Mark Your Calendar for the next

NORTHERN

SUSTAINABILITY SYMPOSIUM

May 1-4, 2014
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See our 2013 Sustainability photo album

NORTHERN  SUSTAINABILITY  SYMPOSIUM:

EVERYDAY SOLUTIONS
May 3-5, 2013

How do I fix this hole in my sock? I wish I knew how to sharpen my own knives. There has to be a less toxic way to clean my house. Hmm…bulgur…how do I cook that? I wish I knew how to build things. Are these the thoughts in your head? Then the Northern Sustainability Symposium is the event for you.

The story of sustainability in our changing world is more than a macro-scale question. Many of the changes ahead will be made by individuals, learning to repair and repurpose, simplify and reclaim the everyday skills of self-reliance from the not-so-distant past. The 2013 Northern Sustainability Symposium will focus on the do-it-yourself skills that are integral to sustainable future.

EVENT  HIGHLIGHTS
Click here for the complete
Event Overview (pdf)

Lunch & Learns
Featured Speakers Friday and Saturday
Film Screening: In Transition 2.0 - Sustainability Courses
Hoop House Tour - Community Pizza Bake

FEATURED SPEAKER
FRIDAY - MN Energy Future: Renewable Energy, Efficiency & Local Opportunities May 3 at 7:00 pm
with Erin Ruccolo of Fresh Energy
Though Minnesota has enough wind and solar potential to meet its electricity needs several times over, most of our electricity is generated by fuels that must be imported into the state. We can do better! Hear what’s happening at the Capitol to bring renewable energy to everyone in Minnesota.

SATURDAY - Featured Presentation "Living with Collapse" 7:30 pm
We welcome featured speaker Dmitry Orlov, the author of the award-winning book Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects and of the forthcoming The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors' Toolkit. Born in Russia, he moved to the US while a teenager, and has traveled back repeatedly to observe the Soviet collapse during the late eighties and mid-nineties. He is an engineer who has worked in many fields, including high-energy Physics research, e-commerce and Internet security. For the past five years he has been experimenting with off-grid living and renewable energy by giving up the house and the car. Instead, he has been living on a sailboat, sailing it up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and commuting by bicycle. Dmitry believes that, given appropriate technology, we can greatly reduce personal resource consumption while remaining perfectly civilized.
 

SYMPOSIUM COURSES

Pre-Event Courses
- Ovencrafting: the Wood-Fired Brick Bread Oven - 4.5 days

Starting May 3
- Clean-it-Yourself: Making Sustainable Soaps- 1/2 day
- Can-it-Yourself: Introduction to Canning - 1/2 day
- Sailing Away from Fossil Fuels with Dmitry Orlov - 1/2 day

Starting May 4
- Green Medicines - 1 day
- Cooking Creatively from a Well-Stocked Pantry - 1/2 day
- Fix-it-Yourself: Mending with Wool - 1/2 day
- Root Cellars: Exploring Use & Design - 1/2 day
- Building Communities that Last with Dmitry Orlov - 1/2 day
- Sharpen-it-Yourself: Knife & Tool Sharpening Basics - 1/2 day

Starting May 5
- What’s on the Menu - 1/2 day
- Boreal Building Basics & Grid-Tied Solar Systems - 1/2 day
- Hoop Hoop Hooray: Greenhouse, Hoop-house & Season Extender Tour  - 1/4 day