News from Schumacher Wild

30 May 2025

Dear Friends,

After the richness of our first Schumacher Foundation module, Encounters, we now turn toward Dialogue as a deep practice of connection. This module invites us to explore the art of communicating with care, presence, and humility.

Dialogue, as William Isaacs puts it, is an antidote to polarisation. He writes:

“Dialogue is a conversation with a centre, not sides. It is a way of taking the energy of our differences and channeling it towards something that has never been created before.”

In this spirit, we enter into dialogue—with each other, with the land, with other beings, and with the unknown—opening space for something new to emerge through shared attention and presence.

We are fortunate to gather in two distinct locations on Dartmoor during this module—landscapes shaped by weather, memory, and time. The wild, open expanses of the moor offer a powerful context for deepening our conversations and our listening. To enter into dialogue with place is to shift from seeing the landscape as a backdrop to recognising it as an active participant in our learning.

Dr Rachel Sweeney, one of our Schumacher Wild teachers, reflects on how Dartmoor has deeply shaped her experience of dialogue between humans and non-humans.

“Dartmoor might speak to us, as a kind of palimpsest of interchangeable tenses, where we might attempt to approach the inhabitants of this place and its lived existence through a kind of attuned engagement with the stories that these rocks hold in their own becoming.”

“In Dartmoor, there is a constant creative tension that weaves between the warp and weft of human action. Copper and Tin mines from the early previous century litter the southern planes of the moor, with large disused pits buried under moss and lichen, while deeper timelines are cast in jagged outlines of granite stone boulders (known as Torrs) with their anthropomorphic shapes etched under grey steely skies, providing mass shelter and for passing Dartmoor ponies and strategic footholds for passing rock climbers.”

At Schumacher Wild, we open space for these living dialogues. In connecting with people and place, we practise a different way of being in the world—one that honours complexity, embraces not knowing, and listens for what wants to emerge.

We extend the invitation to be brave, to be curious, and to meet the world—and each other—with open hearts, free of judgement, and ready to transform differences into shared sense of possibilities.

“Beyond the ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
— Rumi

With Love,

The Schumacher Wild team x

Image courtesy of Georgina Campbell