Schumacher College

Ecological learning college in South Devon, now taking its courses on the road

The first course at Schumacher College, in 1991, was a five-week immersion in Gaia Theory led by James Lovelock. It was held in South Devon, and the College took its inspiration from the book Small is Beautiful. For more than thirty years it worked from the Old Postern in Dartington, drawing students, educators and change-makers from around the world to a way of learning that, in its own words, engages the whole person and puts relationship with the living world at the centre. That home is now gone. The College describes its departure as unplanned and not chosen, and says it called for a reckoning with loss and grief. A core group spanning its early, middle and later years has chosen to treat the move as a beginning. The Satish Kumar Foundation, a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, is custodian of the College, and an appeal toward a £1 million goal is meant to help relaunch it at a new home. The teaching is organised into three pathways: Ecologies of Place, Creative Cultures and Social Transformation. The College offers examples such as Regenerative Food and Farming, Poetics of Imagination and Ecological Design Thinking. Its founding principle is learning with head, heart and hands, and with habitat, and it speaks of Soil, Soul, Society as a trinity. Learning, it says, happens as much in the kitchen, the garden or on the land as in the classroom. Under the name Schumacher Wild, the faculty has been taking its work out to new places, including the New Schumacher Foundation Programme and its Foundation Seed course, and the Radical Love short course. The Schumacher Experience, a five-day residential led with founder Satish Kumar, is set for 17 to 21 February 2027. It offers optional morning Qi Gong or meditation, evening fireside chats, storytelling, poetry and music, and a hybrid course, Handmade Transformation, runs from September 2026 to May 2027.

Traditions: Gaia Theory, Qi Gong, Meditation, Empatheatre, Storytelling, Ecological Design Thinking

Programs: Schumacher Experience with Satish Kumar, Handmade Transformation, New Schumacher Foundation Programme, Foundation Seed course, Radical Love short course, Regenerative Food and Farming, Poetics of Imagination, Empatheatre short course