knowledge and it will report the many innovative permaculture projects around the country.
“Through the pages of Pip, readers will be able to bring permaculture into their lives with how-to guides and a directory of permaculture-related business and courses”.
The national permaculture scene has been without a magazine since mid-2000, when the long-running Permaculture International Journal ceased publication, having been faced with substantial cost increases that it could not sustain. Some of its roles were subsumed by permaculture websites and social media, however an effect of these has been to fracture permaculture information across the infosphere. While the days of a single, centralised, authoritative source of permaculture information have gone, Pip has the potential to gather in one place the most important information affecting permaculture practitioners.
The first edition of Pip comes out around March next year.
More…
Pip: www.pipmagazine.com.au
Permaculture Interpretive Garden and Randwick Sustainability Hub:
27 Munda Street, Randwick, NSW
Barrett House community sustainability hub:
6 Barrett Pace, Randwick, NSW (on Frenchmans Road corner).
Visit http://www.reduceyourfootprint.com.au for more information.