Learning at Schumacher Action Labs is a practice, not a product. In a time when dominant economies wear away the conditions for life, we build spaces to think, imagine, and experiment together — treating many worlds and ways of knowing as a starting point, not a problem. Our programme brings together practitioners, collectives, and communities already tending land, food, culture, care, and shared resources, and lets their practice lead.

It is not so much on what we learn, but also on how we learn. Everything we offer is shaped by six threads running through our approach to learning: knowing ourselves, understanding living systems, reimagining economics, learning through practice, living in community, and cultivating beauty and imagination.

Our Annual Schumacher Lecture

Once a year, we invite a voice that challenges and enlarges how we think about the commons — a chance for our community to remind us of the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, and engage with its questions that arise when we live this world into being.

Summer School

Our yearly Summer School is where learning slows down. Over several days, practitioners and newcomers alike explore commons-based ways of living and organising side by side — with hands in the soil as much as heads in the discussion, and our hearts in the middle of all of it.

Workshops and Gatherings

Throughout the year, we host smaller workshops, screenings, and gatherings — spaces to build the tools and language for a commons practice, and to weave links between projects and ecosystems across art, education, and regenerative agriculture.