About Schumacher College

Inspired by Small is Beautiful, Schumacher College has, for over 35 years, pioneered a lived, life-centred approach to learning, preparing people not only to face crisis but to restore meaning, connection and vitality wherever they go. 

An Urgent Vision

Our vision is a vibrant learning commons that empowers people to live and work for a thriving world. 

We believe this vision is needed more urgently now than ever before. In these times of cascading crises, traditional models of education are falling short. They prepare people to manage parts but not to live with wholes, and to seek certainty rather than attune to complexity. Schumacher College delivers a model of education that undertakes slow and vital work, to cultivate the deep infrastructure needed for long-term social and ecological renewal. 

We do this by equipping students with four outcomes essential for long-term, systemic transformation: 

  • Competency: relational literacy, contextual awareness, and the ability to collaborate across differences and disciplines. 

  • Agency: restored sense of self-authorship, where learners contribute to changemaking with consciousness.

  • Presence: quality of attention that invites trust, clarity, and coherence into families, communities, and organisations. 

  • Sensibility: capacity to perceive nuance, feel consequences, and sense into what is emerging—qualities vital for leadership in complex systems.

The Satish Kumar Foundation, a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, is the custodian of Schumacher College, developing aligned initiatives rooted in shared ecological and holistic values that extend its reach and deepen its impact.

The Satish Kumar Foundation also supports Schumacher College through fundraising – helping sustain and grow its life-centred work; you can support this mission by donating here.

A Unique Pedagogy

We currently offer short and long courses. In the near future, we plan to offer certificates in education and reinstate accredited further education and research degrees.

Our teachings cover three interwoven learning pathways:

  • Ecologies of Place: embeds ecological literacy, transforming “environment” into a lived relationship e.g. Regenerative Food and Farming

  • Creative Cultures: interprets key resources of cultural imagination and creates original work in poetry, myth, movement, and other arts e.g. Poetics of Imagination

  • Social Transformation: engages with innovative social design processes, enterprise labs, and community-change projects e.g. Ecological Design Thinking

All Courses

Our People

  • Dr Rachel Sweeney

  • Dr Emma Kidd

  • Dr Mona Nasseri

  • Dr Valentin Gerlier

  • Prof Roberto Fraquelli

  • Alice Oswald

Read Bios

Our Heritage

Schumacher College has been a pioneer of holistic, ecologically rooted education since its very first course in 1991, held in South Devon: a five-week immersion in Gaia Theory led by James Lovelock. From the outset, the College has offered a radically different approach to learning – one that engages the whole person and places relationship with the living world at its heart. Over more than three decades at the Old Postern in Dartington, this vision has inspired thousands of students, educators and change-makers from around the world.

In recent years, Schumacher College has undergone a profound and unexpected transition. Faculty, staff, volunteers and alumni found themselves needing to leave a physical home of over thirty years – an uprooting not chosen, and deeply felt. This moment marked the close of a much-loved chapter of life and learning, and required a collective reckoning with loss, grief and change.

Yet within the College’s holistic, ecological and spiritual worldview lives a deeper knowing: that endings are also beginnings. A core community spanning the early, middle and later years of Schumacher College has chosen to meet this transition as an invitation – to see the College’s rich 34-year legacy, and the wider learning ecosystem it has helped seed, with fresh eyes. Sustained by the generosity of alumni, friends, and an extraordinary global network of guest teachers and trailblazers, the spirit of Schumacher College continues to move, adapt and grow.