Reflections on A Common Ground
29 August 2025
Hello Everyone,
We can already feel the season turning here in South Devon. The evenings are drawing in and the mornings have a beautiful crisp edge that gently announces the sensorial shift into Autumn. Despite, or maybe because of, the low rainfall this year, nature’s work is fruiting in abundance all around us. We are experiencing an extravaganza of tree fruit right now, happily and gratefully swimming in delicious local apples and pears.
In the context of our newly gained independence, we too can feel a turning of seasons. It has been almost a year since receiving the news that we needed to leave our much loved, longstanding home in Dartington. Since then, we have been on a Wild and nomadic adventure of collective inquiry, hosting courses at home and abroad, with friends old and new, reimagining education together and experimenting with a new curriculum fit for the 21st Century.
Since Schumacher College’s very first course in 1991, here in South Devon, the pioneering vision that has been expressed through our holistic education is still very much alive and well; now coming to fruition in an abundance of new places, in new ways, in the form of new collaborations, and more importantly, friendships.
Our most recent bold experiment in transdisciplinary education, and in friendship, was held in the Netherlands last week at the beautiful community permaculture centre De Kleine Aarde, ‘the Small Earth’, where the bounty of vegetables that are lovingly grown go straight to the local food bank. The summer school that we co-hosted there, Finding Common Ground, was a wonderful collaboration with our friends at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, based in the United States, and the exciting new Schumacher Actions Labs, who are based in the Netherlands.
With participants from across the Netherlands, and also from other places such as Spain, Mexico, and Indonesia, we together explored the question of how, in these times of strife, discord, and confusion, we might create common ground on which to cultivate the conditions for flourishing lives — in ourselves, our communities, and the ecosystems upon which we depend?
We were lucky enough to have Anneke van Woerden, a graduate of Call of the Wild, begin our mornings with body and nature connection. We started our days gently, with simple, grounding practices inspired by the work of Jon Young and other nature connection mentors. These practices helped us to slow down, deepen awareness, and to begin the day with presence and gratitude for the land. We were often accompanied by our new friend, a hen called Mary, who kept us company for the whole week that we were at de Kleine Aarde!
Then, woven across the week, between the more typical classroom sessions that you might expect from our faculty at Schumacher College, we were fortunate to have Claudia Angeli, graduate from the MA in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College, and current member of the Baking Lab in Amsterdam, offer a series of bread making workshops…from ferment to final enjoyment! This was a time in which to not only bake bread together, but to knead emotions, from gratitude, to grief and active hope, by connecting with our senses, and engaging with the process of fermentation as an analogy for ontological shifts.
Last, but certainly not least, alongside sessions by our own core faculty members Jay Tompt and Dr Emma Kidd, our dear friend, Bioregional Weaver, Regenerative Finance & Project Developer, and Commons-Based Systems Change Advocate and Educator, Natasha Hulst, who is cofounder of Schumacher Action Labs, delivered sessions on financing the Commons, and co-hosted sessions on Commons projects from the Netherlands and beyond.
We also had a wonderful online guest appearance from long-time friend and supporter of Schumacher College, David Bollier, sharing a tour de force of current news and perspectives on the Commons. We very much recommend his podcast, Frontiers of Commoning, and shared this episode, an interview with our late, dear Dr Stephan Harding, as preparation for the course with our Summer School participants.
There is so much more to mention about this and our other wild adventures in transdisciplinary education, so stay tuned to our social media channels, and to the recent experiences from our Summer School participants for more detail and insights into this wonderful week, and more!
This weekend, a wild new Schumacher adventure begins in Greece, on the island of Lefkada, with our friends Ilektra Kouloumpi and Foodpath retreat centre, asking, “What is Eudaimonia - ‘the good life’ - in these times?”.
And soon you will be able to engage in a longer period of inquiry with us, on our next long course, Poetics of Imagination. Led by our core faculty members, the poet Alice Oswald and Dr Valentin Gerlier, this course offers a path ‘upstream’, back towards the mythical pool of imagination: bringing together myth, story and poetic creativity with deep wisdom and imaginative reflection. To experience a taste of this course, head over to our Substack page and delve into a lecture by Dr Valentin Gerlier, on ‘Art, Imagination and Revelation’. Or click here to find out more about the course and to apply.
As ever, we are deeply grateful for your friendship and for your company – and we hope to see you soon, somewhere on this wild new adventure!
The Schumacher College Team
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‘Finding Common Ground’ through baking bread and kneading emotions.
Workshop and photo credit: Claudia Angeli