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About

Shift Bristol CIC is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company. We provide affordable and accessible training to people wanting to create positive change in their lives and communities. Our style of education emphasizes empowerment and connection and students learn not only how to understand and do useful things but also how to collaborate effectively to take action.

Directorship

Creative Director

Laura Corfield

Since 2004 Laura has volunteered with a host of community engagement and sustainability groups; including co-founding Transition Keynsham, Frack Free Somerset and participating in Climate Action camps and demonstrations. In 2010 she co-founded Shift Bristol with Sarah Pugh and went on to project manage the Practical Sustainability Course, until starting her family and moving to Frome in 2013. In 2020 Laura returned to Shift Bristol to help navigate the changing goal posts of the Coronavirus pandemic.

She is passionate about self-empowerment and the power of network collaboration and is driven to further the positive influence and impact of Shift Bristol's activities on the local community and beyond. In 2022 she bittersweetly took up the Creative Director gauntlet from Sarah Pugh.

Director

Bryher Bloor

Bryher worked as project manager of the Practical Sustainability Course from 2017-2021; fresh from co-ordinating volunteers for the Permaculture Association International Convergence and several years working with forest schools. She has since worked as a Campaign Manager for Green Party during its 2021 election campaign and is now an Outreach Coordinator for the Landworkers Alliance's 'Future Farming Resilience' project. Through collaboration and connections fused during Shift Bristol roundhouse builds, Bryher co-founded ShelterCraft with a team of experienced builders, teachers, organisers and facilitators in 2022.

Director

Alex Reuer

Alex worked as project manager of the Practical Sustainability Course from 2019-2022; after completing the PSC as a student. Alex works as a human rights translator and interpreter for Amnesty International. She is also a board member of Sims Hill Harvest Community Supported Agriculture project, and a resident member of the Merry Hill Self-Build Housing Development. She continues her life-long joy of learning through applying permaculture principles to her allotment and love of foraging.

The Practical Sustainability Course

Permaculture Design / Soil & Ecology - Lead tutor

Matt Dunwell

After owning & running Ragmans Lane Farm since 1990, Matt Dunwell has gifted the farm to the Ecological Land Co-operative, and is now starting a new chapter and return to teaching. Matt and Ragmans Lane Farm have has hosted numerous courses over the last eighteen years for teachers such as Bill Mollison, Mike Feingold, Chris Evans, Andy Langford and Jude and Michel Fanton from Australia, Starhawk and Penny Livingston- Stark. Jairo Restrepo and Juanfran lopez have helped introduce biofertilisers to Ragmans which are now used on the farm to build system health. He has farmed livestock (cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry), vegetables, mushroom production and apple juicing. He co-authored the first Local Food Directory in 1997. He has been a Trustee of the Tudor Trust for 25 years. He is currently exploring regenerative agriculture methods.

Group Dynamics / Bristol Commoning - Lead tutor

Danny Balla

Danny is a creative facilitator dedicated to ecological justice, community empowerment and facilitating systemic change. He explores human relationships with the world and each other through a combination of activism, participatory arts projects and community building, and has supported many organisations as a professional facilitator and trainer. His background is in immersive theatre, storytelling and film, and he is passionate about inclusive, experiential tools for participatory democracy.

Based in Bristol, Danny is a dedicated Shifty and has been part of the Shift Facilitation Team for over 5 years. He is also a Director of Coexist, through which he is launching a project called The Bristol Commons - a community-building initiative bringing people from diverse groups into dialogue together through a cultural programme of events and community conversations around Rebuilding the Commons. He is also a founder of arts-activism collective CoResist, and a contributor on organisational change programmes such as Craigberoch’s Decelerator Lab and a Programme Lead and Trainer at the transformative youth organisation LIFEbeat.

Regenerative Toolkit / Ecological Citizenship - Lead Tutor

Deborah Benham

For the last 25 years I've been exploring, through various pathways, how humanity can become ecological citizens - positively contributing to our places and ecosystems, living within planetary boundaries, and helping to create a thriving future for humanity and the wider living world. I started out as a marine mammal biologist and wildlife guide, then becoming a sustainability trainer, deep nature connection practitioner and working within the Transition towns movement to support community led climate resilience. Most recently I’ve been diving into the wonderful world of biomimicry - becoming a systems level Biomimicry educator, supporting people and groups to reconnect with, learn from and emulate nature's patterns and principles.

Course Facilitator

Kizzie Fitzwilliams

Kizzie's background is largely in freelance gardening on a domestic scale, and also growing organically and biodynamically on a commercial scale, here in Bristol, in Herefordshire and in Brighton, where she lived as a student. In 2018 Kizzie became a 'Shifty 9-er' as a student on the Practical Sustainability Course. In 2020 she left Bristol and slowly moved north into the mountains of Snowdonia - gardening, foraging, printmaking, swimming up currents - but after a colossal bike adventure along the coasts of Southern Europe, early in 2022, she has returned to Bristol to set down roots and become co-facilitator of the Practical Sustainability Course - She rocks!

Tutors & Practitioners

The Practical Sustainability Course is delivered by an ever-evolving cracking team of over 40 tutors and practitioners. Who bring with them their passion, expertise, knowledge and pioneering spirit. All tutors apply their knowledge on the ground, so their information is fresh, dynamic and adaptive. They believe in working collaboratively and with and/or for meeting the needs of communities. We visit many of them in their natural environment, so we get to see the successes, challenges and results of their work as we tour their projects.

The Permaculture Design Courses are taught by Permaculture Tutor Tammi Dallaston and Facilitator Rosie Fieldhouse.

Permaculture Design Courses

Permaculture Design Course Tutor

Tammi Dallaston

Tammi is multitalented, dedicated, Permaculture practitioner. Alongside her teaching, she is;

  • A Permaculture Association (Britain) trustee; leading a working group on Disability, Accessibility, Inclusion and Equity (DAIE).
  • Manager of Field Families (permaculture at events) - which includes the coordination of Glastonbury Festival Permaculture Gardens and permaculture areas at the Green Gathering and Northern Green Gathering. Lead within Dyfi Permaculture - a local voluntary group that meets each month.
  • Working for Cambrian Wildwood, a rewilding charity in Wales; Cefn Coch Farm, an agroforestry farm; and CiP - Children in Permaculture.
    Director of     Mach Maethlon - a co-op encouraging local food projects in the Dyfi Valley, Wales.
    Founder member of Permaculture Wales (Paramaethu Cymru). Director of Mach Maethlon. Now managing the inception of a community woodland project - Teulu'r Goedwig - near Machynlleth, and Planna Fwyd! community food resilience project.
    One of the founder members of Brighton Permaculture Trust. Former manager of Ragman's Lane Farm. Ex-Chair and trustee of Moulsecoomb Forest Garden Wildlife Project.

Permaculture Design Course Facilitator

Rosie Fieldhouse

  • Rosie has recently completed Shift Bristol's Practical Sustainability Course and feels she has seen "the value and power in small acts with a community as a way of building hope and resilience".
  • She's a craftsperson and maker, specialising in natural building and traditional heritage crafts and runs workshops for children and adults. She also works as a play worker around Bristol and is curious about how play can be a fundamental way of learning about the world and our surroundings. She often combines play with craft to show people that these traditional crafts aren't just fossils from the past, but sparks for the future to ignite new ideas and engagement.
  • The Practical Sustainability Course opened up a number of doors including becoming a co-founder of a new community composting scheme; Bristol Living Soil, with Shift Bristol tutor Danny Balla.
  • Facilitating courses in a new opportunity to apply Rosie's natural aptitude for supporting groups of people to learn in a relaxed and inclusive environment, and she is looking forward to helping others on the journey that she herself has travelled

Our Roots

Sarah Pugh 1971-2022 : Visionary & Founder

Shift Bristol was visioned and co-founded by Sarah Pugh in 2010. The Practical Sustainability Course is a progression of the annual Permaculture Design Courses Sarah delivered in Bristol and around the UK from 2004.

Sarah Pugh lived and worked in Bristol from 1997, starting out as a community gardener, fundraiser and activist. She founded the Bristol Permaculture Group - an active network of over 2,000 people practising sustainable growing and living in the city, and in 2007 set up the first Transition City; Transition Bristol.

She developed her love of teaching permaculture through facilitating Patrick Whitefield's Sustainable Land Use course and Mike Feingold's Permaculture Design course. Sarah then went on to lead her own style of Permaculture Design courses, which emphasised working together to develop productive, resilient and abundant urban landscapes and communities. She was a hardworking single mum to her boy, Albie and until 2020 she was the Lead Tutor and Creative Director of the Practical Sustainability Course.

Very sadly and far too soon Sarah passed away in 2022, after a two year journey with brain cancer. Her infectious enthusiasm, proactive no-nonsense approach, and vision for collaborative action live on through the network of the thousands of lives she touched.

Hear Sarah talk here;

Seasonal Board of Advisors