About Us
The Sustainable Living Arts School is a rural and urban learning network that emphasizes bringing local folks, local knowledge and local resources together for hands-on learning experiences.
WHY A SCHOOL OF SUSTAINABLE ARTS?
Peak oil, anyone? And has Free Trade Agreement got you nuts? Megalomaniacal leaders to the South who also control most of Canada’s food supply? A world gone mad with consumerism and debt? It seems like a sensible time to relearn simple, low tech skills that will reduce our local footprint, decrease our impact on others in the world, and to permit breathing space and time for connection with our landscape.
WHY LEARN AND TEACH WITH US?
- Students will meet others with common dreams and ideas. Build your network!
- Today’s students are tomorrows teachers
- Save money on food and utilities.
- Feel good about using your new skills to reduce environmental impact.
- Experience working models of sustainable landscape design
IN ROBERT’S CREEK ON THE SUNSHINE COAST, BC at our rural campus, Robin Wheeler’s lush Edible Landscapes, we host weekend intensive workshops on a wide variety of sustainability skills. Come relearn the simple, low tech skills that will reduce our local footprint, decrease our impact on others in the world, and permit breathing space and time for connection with our landscape. Robin runs an edible landscape nursery, fully of many perennial food plants adored by permaculturists. She is also a gifted herbalist, an author www.ediblelandscapes.ca
IN VANCOUVER, BC we host free/by donation learning parties where the subject is anything that helps us to live more lightly and joyfully. We’re inspired by permaculturists, 100 mile dieters (’cept for chocolate etc), slow foodies, herbalists, alternative energy folk, natural builders and thrifty, handy, food-growing and food foraging people everywhere. We value and work towards non-commodified, non-institutional, non-credentialized, non-evaluated learning and yes-accessible, yes-joyous, yes-empowering, yes-collective learning (among other lofty goals)! Consuming less and relating more, might be one way to sum it up.
Other ways some of our organizers are teaching and learning sustainability skills include:
- Partnering with Langara College Continuing Studies and the Unitarian Church in Vancouver to offer day-long workshops- a chance to go deep on topics like winter gardening, herbal medicine, fermentation, permaculture and eating sustainably.
- Facilitating a community garden project with Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House.