Who we are

We are a group of permaculture growers, designers, builders, artists and educators that are inspired by the work of Permablitz in Melbourne and City Repair in Portland, Oregon.

Permablitz (noun): An informal gathering involving a day on which a group of at least two people come together to achieve the following:
  • create or add to edible gardens where someone lives
  • share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living
  • build community networks
  • have fun

Core Team:

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Lisa DePiano is a certified permaculture designer/teacher and writer with over 15 years of experience.  She has designed and built prominent permaculture projects including the Montview Neighborhood Farm, one of the first public urban-farm and edible forest gardens in the country,  the greywater system for Occupy Wall Street and her work with the worker-owned collective Pedal People is  featured in the award winning documentary, Inhabit. Currently she is a faculty member for the Yestermorrow Design/Build School, the University of Massachusetts and a visiting scholar at the MIT media lab. She discovered permaculture while living with the Maya in Guatemala and was immediately drawn to its systems and solutions-based approach. She has studied permaculture with Starhawk, Penny Livingston Stark, and Dave Jacke and has taught thousands of students all over the world, including the Menominee Nation,  Haiti, Homer, AK, New York City, Miami, FL the University of Vermont, University of Massachusetts, and Wesleyan University.

Past

Eli Roberts comes to Mobile Design Lab through the Allegheny Mountain School fellowship program in Highland County, Virginia, which includes a six-month residential training in sustainable ag skills, and a yearlong organizational partnership. He has raised chickens, vegetables, gourmet mushrooms, and billions of soil microbes since 2009, and is beginning to explore home-scale aquaponics. Before discovering integrated land management and design, Eli taught first- and third grade, created a year-long independent study curriculum about education policy, and organized meetings for new teachers to discuss race, class, and power in the context of education in New Orleans. He has an always-relevant B.A. in Psychology from Villanova University, but learned almost as much at the 2012 Carbon Farming Course. He has roots in New Hartford, CT and New York, NY. He’s excited about researching useful orchard understories, collaborative design processes, serious chicken fodder systems, and designing for continuous nectar availability.

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Costa Boutsikaris grew up in the Hudson River Valley of New York. His studies in visual arts coupled with a deep fascination in permaculture / ecological design has led him to focus on sharing these insights through digital media. Studying permaculture and filming ecological farming systems has brought him all over the Northeast/Midwest and down to the Central America. He is currently in the final stages of documentary focused on Permaculture design solutions called “Inhabit” (www.InhabitFilm.com). He landed in the Pioneer valley last Fall to study intensive homesteading surthival skills and complete his documentary project.

Corrin Meise-Munns is a farm-based educator and naturalist. With a background in cultural history, Corrin is interested in place-making, gardening with heritage and heirloom crops, and preserving traditional skills and regional foodways. She is the founder and organizer of Valley Food Swap, a no-cash barter-style market for sharing homegrown, homemade, and foraged foods in the Pioneer Valley. An avid home and community gardener, she completed her permaculture design certification with Permaculture FEAST in 2013, and is excited to develop her design skills with Mobile Design Lab.

 

One thought on “Who we are

  1. I’m writing to you today on behalf of the Holyoke Award Program. We’re the organization that puts on the annual “Best of Holyoke Award”, and I’m pleased to inform you that your company has been selected as the winner in the category of Association or Organization.

    I know we’ve tried to reach you a few times before, but we’ve finally been able to get in touch with you through your website contact form. We wanted to make sure you were aware of this exciting news as soon as possible.

    We’ve included a link to our website below that more fully describes your recognition. We hope you’ll look at it and share it with your staff.

    https://holyoke.businessesregional.com/SCU54RPV

    Congratulations again on this well-deserved honor!

    Sincerely,

    Aiden

    https://holyoke.businessesregional.com/scu54rpv_MOBILEDESIGNLAB

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