Schumacher College is a progressive college for ecological studies offering postgraduate and undergraduate programmes, research degrees, short courses and a practical agroecology residency.
We focus on interactive and experiential education to help students develop the practical skills and strategic thinking required to face 21st century challenges and to instigate regenerative futures.
Our learning ethos is about participating, getting out into the field, into the kitchen, experiencing the world as a starting point for more in-depth enquiry. These experiences then inform anti-reductionist, whole systems thinking that can help to break down traditional disciplines and foster collaborations that reach towards a better understanding of the truth.
ABOUT US: Read more about our history and ethos >
live chats & open days
Get to know our College, our faculty and our programmes with these online and offline events.
flexible learning
There are so many ways to connect with our learning programmes to suit your lifestyle – including low-residency or part time routes, unaccredited modules, and blended learning models.
postgraduate programmes
Transformative Education
MA | PGDIP | PGCERT
This postgraduate degree opens up our distinctive learning model to train educators, teachers and curriculum designers in the principles of an ecological approach to education.
Regenerative Food, Farming and Enterprise
MSC | PGDIP | PGCERT
This radical new course is designed to help you develop your knowledge and understanding of resilient human-scale food systems and learn the skills needed to design, influence or develop resilient, productive food-based networks and businesses of your own. With an ecological and systemic approach, you will carve out a path towards making a positive contribution to the food economy.
Regenerative Economics
MA | PGDIP | PGCERT
Regenerative Economics challenges and offers alternative perspectives to mainstream economics programmes – by looking through the lens of ecology as if both people and planet mattered equally.
Movement, Mind and Ecology
MA | PGDIP | PGCERT
Explore the rich intersection of embodied practice, environmental philosophy and ecological thinking with this distinctive new course. The first of its kind, the MA programme encourages you to use your own physical engagement with the world to reshape your understanding of place, nature, self and society, with the help of world-renowned experts from a wide range of physical pursuits.
Engaged Ecology
MA | PGDIP | PGCERT
A radical programme for students looking to reconsider their relationship with the more-than-human and find solutions to the environmental and social crises of our time. The course equips you with the skills to engage practically in the field, while also allowing you the time and space to develop a personal understanding of the interconnected nature of the world.
Ecological Design Thinking
MA | PGDIP | PGCERT
Be active and transformative within organisations, communities, economics and education as we meet the challenge of transitioning to low carbon, high well-being and resilient places and systems. Never has there been a more important time for a new approach to design.
undergraduate programmes
Regenerative Food and Farming
BSC (HONS) | DIPHE | CERTHE
The BSc in Regenerative Food and Farming gives you the opportunity to explore leading-edge alternatives to mainstream agricultural practices and food systems, through a programme of integrated experiential learning, study alongside expert faculty and practitioners, meaningful work placement, and guided independent projects.
Short Courses
Our courses celebrate the ethos of learning by doing and nature connection developed here at Schumacher College and across a century of arts learning on the Dartington estate. They unite ecology, craft skills and contemporary art with politics, philosophy and social justice, underpinned by a stronger sense of our place in the world. Our learning experiences are offered alongside short courses from the Dartington Arts School as part of a collaborative learning community.
more from schumacher
Unaccredited modules
If you love our degree programmes but can’t commit to a full course, it’s possible to select modules as unaccredited short courses.
Practical Residency In Agroecology
A rich, six month immersive programme learning how to grow food in a way that maintains and restores soil and ecosystem health.
virtually schumacher
– Ongoing series of live chats with course tutors
– Podcasts
– Video archive – including our long-running Earth Talks series
research at dartington
We offer research degrees in partnership with University of Westminster CREAM. Our researchers have expertise in a wide range of topics including arts practice-led research; animism; medieval literature; modernism; story and myth; arts, design and ecology; ecology and spirituality; Goethean science; regenerative economics, farming and food; social work with adults and children; and social enterprise.
latest news & blogs
Bullfinch Dairies by Dr Stephan Harding
In this blog post Dr Stephan Harding reflects creatively on the vicissitudes of life and our place in the world following a chance encounter with a bullfinch.It’s mid-March, and the snow falls thick and fast, most unusually for early spring in the south west of...
Reflections on E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful by Ruth Potts
Our Head of Regenerative Economics, Ruth Potts, reflects on the continuing relevance of E. F. Schumacher’s influential book, Small is Beautiful 50 years after publication.
Convergence with Universidad Austral de Chile
Current student Mark Sim blogs on a recent international meeting of minds combining our Regenerative Economics Master’s with Human-Scale Development and Ecological Economics intiatives in Chile.
watch: Soil To Supper – Sustainability at Schumacher
watch: our students in their own words
follow us
What role can education play in curbing runaway climate change? Our new MA Transformative Education will ask exactly this question of our first cohort joining us in September. If you'd like to join us, the bursary application deadline is tomorrow 1 June!
Rachel Musson of Thought Box Education has been on the approval panel for the degree and we asked her to share her thoughts after seeing the plans for the course:
"I have been waiting to see the birth of this course for a long time and am beyond delighted that it has arrived. We know that education needs to transform. But how? In a world where so many of us have been to school, we all have an opinion on what education could be, should be, must be...
"What I love about this programme is the depth it goes into, the wisdom it explores and the regenerative practice it supports. Transformative Education is a journey down into the root causes of our nested crises to understand both educations role in perpetuating these disconnections and educations role in reconnecting us to ourselves, each other and the more than human world."
Photo credit: Jo Joelson @libraryoflight - featuring students on the MA Arts and Place, another degree at Dartington breaking down the traditional boundaries of educational experiences!
When we lose touch with the soil, we lose touch with ourselves. Soil underpins everything. It is foundational - not just as a growing medium for horticulture - but as the basis of life, for being in the world, for what we understand as civilization. In today's post-industrial, artificially intelligent world it can be easy to forget the soil. But at Schumacher College we encourage all of our students to return to it, to get involved in working with the soil for food, and developing a new more humble relationship to it. Whichever course you choose here, we can guarantee you'll be invited to get your hands dirty (if you want to) - it's not just our Regenerative Farming and Agroelogy students!
By the way, tomorrow is the second deadline for our September start postgraduate degrees - so do get your applications in tonight if you can to guarantee your best chance of securing a place on either MA Regenerative Economics, MA Ecological Design Thinking or the new MA Transformative Education.
Image: Josh Pratt
#soil #society #horticulture #humus #growingfood #intentionalcommunity #ecology #dartington #schumachercollege
What does it take to transition from a sustainable to regenerative mindset? Do you know your doughnuts from your well-being economics? We're getting back to economic basics with free webinar 5pm, 5 June featuring our Regenerative Economics team @jay.tompt & Ruth Potts.
Register via the Whats On listings link in our biog.
📷 Josh Pratt
#WorldEnvironmentDay #circulareconomy #economics #regenerative #degrowth #transition #doughnuteconomics
What a wonderful group and what a treat to have @poppy.okotcha along with @markswildergardens and @oasisgardendesign teaching on our new Community Gardens short course at the weekend 💚