In November 2001 I had the opportunity to attend a two day Design Support Tutor training event in Bradninch, Devon & so I went along. Although the ideal is for Design Support Tutorials to held by Diplomats, the situation within the network was such that the training was available to those still on the Diploma pathway. As it turned out, I was not the only non-Diplomat, although as I now know that at least two have graduated since, I now may be! The event was run by Andy Langford, with Carolyn Hall in support & there were about eight of us attending.

 It was very interesting looking at the Diploma process from the tutor's point of view & it certainly helped me to understand more of what was expected of me as a student still on my pathway. Having become quite familiar with Action Learning Sets, I was integrated into the teaching somehow after lunch on day one, but I honestly can't remember exactly what it was that I did! The usual creative teaching methods were in attendance, bringing fun into the learning; a group I was in did some kind of crazy miming of tutorial elements & we also did a mock Design Support Tutorial as part of the process. All in all I found it a very valuable weekend & also came away having made some new friends. The only disappointment for me was the fact that nothing happened afterwards in terms of developing the tutorial network further until over a year later.

 Eighteen months later in June 2003, I was also fortunate enough to be able to attend the European Diploma WorkNet development event, held at Braziers Park in Oxfordshire. Andy Langford & Angus Soutar were the event leaders. This ran over the best part of a week, but I didn't arrive until the second day, having already become pretty familiar with Action Learning Sets - the subject of day one. This time, as the course name suggests, over half of the participants (this time there was 21 of us) were from abroad; Germany, Italy, Spain & Portugal. I was almost embarrassed at the ease with which some of the participants conversed with us in English & I pondered how I would manage trying to do so in another language. The venue was really good & the weather was mostly sunny, allowing us to spend a lot of our sessions out of doors. As part of the event, Looby MacNamara did her accreditation, to provide an example of how we do it in the UK. Being in her peer group stirred me into re-designing my own accreditation & my portfolio.

 Going back over the elements that were covered eighteen months previously was really good revision for me & I came away feeling much more confident about doing tutorials. There were a few changes too, always good to keep up with those.... among them, ALSs have become ALGs it seems, but I've already used the former name in a lot of places in this portfolio, so I'm sticking with that for now! The day dedicated to brainstorming a structure for the European WorkNet seemed to be very productive & I enjoyed getting a European perspective on things (did you know that the German Permaculture Association is as old as ours in the UK?). I also had the chance to see some great slides of permaculture projects in Germany & Tibet. As with all these events I came away feeling much the richer for having been there & I send thanks as always to my fellow participants without whom it wouldn't have happened. Oh yes! & I was given a water chestnut, which is now growing happily in my pond (fingers crossed for the winter though!).