Adam Brock - Invisible Structures

There we talked about Community Developed Finance, here Adam and I speak more broadly about Invisible Structures and his emerging Invisible Structures Pattern Language. This invisible structure theme began when I first spoke with Adam and I've wanted to follow up on it for some time. What we are capable of as individuals is multiplied when we come together. Many hands make light work whether designing a landscape, working out the details of an alternative economic system, or building community. In Permaculture, there's plenty of work on backyard permaculture, and as Rafter Sass Ferguson's study shows the work on broad scale is growing. To take these ideas further, we now need to move from the physical and start on the small scale invisible structures: our friends and neighbors. And then our community.

You want to review his online presentation here: Adam Brock's Invisible Structure Pattern Language Take your time to look it over. If you have thoughts on what to the pattern language, leave a comment and help Adam grow this body of knowledge he's working on.

I think these pattern languages, in the long term, serve as one of the best ways to take the vast body of information we have available as permaculture practitioners, and break them down into something we can carry with us. Though the descriptors that go with each piece of the language may take several paragraphs, or pages, to explain in detail, the title of the pattern is short. You can take all titles from the patterns in Peter Bane's A Permaculture Handbook, which is excellent by the way, and write them down on the front and back of a single sheet of paper. The same can be said for the edible forest garden pattern language in Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier. Take those two, add in Alexander's plus Mr. Brock's, and you have a very powerful reference, that extends the ethics and principles of permaculture. This toolkit allows us to facilitate designing larger, more varied systems, all in a format that fits in a pocket.

Inspirations for Adam's Pattern Language:
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sarah Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein.
Debt the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier
The Empowerment Manual by Starhawk
People and Permaculture by Looby MacNamara
The Permaculture Handbook by Peter Bane
Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein

Resources:
The GrowHaus
Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman