The Park, Findhorn Rd, Findhorn, Forres IV36 3TE, UK
Up to 16 in group
Apr 24 - May 1, 2027
About this Retreat
Since 2022, Sally Bogale has served as Co-CEO of Gaia Education, an international NGO with over 200 partners across 55 countries, that supports communities to move towards regenerative cultures. She joined the organisation in 2016 as Project Development and Fundraising Manager, where she worked with pioneering partners helping their communities face climate change and ecosystem loss by restoring biodiversity, strengthening livelihoods and building social and cultural resilience.
Before joining Gaia Education, Sally worked across the international development and humanitarian aid sectors with organisations including the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and Ecologia Youth Trust.
Sally is driven by the conviction that people can thrive in harmony with each other and the living world by shifting from an extractive to a regenerative view of life. She believes that using Whole Systems Design to build resilient communities and ecosystems can be a joyful experience. She lives happily near Ecovillage Findhorn with her husband, daughter, and dog.
Christine Lines grew up in England and felt the call to community, living on a kibbutz in Israel. She later emigrated to Australia where she first heard about Findhorn. With a career in travel and tourism she travelled extensively. Over time her focus turned toward the inner journey and she began organising yoga and meditation retreats. A year after attending Experience Week at Findhorn, Christine woke up with the words ‘Findhorn Life Purpose’ on her mind, an inner prompting that led her to make Findhorn home.
She has lived at the Park Ecovillage Findhorn for over fifteen years and has been deeply engaged in its educational life. For five of these years Christine served as the Executive Director of the Holistic Centers Network, linking up learning centres around the world in the spirit of collaboration. She describes Findhorn as her ‘University of the Soul’ and helps shape the learning pathway of the Findhorn Foundation.
Trained as a life coach, Christine is passionate about following the inner call, growing into our potential, and honouring the wisdom inherent in different traditions. Endlessly curious, she delights in creating spaces where people can slow down, listen more deeply, and rediscover the quiet wisdom within their own lives. She can often be found on joyful walks around Findhorn with her spaniel.
Details of this retreat
Mini Ecovillage Design Education: Regenerative Living
An experiential introduction to regenerative living through the ecological, social, economic and worldview dimensions of Ecovillage Design Education, in partnership with Gaia Education.
Grounded in the spiritual community of the Park Ecovillage, Findhorn
This Mini Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) programme welcomes people of all ages who care about the world we live in and want to explore regenerative ways of living, with ourselves, each other and the wider web of life.
At a time of ecological and social change, many of us are asking how we can contribute to a more peaceful, equitable and regenerative world. We may be seeking practical inspiration, a community of shared purpose or ways to bring our values more fully into everyday life.
This programme brings practical exploration together with inner listening and shared experience. Learning within a living ecovillage, you are invited to discover how personal awareness, community relationships and the systems that sustain us can support meaningful change.
What Ecovillage Design Education offers
As the week unfolds, you are invited into the rhythms of community life. Through facilitated sessions, visits to local projects, shared meals, reflective practices and time in nature, we explore:
Inner listening as a foundation for thoughtful action
The relationships between personal, community and planetary wellbeing
Communication skills, conflict management and shared decision making
The connections between ecological care, community wellbeing and local economies
How shared values take shape in everyday community life
Ways to bring regenerative principles into our own lives and communities
Learning also happens between sessions: sharing a meal, walking through the ecovillage, listening to different perspectives and noticing how community life works in practice. These everyday encounters help connect what we explore with how we live.
Exploring the four dimensions of regenerative living
This Mini EDE introduces the four interconnected dimensions of Ecovillage Design Education: ecological, social, economic and worldview. Through facilitated sessions, practical exploration and encounters with local projects, we discover how these dimensions come together in the life of an ecovillage.
Ecological: Explore permaculture design, the surrounding landscape and practical approaches to living in relationship with nature.
Social: Experience community building through circle dance and discovery games, alongside communication skills, conflict management and shared decision making.
Economic: Discover local initiatives that support community resilience, including social enterprise, the Eko community currency and community supported agriculture scheme in Cullerne Gardens. Explore how economies can serve people and the planet.
Worldview: Explore inner listening, co-creation with nature’s intelligences and the shifts in awareness that support a more holistic way of living.
From exploration to possibility
Towards the end of the week, an introduction to the design process invites you to draw together what you have experienced across the four dimensions. There will be space to reflect on the insights you have discovered and explore how these might inform your next steps.
Whether you are nurturing a personal change, contributing to an existing community or imagining a new initiative, this is an opportunity to consider how regenerative living can take shape in your own context.
The Park Ecovillage, Findhorn
The Mini Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) is rooted in the spiritual soil of the Park Ecovillage at Findhorn, a place with a long history of exploring the inner dimensions of life, conscious relationship and regenerative ways of living.
Park Ecovillage Findhorn is an established spiritual community and pioneering ecovillage on the Moray coast in the north of Scotland. Emerging from the Findhorn Foundation community founded in 1962, it has developed over more than six decades as a living experiment. The settlement brings together community living, ecological building, renewable energy, organic food production, nature-based systems and a holistic approach to personal and collective development, providing a rich learning environment in which participants can experience many aspects of ecovillage design in practice.
The Park offers a unique combination of natural beauty and simplicity. Surrounded by dunes, forest paths, the beach and bay, and the wide skies of the Moray Firth, it provides a supportive environment to slow down, reconnect and listen more closely – both inwardly and outwardly.
Accommodation
You will stay in simple, comfortable accommodation within or close to the Park Ecovillage. Rooms are shared, supporting the sense of togetherness and community life that is central to the experience.
Meals
Enjoy nourishing, predominantly vegetarian meals prepared with care, using seasonal and locally sourced ingredients where possible. Eating together is a practice in itself: a moment to arrive, connect and experience community through sharing a meal.
Most dietary requirements (gluten free, dairy free and vegan) can be accommodated; please let us know in advance if you have more specific requests and we can discuss this with our catering team.
Who this week is for
The Mini EDE welcomes people of all ages and backgrounds who care about the world we live in. You may be an activist, educator, student, community organiser or someone exploring how to make a difference through everyday life. People join for many different reasons:
To connect their care for the world with practical possibilities for change
To develop skills for collaboration and working across differences
To experience community life and discover how shared values and everyday cooperation support regenerative ways of living
To deepen their relationship with nature and explore ecological approaches to living
To bring reflection and inner listening into their work and actions
To find inspiration, renewal and connection with others who share their concerns
To explore practical approaches to regenerative living and community design
No prior knowledge of ecovillage design or experience of community living, meditation or spiritual practice is required.
What matters most is a willingness to participate, learn with others and stay curious about what becomes possible.
What you take home
Through participation, reflection and shared exploration, you will have opportunities to strengthen your collaboration with others, connect your values with practical action and identify possibilities relevant to your own life, community, work or study. The relationships and questions you take home can support continued learning long after the programme ends.
The Mini EDE is an invitation to explore regenerative living through direct experience, bringing inner awareness together with practical approaches to ecological care, community life and economic resilience.
You will take home an introductory understanding of the four EDE dimensions, examples drawn from a living ecovillage and ideas to explore in your own setting.
What makes the Mini EDE at Park Ecovillage Findhorn unique
In 1995, Findhorn hosted the landmark conference ‘Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities for the 21st Century’, which helped bring the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) into being. Educators from this growing network subsequently came together to translate the lived experience of ecovillages into a shared curriculum for sustainable living. Their collaboration gave rise to Gaia Education and the Ecovillage Design Education curriculum, launched at Findhorn in 2005 during GEN’s tenth anniversary conference. This Mini EDE draws on that continuing legacy of learning through community life.
The Findhorn Foundation’s longstanding engagement with the United Nations adds a global dimension to this learning environment. In June 2026, the Foundation was granted Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), building on more than three decades of engagement in transformative education, sustainable human settlements and a culture of peace. The ecovillage has also been recognised by UN-Habitat as a Best Practice for sustainable living.
Together, these connections give learning here a distinctive perspective: global aspirations for sustainability and peace can be explored alongside the everyday choices, relationships and practical initiatives of a living community. Participants can consider how local action contributes to wider change, and what this might mean in their own setting.
Travel plans
Please arrange your travel plans to arrive between 1 and 2pm on the Saturday so you have time to settle in before the welcome circle begins at 3pm. The programme ends at 10am on the Saturday. Please arrange your onward travels after this time so you can make the most of the whole experience. Once you have booked your place the pre-arrival information will include how you can arrange additional night stays if needed.
Verified
