Learn new skills, then share them
Part 9: Ten things to take into 2025
Welcome to this 10-part series on 10 things to take into 2025.
Here are the previous parts:
Part 1: Digital tools over digital drugs (Alt: Go at human pace)
Part 2: Go deeper
Part 3: Build your bucket-line community (Alt: Mutual aid for life.)
Part 4: Slow travel
Part 5: Dance on the abundant edge (Alt: Be the weird one)
Part 6: Get to work in the non-monetary economy
Part 7: An ode to the public library
Part 8: Ripples make a positive difference (even introverts can do it)
What are you taking into 2025? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to know.
Thing #9: Learn new skills, then share them
Before we dig into sharing skills, I wanted to let you know that I just put a downloadable and printable Visible Mending Pocket Guide for weave mending up on my shop - a small way for me to share my mending skills with you.
It’s adorable and handy. Head here to check it out.
So, I’ve just returned from our 5th twice-annual Permaculture Skillshare Weekend feeling nourished and skilled-up.
We organise a gathering in spring and autumn each year to bring around 20 permies, plus a ragtag bunch of kids, together to share skills and incredible food over 3 days.
The event was born out of a need to create a community, cross-pollinate skills we’ve been learning, and create space for play, rest, and side conversations that are always inspiring.
Folks come from all kinds of backgrounds and share in all kinds of ways. Some share in a classroom format, sometimes it’s a group discussion in a circle outside, sometimes we’re learning something hands-on, and sometimes we tour someone’s incredible garden learning about their clever systems.
Over the past 2 or so years, we’ve shared:
A couple of permaculture design activities
2 community building ideas
Small business case study using Permaculture principles
Social Permaculture: Midwifing the New Systems
How to build a solar dehydrator
How to find acuate contours online
Intro to Syntropic Agriculture
Visible mending
Yoga + movement
Appropriate tech (off-grid plumbing)
How to make sourdough
Community Based Income
How to choose appropriate plants for a bush regen project
A Permablitz
How to break down a pallet
Using Excel to organise plant lists for stacking functions
Permaculture earthworks
Intro to Holistic Decision Making
Guided mindfulness meditation
Bicycle maintenance
Discussion on community building
Business and marketing through a permaculture lens
Carving wood animals out of sticks
Gardening for native birds
Darning holes in socks
Discussion on contemplating future adaption
Systems thinking in permaculture
Intro to Design Web
How to build a worm farm from reclaimed materials
Slide show of photos from permaculture tour of Aotearoa, New Zealand
How to make soil blocks
Designing a syntropic installation
How to carve a spoon
Fruit bottling workshop
How to DIY a bokashi bin system
Sound bath
How to build an air-pruned box for tree propagation
A biochar kiln burn
Crochet tutorial
Lino printing workshop
8x permaculture garden tours
All this from a bunch of people who frequently say… “I don’t think I have a skill to share.”
There’s another group I’ve found myself in that comes together in a more ad hoc way to share crafting skills, cups of tea, and cake.
It’s delightful (see image above).
It’s easy to organise with a group email. We’ve got more ideas than available dates, and recently, we went away on a summer crafting retreat to a beach shack. Which was THE. BEST.
Real skills are important. So is coming together to connect. So, gathering to share skills is the perfect way to combine the two.
When I (occasionally) listen to big heavy podcasts** about the state of the world, almost 100% of the time, the take-home message at the end of the podcast is one of two things, or both:
Create strong, resilient communities
Learn real skills, both hard and soft ones.
Hard skills are ones we do with our bodies, like splitting firewood or fixing a bike. Soft skills are less tangible, they are things like group facilitation or healthy communication.
Our current culture seems to want us to be specialists. We’re encouraged to go to full-time work and be really good at one thing. We’re supposed to give that one thing all our resources, then only have the capacity to eat processed food in front of the television outside of work.
This doesn’t seem like a very fun or a resilient way to live.
We need to be skilled up and connected with each other for the future we’re all heading towards. Working on those two things makes me feel hopeful about what’s coming next.
I highly recommend having a coragous conversation with a friend or a couple of mates about the idea of coming together to share skills, learn together, have excellent conversations and good food.
Through helping to organise the Permaculture Skillshare Weekends, I’ve noticed that people often say they don’t have any skills to teach. But what I’ve learned is that you don’t have to be a 10,000-hour expert on something to teach it, you just have to be a little further along the path than the people you teach. Inevitably, they will create a welcoming and supportive environment for you, where you all learn from each other along the way.
**Big heavy podcasts I’ve been into lately: Upstream, The Great Simplification, Team Human, and The Blindboy Podcast. Two words of warning: listen only when feeling robust, and these podcasts are mostly made by middle-aged white men, just so you know.
Learning new skills (like bee-keeping) and teaching the ones I’m a little bit further along the path with (like visible mending and community building) is something I’ll be doing in 2025.
What about you? Are you hoping to learn any fun new skills this year?
This whole series is becoming an interconnected web. I mentioned learning new skills in the Go Deeper edition and community building in the Build your bucket-line community newsletter. Everything is connected.
Thanks so much for reading this installment of Ten things to take into 2025.
Keep an eye out for the last edition in this series coming to your inbox next week.
This series is a homage to Catie Payne’s awesome Reskillience podcast's '10 Things’ series, in which her guests gather a list of 10 things to inspire a more resilient, skillful future.
Over 10 weeks, I’m jotting down 10 things (habits, ideas, mindset shifts, and gentle reminders) I’m taking into 2025, which is allowing me to sprinkle in all the juicy changes happening for me this year too.
I'll be sad when this series ends, i've really enjoyed reading your practical applications.
I was one of those people as I was reading about your skill share gatherings, I'd love to be part of a group like that, but "I don't have any skills to share".
I am impressed with the series Nat and even more impressed with the list of skills shared over 2 years. I love the proactive approach you have - so focused. It's wonderful.