About the European Permaculture Network

The European Permaculture Network (EuPN) is intended to be a wide network of national and regional organisations, projects and individuals - who from time to time come together to exchange knowledge and experience. We are referring to Europe as a geographical entity rather than the European Union.

History

The European Permaculture Institute was originally based in Steyerberg, Germany and managed by Declan Kennedy. In 1996 it moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, to the office of Tony Andersen. In 2006 the Institute was converted into The Permaculture Council for Europe.

Since 1992, the Permaculture Council has organized 12 European Permaculture Convergences. Meetings of the council have also happened in between these convergences.
While the council tried to implement democratic procedures of voting for the members of the council, its main work in recent years focused on finding the hosts of the next European Permaculture Convergence (EuPC). There has always been a long “wish list” for what the council could / should be doing but it never had the resources to get this going.
At the EuPC 2012 in Germany, a large group of people stepped forward as council members – out of which only a very small number of people actually kept the work going.
During the EuPC in Bulgaria in July 2014, several meetings of council members and other interested people were held to start a process and create a first draft of a „Vision, Mission and Aims“-statement for permaculture in Europe.
From this, 11 people stepped up to move this statement forward to prepare a strategy for a European Permaculture Network (EuPN) and to create a proposal to go out for review to the existing permaculture organisations in Europe
2015 At the IPC London the up to date version of Vision Mission Aims was discussed tweaked and agreed on in an Sociocratic process. (see Video below)
2016 At the EuPC in Bolsena the first General Meetings with Real Live and Online Participants was kicking of the Work of The EuPN