5th Annual Eco Hero Awards honoring Natural Building Pioneers 2025

Name: 5th Annual Eco Hero Awards honoring Natural Building Pioneers 2025
Start: 2025-03-23T18:30:00-07:00
End: 2025-03-23T21:00:00-07:00
Location: Lobero Theatre

Schedule

Sun Mar 23 2025 at 06:30 pm to 09:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Lobero Theatre | Santa Barbara, CA

This year's Santa Barbara Permaculture Network 5th Eco Hero Award recipients are Natural Building pioneers Bill & Athena Steen of the Canelo Project, and Roxanne Swentzell of the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute.
Sunday, March 23, 6:30-9pm, 2025
TICKETS $10, $20, & Friends of Eco Hero $100 (students & kids free)
Location: Lobero Theatre
33 E Canon Perdido St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101

Tickets on Sale Now: Lobero Ticket Office

Reception follows in the Lobero Courtyard for all ticket holders

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network celebrates its 5th Annual Eco Hero Award, continuing to honor those making significant and positive change, this time honoring Natural Building pioneers, Bill & Athena Steen & Roxanne Swentzell, joining us in person on Sunday, March 23, 2025.
All three hail from the American Southwest, they are natural builders, authors and acclaimed artists, each one devoted to the beauty of the land, with a commitment to building with care of the earth as a priority.
Bill & Athena Steen are founders of the Canelo Project in Elgin, Arizona, defining their priorities as “sustainability and cross cultural relations”. After building their first straw bale home for their family in the late 1980’s, they began conducting strawbale workshops in southern Arizona and Mexico. They were later invited to teach around the world, sharing their skill and knowledge on how to build sustainably and affordably, using only earth, clay, sand & straw, materials all found easily in nature. Athena’s heritage inspired her, growing up surrounded by clay artists & builders on the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico. Bill also grew up in the southwest, becoming an author and professional photographer keen to capture the beauty of the land, and in time, the numerous projects they were creating. Together they coauthored many natural building books including The Straw Bale House; Beautiful Straw Bale; The Small Straw Bale House, and The Canelo Project. A family affair their sons Kalin & Benito document the Canelo Project with a video series, the Nito Project.
Roxanne Swentzell is a world renowned sculptor, ceramic artist, indigenous food activist, and the founder of the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute. In 1986 Roxanne returned with her two small children to live on the Santa Clara Pueblo in the high desert of New Mexico, building a strawbale house where the family together created a lush food forest within the homes enclosed earthen walls. New to permaculture in those early days, Roxanne adopted some of its best design techniques that were culturally appropriate. Later with other community members she embarked on an experimental journey of eating only foods available to their ancestors before the Spanish arrived in 1540. This experiment led to a marked decrease in diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure with those participating. To complement the experiment Roxanne coauthored The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook: Whole Food of Our Ancestors. Today the Flowering Tree Institute has eight sites, including seed banks and intern residences and farms where workshops are held. Roxanne’s artwork is displayed in museums and galleries worldwide, also at her own gallery, The Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery, located at the Pojoaque Pueblo Poeh Cultural Center north of Santa Fe.
How we continue to build will affect the chances of survival for our grandchildren. Modern buildings are often toxic to both the builders & the inhabitants, with many becoming chemically sensitive to products used. Natural building, with materials like clay, straw, wood & stone are not only non-toxic, they are life enhancing, and if designed correctly, conserve heat & energy. Natural building has joined the modern age with beautiful and functional structures, that are also less likely to burn in wildfires.
Please join us for a very special evening with Bill, Athena & Roxanne in person, with time for conversation and questions about Natural Building. What is it? Why did it become their passion & lifework? How is it different from Green Building? What do they see as the future of natural building, especially for young people looking for a meaningful lifepath & career.
The Santa Barbara Permaculture Network Eco Hero Award honors those individuals who have committed themselves to work in service of the planet and its inhabitants for more than thirty years, with actual solutions and concrete ways forward that benefit many, often on a global scale. We encourage the next generation to come and participate in a robust Q&A, a part of every Eco Hero event, learn from our Eco Heroes, who have so much to share.
Past recipients of the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network Eco Hero Award include John D. Liu; Paul Stamets & Louie Schwartzberg; John & Nancy Jack Todd, & Albert Bates. We are honored to have Bill & Athena Steen, and Roxanne Swentzell as the recipients for the 2025 Eco Hero Award. A reception follows in the Lobero courtyard for all ticket holders.
The event takes place at the Lobero Theatre on Sunday, March 23, from 6:30 pm–9 pm, tickets on sale at Lobero Ticket Office (fees apply), 805-963-0761; more information, www.sbpermaculture.org.

A Community Event Hosted by Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
www.sbpermaculture.org

Cosponsors:
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, Community Environmental Council (CEC), Blue Sky Biochar, Bamboo DNA, Buena Onda, Teeccino, AH Juice, Community Environmental Council, SBCC Environmental Horticulture, Explore Ecology, Regenerative Landscape Alliance, Island Seed & Feed, Orella Ranch-Gaviota Giving’s, Santa Barbara Aquaponics, Sustainable World Radio, Santa Barbara Agriculture & Farm Foundation, Paradise Found, Quail Springs Permaculture, HourBooks, Mesa Harmony Garden, Rincon-Vitova Insectaries, Building Health Matters, Central Coast Building Council, Voice Magazine & the Santa Barbara Independent.