Business and Sustainability at Schumacher College

SCHUMACHER COLLEGE
An International Centre for Ecological Studies

Education for Sustainability Schumacher College’s Business and Sustainability Courses.

Sophie Unwin 4/8/2001

“What one thing would you have liked to achieve by this time next year?” Jonathon Porritt asked the 20 participants – from business, NGOs, academia and consultancies – on the last day of the Business and Sustainability course at Schumacher College in July this year. Writing our responses, addressing them to ourselves, we were told that these letters would be posted to us in a year’s time.

Schumacher College is an international centre for ecological studies set in the beautiful Devon countryside. The one-week business courses were developed last year and have attracted teachers of international renown, including Amory Lovins, Fritjof Capra, Karl-Henrik Robert and John Elkington.

The week July 16-20 was taught by David Orr, from Oberlin College, USA and Jonathon Porritt, Director of Forum for the Future in the UK. Both teachers were excellent. They shared huge amounts of information in two-hour tutorial style presentations with an elegant link in the form of a mid-week dialogue between them, touching on areas of common expertise: business-ngo partnerships, the drivers for change and the challenges of working from the ‘inside’.

Any concerns that Schumacher’s ‘deep green’ philosophy would not sit comfortably with the reality of the business world proved to be unfounded. A visit to native forest in Dartmoor with resident ecologist Stefan Harding was an effective reminder of our reliance on and interdependence with natural ecosystems – the implication being that business is neither inherently good nor bad, it all depends on the way it operates.

A positive, solutions-oriented spirit infused both David and Jonathon’s teaching. Though not underplaying the scale of the challenge “We’ve never had a planet to mess up before”, remarked Jonathon, the emphasis was on what works, and what we can do now. As Martin Batt, Environmental Programmes Manager at Halifax remarked, the course “showed that it is possible to spread stories of success”.

The course has been set up with the express intention of equipping those within business – at a managerial and senior level – to learn lessons to take back to their organisations. One way this was achieved was in the small group work, which followed much of the wider discussion. For example, in groups of 5 we looked at measuring the financial benefits to a company that might come from investing in social capital. We were encouraged to find solutions from our own experience and to look at how to be effective as individuals within organisations.

But the course at Schumacher was so much more than the formal teaching: it was the experience as a whole. David has developed a remarkable green college building at Oberlin College and his refrain, “We shape our buildings and they shape us” underlay the powerful exemplary charge of being at Schumacher College for a week. Seeing an institution that not only teaches, but actually lives its values, made the challenge of sustainability all the more real.

Participants have to share in some of the housekeeping activities – cleaning and preparing meals under the instruction of Julia, the cook. The food is organic, and delicious. The daily ‘chore’ is an integral part of the course: after all, if you have been cleaning toilets with someone it is hard not to relate to them on equal terms.

Wayne Hardy from Tesco’s came on the course “because I can see that Tesco’s are moving in the right direction and I feel I can make a significant difference in the property side”. At the end of the week, describing it as “absolutely superb”, he said that “everyone has co-operated in every sense and it is this cooperation which you take away from Schumacher into your business.”

Sophie Unwin

For more information about Schumacher College and its courses, please contact :

The Administrator, Schumacher College,
The Old Postern, Dartington, Totnes, Devon, TQ9 6EA.
Tel : +44 (0)1803 865934 Fax : +44 (0)1803 866899
Email : admin@schumachercollege.org.uk
Website : www.schumachercollege.org.uk

Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.