The Hollies has established a growing reputation for running courses on many aspects of practical sustainability. Since 2000 we have run training courses about such diverse topics as Permaculture Design (with David Holmgren, Rob Hopkins and others). Woodland Management (Ben Law), Natural Building (Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley, Rob Hopkins, Thomas and Ulrike Riedmuller), Consensus Decision Making (Beatrice Briggs) and Conflict Resolution (Thomas Riedmuller).
One of our first courses was a workshop called ‘Building with Heart - the art of designing a house with the landscape rather than against it’, led by internationally renowned architect and author of ‘Places of the Soul’ Christopher Day. The course looked at a method Chris developed for looking at and understanding a site and how then the site design arises from that, rather than being imposed on the site. This was the start of the design process for the new houses at The Hollies.
In 2003 we started building 2 cob houses. We had a course to start each stage of the building process. For the foundations with stone and lime we had Neill May from the UK. For the cobbing phase, Kevin Mc Cabe from Devon introduced us to mixing large quantities of cob with a wheel digger. In 2004, 05, 06 and 07 we had Ianto Evans from Oregon, US, master builder in the foot mixing and hand-sculpting method. With him we also built a clay baking oven in a creative outdoor seating area and a tool shed as well as a rocket stove.
Another highlight in 2005 was Permaculture pioneer David Holmgren who came from Australia to teach an advanced Permaculture Design course. Another milestone in 2005 was our 2-day conference ‘Fuelling the Future’ in Kinsale about creative community responses to the coming energy crisis.