June Newsletter
26 June 2025
Dear Friends,
We went wild for a little while to mark midsummer. Pagan, even. Fire, singing, dancing, revelry of all sorts. We marked our bodies and howled like wild wolves. We lost ourselves to find ourselves in this brief pause between longer days and longer nights. Happy solstice, everyone!
Here in the northern hemisphere - specifically, here in Devon, UK - we spent the better part of June exploring notions of place and community, in dialogue with each other and the land. It was the second residential together in the New Schumacher Foundation course, our radical transdisciplinary prototype. We learned some things, including what the new Schumacher College could be and how our ‘way’ might be evolving.
We formed a learning commons. We inhabited the ancient epic of Gilgamesh so fiercely we had to invent new vocabulary. We read Blake on the moor and experienced, ‘from the point of view of innocence, a community like a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere’. We interrogated the holism of Max-Neef’s approach to ‘fundamental human needs’. We rolled our bodies down the hill and mapped our senses. We walked through the ancient landscape of Dartmoor, tarrying long in phenomenological noticing. And we considered the ‘anarcho-mythic’ implications of deeply inhabiting the places we call home. This relates something of how the inquiry of this course is developing and what it feels like without giving away too much. It’s still a work in progress.
Huge gratitude to our guests who have enriched our journey: Ruairi Edwards, Peter Oswald, Gillian Healy, Marina Turley, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Allan Kaplan, and Joanne Peers. Blessings to our talented chefs, Julia, Kirsty, and Phil who kept us well fed and soulfully nourished.
While the second module of that course is just finishing, the ‘World Wild’ programme of international courses is just beginning. We’d like the new Schumacher College to be open to the world like never before, to humbly ask what’s needed in these times, and to discover how our community of educators can truly be of service. What’s already emerging in these co-created courses is an emphasis on the kind of economic and social change that affirms life, justice, ecological wisdom, conviviality, care, and community.
This year, we’re trying to create the conditions for the new Schumacher College, with strong foundations for the long term and a reimagined offering of learning experiences that meet this historical moment. We need your help! To offer support - please enrol in one of these courses and/or fund a bursary for a young person. And most importantly, please spread the word that Schumacher College is alive!
In gratitude,
The Schumacher Wild team x
Image courtesy of Jay Tompt