We’ve been talking with several people recently who call themselves ‘Shifties’ – i.e. they’ve done Shift Bristol’s Practical Sustainability Course. They’re in touch with other Shifties, and they all swear by it. We need more people with these skills. So we’re providing more information, and inviting you to join them for the next course, starting in September. Over to Shift Bristol director Laura:
In the face of climate breakdown, economic instability, and social fragmentation, many people are searching for practical ways to help create a viable and thriving future. Shift Bristol offers a compelling response through the Practical Sustainability Course (PSC), an immersive, hands-on educational pathway rooted in community, ecological literacy, and systems thinking.
For over 15 years, the PSC has been a flagship programme for sustainability education in the UK. More than a course, it is a transformative journey that invites participants to reconnect with land, with one another, and with a sense of purpose. Students learn how to meet human needs for food, shelter, energy, health, and belonging in ways that are regenerative, inclusive, and joyful. As the course is unaccredited, each student’s motivation for learning is deeply personal and self-directed, free from external agendas. The PSC attracts a diverse mix of participants, including young people fresh from formal education, adults changing career paths, and older learners exploring new roles in life.
Originally developed in 2010 as an expanded evolution of the Permaculture Design Course, the PSC has grown into a year-long curriculum made up of ten integrated modules. These follow the core permaculture ethics of Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share, and are structured seasonally to support both practical learning and inner development. The course begins in September and ends in July, structured across six terms. It starts with permaculture design and ecological citizenship, and then progresses through soil and food systems, woodland management, regenerative building, and community-scale infrastructure. Each phase blends theory, hands-on practice, and group reflection to support embodied learning.
> The Earth Care strand includes modules in ecological design, soil and plant systems, organic growing, woodland stewardship, and biomimicry. Teaching happens not just in classrooms but in the field — on farms, in gardens, and in forests. Students learn how to grow food and steward land in ways that are abundant yet non-extractive. This process begins to heal inherited colonial patterns of relating to the non-human world.
> People Care focuses on the social and emotional dimensions of sustainability. Modules include regenerative cultures, group dynamics, and personal agency. Students explore burnout, eco-anxiety, nervous system regulation, identity, power, and communication. The group becomes a learning ecosystem where collaboration, inclusion, and care are actively practiced.
> Fair Share brings economic and systemic awareness into focus. Students explore the circular economy, housing justice, and collaborative ownership. They engage with commons-based models such as community land trusts, energy cooperatives, and food co-ops, while reflecting on how these approaches counter individualistic and linear systems. The engagement module draws on diverse methodologies for learning and engagement, including clowning, Afrikan drumming, movement, sound, and other non-verbal forms of expression. These approaches expand how knowledge is communicated and embodied.
Shift Bristol’s founders, the late permaculture teacher Sarah Pugh and current director Laura Corfield, designed the course to be deeply woven into the fabric of the city and its rural surroundings. Rather than owning a permanent site, Shift hires community venues, allowing students to learn in real places, from and with communities navigating real challenges. Growing, building, and collaborating in community settings offers students the opportunity to observe and engage with living systems and social realities. This creates a reciprocal learning exchange, building long-term relationships that blur traditional roles of student, teacher, practitioner, and neighbour. The course’s impact can be seen in gardens, homes, and public spaces throughout Bristol and beyond. This includes 14 roundhouses built by students, now used as community, educational, or therapeutic spaces. Other examples include permaculture-inspired landscapes, rainwater harvesting systems, composting systems, retrofitting, living willow structures, and more. Since 2010, Shift Bristol has reinvested over one million pounds into the local economy through space hire, tutor and facilitator fees, field trips, and materials that remain in the community.
The PSC is delivered almost entirely in person, with over 650 contact hours. More than 40 expert practitioners teach and facilitate, including builders, growers, engineers, herbalists, designers, activists, and mycologists. All bring current, lived experience into the learning space. Three lead tutors — Matt Dunwell (permaculture design), Deborah Benham (ecological citizenship), and Danny Balla (group dynamics) — co-steward the evolving curriculum. Alongside course facilitator Kizzie Fitzwilliams, they integrate student feedback and experiences to ensure the PSC remains responsive, relevant, and grounded in its core values.
Commoning is not a standalone module, but it is embedded in the course under the Fair Share strand. It reflects a deeper question about how to restore connection between people and land, and how to share power and responsibility. Commoning shapes how students learn together, make decisions, and hold space throughout the year. It is most visible in clan groups — small peer circles of up to six students — which provide live practice in mutual aid and self-governance. These groups take turns with key responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning, organising field visits, and capturing group learning. Through this structure, students experience shared leadership, consensus-based decision-making, and real-time conflict resolution. They learn how to ask for and offer help, how to navigate vulnerability, and how to challenge the internalised narratives that define worth through productivity. In this process, they also discover how belonging can be intentionally cultivated through trust, generosity, and interdependence. The experience of Commoning becomes a foundation for personal and collective resilience.
Graduates describe the course as life-changing, empowering, and grounding. They leave with practical skills, deep relationships, and greater confidence in how to engage with the world in ways that feel aligned with their values and capabilities. Many go on to lead community projects, work with land, design systems, facilitate groups, pursue creative work, or embed permaculture into their existing careers and lives. The PSC acts as a launchpad for meaningful change, both personal and societal.
Applications for the 2025 course are now open.
Visit shiftbristol.org.uk/about-the-psc for more information.
This is more than a course. It is a community, a transformation, and a call to collective action.
MEDIA:
Roundhouse Build 2023
A wonderful film of a Shift Bristol roundhouse build 2023. Video creator and student Esther Cacace-Soret (instagram @strbluk) has captured the collaborative and harmonious essence of the build.
The roundhouse build is part of our ‘Place & Ownership’ module, where we explore buildings, homes and our need for security, shelter and comfort.
Articles on the PSC
Would you like to know more about the story of Shift Bristol and the Practical Sustainability Course? Head over to the Permaculture Association website – we’re in the spotlight .
‘Picture the Future: The Shift’– By Anita Roy. This is the third of a series of blogs for Rapid Transition focusing on evidence-based hope from volunteer-led groups who are taking action to restore nature and tackle the climate emergency in practical ways.
Past Students
Shift Bristol has trained over 400 Practical Sustainability Course students, affectionately known as the Shifties. Over the years the student network has expanded and evolved into an autonomous, self-organising, self-celebrating being. They organise their own socials, events, workshops and field trips; including everything from welding, to study groups, to hosting film showings, and forming a choir – the ‘Shifty Singers’.
It’s impossible to move in the Sustainability circles in the Southwest and not bump into a Shifty. They can be found on smallholdings, farms, community gardens, energy co-ops, in schools, in the NHS working with green social prescribing and mental health services, in the Landworkers Alliance, in the Ecological Land Co-operative, in social centres, heading up children’s gardening clubs, in political campaigning, as permaculture consultants, green building contractors, community composting groups, and much more besides!
Ursula BillingtonPSC Graduate gets job as Bristol 24/7’s new Climate & Sustainability Editor; Writes a piece on the Practical Sustainability Course
Instagram Reels made by students:
- Cohort Summer 2024
- Cohort Summer 2023
- Rosie Fieldhouse 2022-2023
- Holly Vandyke 2020-2021
- Karina Pontin 2019-2020
- Alex Reuer 2016-2017
Testimonial Words
“Do it! Do it!”
“Beautiful experience.”
“If you’re unsure about your sustainable future, start here!”
“Life-changing!”
“So much more than a great course. More of a life shift.”
“Delivered expertly by passionate and knowledgeable tutors who couldn’t be more authentic”
“The psc enabled me to view myself much more authentically and empowered me will practical skill that i have gone on to utilise so to transform my life. “
“Truly inspirational course that has changed the way I think for good. I now have muddy hands, a happy heart and a head that will forever question the norms about me.”
“It was a transformative time for me and has led to new career opportunities, further learning and greater self-awareness.”
“The PSC is brilliant! This course will change your life!”
“This is a fantastic course with fantastic tutors.”
“Creating a positive new direction for life.”
“A fantastic course. So many ways to change your life for the better.”
“This course is almost unique in its comprehensive coverage of the issues we face right now. It’s practical, honest and serious but also great fun.”
“To my knowledge, there is no other educational experience quite as unique as that offered by Shift Bristol. It is inspiring, the scope of topics offered is incredible and the field trips are fantastic. I have learnt a lot and I am inspired to learn more!”
“The Practical Sustainability course is incredibly important in encouraging us to envisage a positive future, and how we can co-create it. It’s a fun, safe, creative environment to learn and build confidence in facing huge issues from the personal to the global. It’s been an immensely enriching experience being involved so far, and I’m looking forward to a shifted future.”
“It’s called the ‘shift’ course for a reason and more the inner shift than anything else. I now view my life in 2 parts: ‘before shift’ (BS) and ‘after shift’!”
“The SHIFT PSC gives very good value for money for the student, it’s a unique learning experience that enables a depth and breadth of knowledge to be accessed in an informal non-judgemental way. You should be very proud of what started out as a back of an envelope idea and is now a blueprint of how to run a first rate sustainability course on a shoe string with over 150 students benefiting from being involved and leading a richer and more informed life. Don’t underestimate the true value of the SHIFT course, it is unique and something very special.”
“I work in research for the UCL Energy and Sustainable Resources Institute where I get to take an active part in current energy/ sustainability planning and have regular contact with climate and sustainability field leaders. The confidence and knowledge from the course definitely put me where I am today and has set me on a path which has shown me not only how to be more resilient but to want that resilience, imagination and drive to be shared in others.
The work I’m doing now has been reflected in the course, new research areas are widely based around what I learned at Shift.”
