Schumacher Wild: On Schumacher College Closing

Words by Dr Martin Shaw

You may have read a statement from the Dartington Trust about the closing of Schumacher College, down here in Devon. That the Schumacher College Foundation decided to close down all courses, just as students were preparing to arrive and study.

This can create a distorted impression. The larger proportion of this foundation are not the tutors and creatives themselves. We need to know this.

Nobody with any real relationship to Schumacher voted for this.

It was a money issue. It’s hard to make real money from groundbreaking education.

Creatively there has been no running out of steam, certainly no lack of pluck and imagination. Schumacher has in no way lost touch with its essential values. There’s been no scandal.

It was about to lead a programme that brought together many of its previous courses in one amazing year long process. Groundbreaking. Well, that’s not happening anymore. Nixed without warning.

Fifty-five years ago my dad met my mum because he wanted to go study music at Dartington. She could read music. Fourteen days later they were engaged – that’s how they rolled back in the day – and they remain a huge love story.

If Dartington college didn’t exist, neither would I. Growing up in 1970’s Devon it was extraordinary to know that there was this place of innovation, playfulness and real study just a few miles up the road.

The arrival of Schumacher college in 1990 on the Dartington estate deepened this feeling of possibility still further. They valiantly held innovation and tradition in either hand. They made a lot of beauty, and changed thousands of lives.

What now?

I think we’re called to do two things. Grieve appropriately for what is ending and keep an eye for green shoots. To exist in the tension of both is what makes an interesting human being.

A chapter is ending, and to pretend it isn’t is not an adult response. Dwell soberly for a time. It’s ok to be properly sad.

The recent death of our dear teacher Stephan Harding at exactly this moment (Stephan was a huge figure in the life and ideas of the college) brings all this to an expression of even profounder emotion, and it deserves to be so.

Anyone who was part of the college has a great beehive of memories living in their heart, this is a time to share those memories. That sacred building The Old Postern, those nights by the fire in the Redwood forest, or walking out of a lecture so dizzy with possibility you can barely breathe.

All of this happened. It changed us, tempered us, deepened us.

All over the world people are having radical adventures in how to live better because of the college. The fact that this has been halted by people who never tasted this reality is an age old and saddening dilemma.

The fact that we now have some of the best teachers around scrambling to find work (at the beginning of the academic year) is brutal and escalates a sense of animosity which is not useful. Schumacher and its students have not been treated at all well by the folks on the hill.

As the Irish say, 'how can I be with you if I’m not sad?', and these are things to legitimately grieve. There’s such a lack of panache and imagination in what’s happened. It’s a micro-version of a much bigger story in which soul gets swiped left by relentless monetary concerns.

Having led my own school for twenty years, I know how hard it is to balance the books, but c’mon.

This is a deadening failure of Dartington’s educational mandate over the last hundred years. It’s small (and not the beautiful kind of small).

But it’s not happening, it’s happened.

I would suggest staying as far away as possible from groups of trustee’s or Robber-Baron's in whatever future may start to develop.

So that’s one reality. Here’s the next.

This is money stuff.

I’ve been around organisations who had plenty of cash but an absolutely corrupted and fatigued mandate. Behind the facade it was jaded backbiting.

By some miracle Schumacher has not fallen into this. It’s still clean, loving and determined in its intentions. The soul of the endeavour has remained robust, and dare I say it, wholesome. Wholesome is a neglected term these days, a little gauche, but growingly radical. There's an odd funk to the word.

Important:

It would not have profited Schumacher in any fashion to gain all the money it needed to keep Dartington happy, if growing more disconnected and compromised from its original mandate.

That would have been a far greater disaster.

That’s a poetic and religious point of view, but I really believe it.

Despite the news, in the deepest sense, Schumacher is healthy.

It’s integrity has not been distorted out of all proportion, it’s not a burnt-out husk. Sometimes things have to get to this point to truly grow. The worst has to happen.

But, as a twinkly-eyed old man recently said to me, God favours the nomad.

I wonder if Schumacher Wild is just beginning.

Beautiful though the estate is, there is three hundred and sixty-five square miles of wilderness just a few miles away – Dartmoor. There’s village halls that can hired very cheaply, there’s tents that can be erected, ramshackle old houses that can squeeze fifty folks in. It could go caravan. There’s an energy to that.

As the poets say, it is time to think in ways we’ve never thought before.

This doesn’t solve the problem of teachers salaries, but whilst those issues are tended to it gives Schumacher a chance to dream into its own story again, connect in a different way to the local, create a culture of resistance and delight. All over the world, alumni could organise (and often have) in such a way.

As someone who’s co-created two MA’s under the Dartington umbrella, I would say a relationship distinguished-by-disfunction is a good one to leave behind.

Stop trying to make it work with people who do not care for you.

Schumacher has a story, a really bloody good one.

As a storyteller that’s always what I’m listening for.

I don’t know what this next chapter is – or when and how it will appear – but let us attend both to our grief and keep our imagination wide for the future. There are far wiser heads than me working on this, but out of love for all involved I wanted to write this.

Onwards and upwards,

Martin

Photo: Maria Souza