Attunement:

Higher Education Teaching for a Living World

Dates to be confirmed

This four-day immersive gathering is for educators who long to rekindle the deeper purpose of teaching – to nurture an attunement to life, to its goodness and its flourishing, its wholeness and complexity, with responsiveness and care.

Rooted in the spirit of Schumacher College, this course invites you to explore a way of learning and teaching that is holistic, interdisciplinary, and grounded in care—for the Earth, for each other, and for the unfolding of regenerative futures. Together, we’ll step beyond the walls of conventional higher education and ask: What does it mean to teach in a way that nourishes both the human spirit and the living world?

Held in the wild and welcoming landscape of Colehayes Park on the edge of Dartmoor, this course weaves together experiential workshops, reflective practice, dialogue and shared inquiry.

Together, we’ll explore:

  • Teaching with heart, hands, and head

  • Weaving together diverse disciplines and ways of knowing

  • Finding resourceful paths within institutional constraints

  • Creating spaces of learning that awaken, transform, and connect

This course will not offer ‘training’ in the traditional sense. We aim rather at a co-created sanctuary for renewal—where questions are cherished, ideas take root, and a more life-affirming way of teaching can emerge.

This course is ideal for university and college lecturers, tutors, and facilitators who feel called to bring more meaning, depth, and vitality into their work.

Places are limited to support an intimate and collaborative space. All meals and accommodation are included.

This course takes place alongside the Schumacher Foundation Course, with a few shared sessions and informal moments—offering a rare chance to experience the richness of the wider Schumacher learning community.

If you are curious about joining this course please complete the following form:

Facilitating this Course

Dr Valentin Gerlier

Dr Valentin Gerlier, scholar, songwriter, and musician, led the MA Poetics of Imagination programme at Schumacher College and Dartington Arts School. He is also a Tutor and academic board member at the Temenos Academy, a Research Associate at the Margaret Beaufort Institute, Cambridge, and a Visiting Lecturer at several institutions. His latest book is Shakespeare and the Grace of Words (Routledge, 2022).

Valentin's teaching and writing span a wide range of subjects, including Shakespeare, William Blake, Dante, Rainer Maria Rilke, Kathleen Raine, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, W.B. Yeats, Ivan Illich, Heraclitus, John Scotus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Western contemplative and mystical traditions. His current research explores the poetic wisdom of nature in pre-modern texts (e.g., Eriugena, Hildegard of Bingen, and Bernardus Sylvestris), contemplative philosophies of nature, and the poetics and metaphysics of ritual and liturgy.

Valentin holds an MA from the University of Kent and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has published in journals such as Journal of the Philosophy of Education, Heythrop Journal, Religions, Medieval Mystical Theology, Temenos Academy Review, and Modern Theology.

Dr Mona Nasseri

Mona led the MA Ecological Design Thinking programme at Schumacher College and served as the Head of Research as well.

As a researcher herself, she has been collaborating with interdisciplinary and international research teams on various participatory projects, primarily related to food, land, and water in East and West Africa. Her primary responsibility is to engage local communities in co-designing pathways for change, ensuring that local problems are addressed through local wisdom.

Mona has a background in craft and design. After completing an undergraduate degree in Craft and Material Culture at the University of Art in Tehran, Iran, she earned an MDes and PhD in Design at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Her doctoral thesis explores the role of an unmediated relationship with the environment in the evolution of human consciousness. Mona’s aspiration is to reintegrate the embodied and relational aspects of craft practice into regenerative design processes, particularly within participatory approaches to Transition.