About Us
Helygen was created to support practical, accessible ecological education in Swansea, Carmarthenshire, and across Cymru, helping people build the skills and confidence needed to design for a regenerative future.
Paul Jennings
Paul is a long‑standing Permaculture designer, teacher and practitioner with more than thirty years’ experience across community projects, ecological design and food growing.
Director
Luke Peake
Luke is a PDC graduate, an innovative designer, organic grower and community activist whose work is rooted in creativity, collaboration and hands-on learning.
DirectorOur Approach to Permaculture Training:
Helygen’s approach to teaching Permaculture is inspired by a three-fold vision which closely matches the Permaculture Ethics: Fair Shares, People Care and Earth Care.
Affordable.
Too many people feel priced out of Permaculture. If we really believe that the skills we are teaching are crucial, and indeed will prove central to resilient responses to the ecological and social crises, then we must make them as accessible as possible. The individuals and communities currently least able to afford most training courses are arguably those most in need of Permaculture skills - Permaculture educators and practitioners need to do better if we are going to speak outside the usual circles.
No-one will be excluded from our courses on the basis of cost.
Practically Focused.
Over several decades, a huge body of Permaculture practice and knowledge has come into being and learners can be daunted or overwhelmed by all of the information. At Helygen we are moving towards a practically focused model, giving our course participants as much hands-on experience as possible from the start of their Permaculture journey. We minimise lectures and the pressure to retain lists of examples and theories. Instead we ask our learners to use the powerful tools at the heart of Permaculture to make their own discoveries, and encourage observation and interaction from the start. Permaculture Earth Care is built from practice.
Our courses won’t rely on bombarding participants with information, but on encouraging design thinking from the very start.
Creating Practitioners.
Many people who go on Permaculture courses find it difficult to take the next step and to become confident practitioners and designers themselves. Helygen will develop its training methods to produce not just people familiar with Permaculture as a set of ideas, but ready and enthusiastic to go out into the world and put what they have learned into practice. Practitioners become designers and then teachers, not just focusing on their own projects, but helping to ignite the wildfire we need to carry Permaculture into every community.
Every one of our courses will create activists and we will create the future community teachers of Permaculture.