Handmade Transformation

Our Approach

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.

Core Themes

During the residential parts of the course, we examine and respond to the following questions, using them as foundations for developing our practice:

What does it mean to cultivate a making practice?

How can we learn to pay deeper, wider, closer attention?

What does making by hand teach us about ourselves?

What happens when we enter a reciprocal collaboration?

How can we better understand our “materiality”?

How might unmaking also be an ally in our journey?

How does our making hold meaning?

For more details on this download our course handbook here.

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.