Handmade Transformation

A course for crafting meaningful life and work

June 2026

In-person & Online

Through embodied practices and project-based mentoring, you hone your craft, attune to your calling,

and shape a livelihood rooted in authenticity and care for the living world.

Handmade Transformation is a new Schumacher course exploring what it means to shape life with the attentiveness, agency, integrity and quiet courage of a craftsperson. In a world that often pulls us toward speed and fragmentation, this course invites you to slow down, deepen your awareness, and approach your personal calling and livelihood as a handmade, intentionally crafted work.

Rooted in Schumacher’s long tradition of embodied learning, this programme invites you to engage your hands, hearts and minds in meeting a world that is as complex as it is wonderful and to shape your own life project from that place.

Together with members of the wider Schumacher community, we will explore how the craftsperson’s way of working - patient, intuitive, relational, grounded, imaginative and reverential – can offer tools for shaping a life and livelihood that are both ecological and authentic.

Through interactive, hands-on sessions, we will practise ways of tuning attention and clarifying intention, supporting you to shape your project or livelihood in a way that honours the world around you and the deeper truth within.

Expression of Interest

Core Themes

Over the course of our time together, we will work through four central themes that support handmade transformation:

Uncluttering the Mind — creating the inner space needed for insight, presence and creativity.
Beauty and Simplicity — cultivating the capacity to recognise, make and live by what is essential.
Empathy and Connection — strengthening our relational awareness with self, others and the more-than-human world.
Inquiry and Life’s Work — exploring the questions and callings that guide our personal and ecological purpose.

These core themes will be woven throughout the course to animate our sessions in dynamic, creative and contemplative ways. On this course, learning experiences will take a variety of different forms, including communal workshops, dialogues, talks, meditation sessions and one-to-one tutorials.

Who is this for?

For those standing at the threshold of a project, carrying a clear or emerging calling, and ready to move from intention to form with the support of a structured, caring learning community.

This course welcomes makers of all kinds - artists, craftspeople, writers, gardeners, organisers, teachers, designers, entrepreneurs - as well as those who may not consider themselves “makers” but ready to commit to learning a craft.

Bring Your Project

While we will explore a range of hands-on practices, this is not a technical training in any one craft. Instead, we invite you to bring your own craft into the space , or to commit to learning one alongside the course. This commitment to a personal practice helps deepen and ground the learning.

Alongside a commitment to learning or deepening a craft, participants are invited to bring a personal project – creative, professional, ecological or livelihood-focused – to thread through the programme. These projects become living pathways through which the course’s insights can be practised, tested and carried out beyond the course.

Mentorship

This is not just a course; it is a journey. The small community we form will support one another in shaping and strengthening each person’s project. Throughout the process, you’ll benefit from companionship and mentorship , and you may even begin to pave your own path towards becoming a mentor in a future iteration of the programme.

What we need from you to help shape this course

We’re committed to making this programme structurally and financially accessible to anyone who feels called to join. The programme fee is expected to be approximately £5,700 inclusive of food and accommodation during the residential periods, and we’ll do our best to offer bursaries and other forms of support for participants who might otherwise find it difficult to take part.

In terms of structure, we would love to hear what would work best for you.
Our current model is a 10-day immersive residential experience in June 2026, followed by long weekend gatherings every five weeks, running over 6 months (August 2026 to January 2027). The spaces between residential weekends will be supported by a blend of online check-ins, peer companionship, and expert mentorship.

Your reflections on this rhythm – what feels right, what feels challenging, what excites you, and what you would prefer to change – will help us shape the course into something accessible and nourishing for all who join.

Expression of Interest