Short Courses

A weekend of connecting deeply with trees in diverse ways, from identifying species and understanding basic tree biology, to intimate sensory experience and deep soulful connection.

This course is also running in June 2021. Click here for details.

Booking deadline: 5 February 2021

Our beautiful planet earth is under pressure, her diverse habitats are being destroyed, her wild animals are going extinct, What must we do?
We need to develop and deepen our Wild Facilitation skills and use these creative methodologies to collaborate with individuals, groups, teams, communities, organizations and governments so that we can work together to serve and save the earth. We need to act fast.

Booking Deadline: 8 February 2021

There is an ever-growing rise in people choosing to take time out of their daily lives to walk pilgrimage routes in the UK and other well-known place around the world. This course will explore the different ways intentional walks are nourishing people’s lives; from the Deep Time Walk, to forest bathing, to sacred pilgrimages and labyrinths to protest walks and pilgrimages for change. During the week there will be an opportunity to experience different styles of pilgrimage as well as meet those who have crafted the art of being a pilgrim in their lives.

Booking deadline: 19 Feb 2021

Participate in a weekend meditating, walking and spending time in nature away from the daily stresses of life and discover the importance of bringing soul into the heart of everything you do.

Booking deadline: 26 February 2021*

Discover who you are through song. This is a chance to find your own authentic voice with the support of a community of like-minded people. Maybe you are part of a choir and need the courage to step into the limelight? Maybe you want to sing but lack the confidence? Led by Ruairi Edwards – one of the UK’s most sought-after choral conductors and vocal coaches, this course offers the unique combination of individual attention to developing your technique combined with the sheer joy of experiencing communal voice.

Booking deadline: 5 March 2021

Will you reach for this primordial memory that long time ago belonged to you?
Will you hold this powerful intuition, for once you knew it to be true?
Will you trust to this unfettered spirit, for it is free and surely yours?
Will you take this ferocious courage left for you by those who came before?

Booking deadline: 1 March 2021

As the global crisis deepens, there is renewed interest in deep ecology as a philosophical and practical foundation for compassionate engagement with the world’s problems. This course brings deep ecology right up to date by reviving our deep ecological senses with new ways for connecting to our place and to the community of all beings and by developing our own personal ecological wisdom using the powerful Tree of Life model.

Booking Deadline: 15 March 2021*

Learn how to design, implement, and maintain forest gardens and other sustainable agroecological systems. Participants will experience both recently planted and well established 25-year old forest gardens, as well as other agroforestry in and around Dartington.Includes sessions on harvesting, preserving and cooking with forest garden produce.

We have impoverished our understanding of the world by focussing so much on mechanism. The proper relationship of the two brain hemispheres is one that balances head and heart; one that gives weight to reason, intuition and imagination.

It is this connection that offers us remarkable insights into the unique harmony between ancient wisdom and cutting-edge neuroscience.

Booking Deadline: 29 March 2021

The idea of this course is to investigate deeply the spiritual orientation(s) that best suits the country’s growing truth-telling, Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) movements - movements that are almost certainly our last chance at averting or softening societal collapse.

Booking Deadline: 3 April 2021*

A practical workshop to learn the basics of the NonViolent Communication process according to Dr. Marshall Rosenberg.

Participants will be invited to actively participate.

Course deadline: 21 April 2021*

A weekend of connecting deeply with trees in diverse ways, from identifying species and understanding basic tree biology, to intimate sensory experience and deep soulful connection.

This course is also running in March 2021. Click here for details.

Booking deadline: 23 April 2021

Led by Jenny Mackewn, with special contributors. This is a unique course introducing you to inspiring teachers and thinkers supporting you to develop your own personal leadership qualities and achieve your goals.

Join us for an eight-month journey that consists of:  A period of preparation,  a residential intensive and an 8 month community of practice through Virtual or Face-to-Face meeting.

Booking deadline: 26 April 2021

Gardening has a profound impact on the heart and soul. There will be talks by Satish Kumar on how we are all connected via the profound spiritual essence that is Nature and how through gardening we can connect intimately with nature; and by an expert on Islamic gardens, Emma Clark, on how gardening may be seen as a sacred art and on the spiritual symbolism of the Paradise Garden. Your experience will also include walks around the beautiful Dartington grounds and Qigong bamboo exercises led by the well-known and experienced practitioner June Mitchell.

Booking Deadline: 27 May 2021
 

Join Colin Campbell, Lucy Hinton and Andrew McAulay for a process of deep ritual and bring together two areas of practice; nature vigil, and breathwork techniques. This is a chance for relational interaction to contribute to the regeneration of people, and the 'other-than-human' kin who speak a language that is both strange and achingly familiar.

Booking Deadline: 30 April 2021*

This course will set you up with the basics of how to garden in a way that looks after the people, the plants and the whole ecosystem. Learn how to sow seeds, make great compost, look after your soil all in a way that restores the connection between human life and soil life.

Booking Deadline: 25 June 2021*

At a time of uncertainty in our world, the learnable skills of personal resilience strengthen our capacity to deal with difficult situations and rise to the occasion. Drawing upon psychological, relational and eco-spiritual perspectives, the course focuses on ways to cultivate resilience in ourselves (me), in other people (you), and within the teams, groups or communities we belong to (us). 

Booking Deadline: 26 July 2021*

For our Gaia's Kitchen short course, we will cook together a menu of lunches and suppers using garden produce and including some favourite menus inspired by our college cookbooks. We will also prepare chutney, sauerkraut, minced fruit for minced pies and a fruit cake which can be eaten at Christmas.

Booking deadline: 30 August 2021

This course provides an introduction to Transition Design, a new approach to seeding positive, systems-level change and catalysing the transition of entire societies toward more sustainable long-term futures.

Booking deadline: 9 May 2022