Online Course - Energy Systems Science and Practice by Curtis Ogden and Gaia Education

Gaia Schools

A global community of diverse, place-based educational initiatives united by shared values and a commitment to regenerative, holistic education.

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Gaia Schools Network

Common Vision

The Gaia Schools Network is a global community of diverse, place-based educational initiatives united by shared values and a commitment to regenerative, holistic education. Our vision is to cultivate learning environments that empower students, teachers, and families to thrive while contributing positively to their communities and the wider world.

Gaia Schools foster a deep connection with nature, community, and self-development, through participatory, inclusive, and learner-centred processes. At the heart of the network are schools that apply the Gaia Education 4D Framework, integrating the dimensions of Social, Ecological, Economic, and Worldview sustainability into their learning environments, curricula, and daily practices.

These schools act as living sustainability hubs and demonstration sites, inspiring and engaging their local communities and neighbourhoods while modelling pathways toward more resilient and regenerative futures.

Energy Systems Science and Practice Online course with Curtis Ogden and Gaia Education

Background

How did it start? (to be written)

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is an approach to education that empowers learners of all ages with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes needed to contribute to a more sustainable, healthy, and just future.

ESD integrates key global challenges—such as climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty reduction, and sustainable consumption—into teaching and learning processes, while encouraging learners to understand the interconnectedness of social, ecological, economic, and cultural systems.

It emphasises participatory and learner-centred methodologies that foster critical thinking, collaboration, and the ability to imagine and shape alternative futures. By promoting active engagement and responsible decision-making, ESD calls for transformative changes in how education is designed and practised, positioning education as a key driver for sustainable development.

Key Benefits

In our time together, we will gain a theoretical and experiential understanding of energy systems and flow networks, and spend time each session more deeply and interactively exploring the 4 pillars:

Regenerative flows – how energy circulates to nourish systems
Balanced and resilient structures – designing systems that adapt and thrive
Common-cause culture – building shared purpose and collaboration
Cooperative learning – strengthening collective wisdom and action

What You Will Gain

In the end, participants will leave this course not only with a conceptual and experiential understanding of regenerative development, energy systems and flow networks, but also:

• Being able to apply this knowledge to real situations — from local projects and organizations to broader environments

• New tools, frameworks, and case examples that support lasting change

• Confidence in your ability to design and influence regenerative systems

If you're ready to explore the world of energy flows, this program is for you!

ENROLL IN ENERGY SYSTEMS COURSE NOW

Gaia’s 4D Framework: Unique and impactful approach to Sustainability & Regeneration

Social, Ecological, Economic, and Worldview dimensions combine to offer a holistic approach to sustainability. Gaia’s 4D Framework connects people, nature, local economies, and personal growth to create balanced and resilient comunities and projects.

The 4D Framework applied to Schools

The Gaia Education 4D Framework, grounded in the four core dimensions of sustainability—Social, Worldview, Ecological, and Economic—was developed alongside the Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) curriculum, drawing on the experience and expertise of a global network of some of the world’s most successful ecovillages and transition initiatives.

The framework has since been adapted for school settings, making it accessible and practical for formal schools and other learning environments. When applied in schools, the 4D Framework supports integrated, whole-school approaches that connect curriculum, campus, culture, and community.

Social

Enhance your leadership and collaboration skills with practical tools to empower communities, advance social justice, create inclusive solutions, and implement effective governance strategies.

Ecological

Master regenerative design and ecological practices to restore nature, applying principles of permaculture, ecosystem resilience, and innovative environmental solutions.

Economic

Develop regenerative economic models by integrating local economies, ethical finance, conscious consumption, and systems that foster prosperity without depleting natural resources.

Worldview

Expand your perspective by embracing holistic values, ecological ethics, and transformative spirituality while balancing innovation with ancestral wisdom.

Energy Systems Course Format and Details

Course format:

Online, flexible modules

Price:

200 GBP
Limited number of partial scholarship available, apply here by 15 Feb 2026

Duration:

5 weeks

Workload:

Approximately 5 hours per week

Structure:

Live sessions, Forums and complimentary material

Live Sessions

Four 2,5 hours interactive sessions with Curtis Ogden

How to Become a Gaia School

We welcome schools at different stages of development that are working across the Gaia Education 4D Framework. Both formal and non-formal schools are invited to join, regardless of their primary educational approach—whether Waldorf, Montessori, project-based learning, or other pedagogies and methodologies.

Pedagogy and Principles

Gaia Schools embrace:

Participatory learning – engaging students as active contributors to their education
Experiential learning – hands-on, real-world experiences that deepen understanding.
Life-affirming, nature-based education – fostering a deep connection with the natural world.
Personal and social development – encouraging self-awareness, empathy, and strong social skills.
Student empowerment – supporting each learner in developing their unique talents and abilities.
Respect for diversity – promoting cultural diversity, social inclusion, and gender equality.

Join us in shaping a future where education is nature-based, regenerative, and nurtures both individuals and communities.

How to Get Certified as a Gaia School

If your school aligns with the pedagogy and principles above, is already applying the 4D Framework, and has been operating for at least two years, you are eligible to begin the certification process.

Certification Process

Get in touch with the Gaia Schools Coordinator
taisa.mattos@gaiaeducation.org to introduce your school and set up an initial meeting.
Participate in group meetings for a period of six months.
Engage actively in group activities and peer learning.
Once these initial criteria are met, please write to:
certification@gaiaeducation.org

You will then be invited to:

Complete the 4D Framework assessment, and
Participate in an interview with the Certification Manager.

Certified Schools’ Profiles

Our course is taught by leading bioregional practitioners from diverse global contexts, including:

Gaia Kool

Estonia

More Info

Founder of the Bioregional Learning Centre (UK), Isabel is a bioregional educator and systems thinker dedicated to empowering communities through place-based learning and regenerative design.

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Liber School

Italy

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Founders of Resilience.Earth (Catalonia, Spain), Erika is a specialist in regenerative governance, decolonial approaches, and participatory community engagement. Oscar focuses on regenerative leadership, social innovation, and systemic change for bioregional transformation.

Hjallastefnan Árbær

Iceland

More Info

Founder of Colombia Regenerativa, Melina integrates biomimicry, biocultural innovations, and systemic design to strengthen bioregional identity and collaboration.

Poshayi St. Mary’s Primary School

Zimbabwe

More Info

Founder of Pattern Mind (USA), Joel is a renowned permaculture designer and tracker, helping individuals and communities reconnect with living landscapes through pattern recognition.

The Chestnut Tree

Spain

More Info

Author, curator, and founder of Doors of Perception (France), John explores sustainable livelihoods and regenerative economies in bioregional contexts.

Johannes Kepler

Ecuador

More Info

Systems change expert and regenerative finance specialist, Stuart co-authored Ecological Design and works on bioregional infrastructure and resilience-building.

Udi Mandel

Enlivened Cooperative, Hawaii, USA

Researcher and educator in cosmopolitical learning, Udi explores interspecies relationships and indigenous knowledge systems to foster bioregional stewardship.

Daniel Wahl & team

Tramuntana Regenera, Mallorca, Spain

Author of Designing Regenerative Cultures, Daniel is a leading thinker on regenerative design and bioregional regeneration, based in Mallorca, Spain.

Eileen Hutton

Burren College of Art, Ireland

Artist and educator at Burren College of Art (Ireland), Eileen focuses on creative ecological engagement and deepening relationality with place through artistic practice.

Eduard Muller

Costa Rica Regenerativa & UCI, Costa Rica

Founder of the University for International Cooperation (Costa Rica), Eduard is a leader in regenerative development and planetary health.

Gaia Schools’ Webinars

Get to know more about the Gaia Schools Network watching our webinars

The Social Dimension is one part of Gaia's unique 4D Model, which integrates social, ecological, economic and worldview dimensions to create lasting change.

Webinar #1

How to apply Ecovillage Design and Regenerative Education into Schools?

May 28th, 2024

This opening session will provide background on bioregioning, its current context, and an overview of the webinar series. Jane and Isabel, co-founders of the Bioregional Learning Centre, will guide you through the steps for activating a bioregion—from creating a Story of Place to mapping bioregional systems through a Learning Journey, intervening in those systems to drive change through project work, launching a multi-sector and multi-actor design process to build collective will, and documenting the actions along the way. They will also discuss bioregional governance, data, and finance.

The programme opens with a reflection on the intersection between three megatrends informing the world we live in: women’s repositioning in society, the accelerated pace of urbanisation and the imperative of decarbonisation of our lifestyles. It draws on recent reports and documents from international ‘agenda holders’ and ‘knowledge brokers’ that reaffirm the historical fact that cities have predominantly been planned and built by using men’s experience as a reference. We then discuss the implications of cities tending to function better for men than for women, children, older people, all levels of ableness, and gender identities and how cities are bridging this gap in urban planning.

Participants will be invited to:

• Examine how these megatrends influence the bio-cultural-spatial uniqueness of their place.

• Explore the ongoing impact of Modernism and Fordism on the continuities and discontinuities of cities, towns and neighbourhoods.

• Reflect on unique gender-sensitive policies and practices from cities such as Vienna, Lyon, Glasgow and Rio de Janeiro, which aim to bridge the historic gender gap in urban planning.

Webinar #2

How to apply Regenerative Education, Environmental Education and Ecovillage Design into Schools?

May 6th, 2025

Webinar #3

Permaculture for Children & Schools

Jan 27th, 2026

Tuesday, April 29

Bioregioning and Regenerative Governance
Facilitators: Erika Zárate & Oscar Gussinyer

Erika and Oscar will share their years of experience working with municipalities in and beyond the Garrotxa bioregion in Catalonia. You will learn how to activate the critical yeast, engage the critical mass, and enable the community to take ownership and responsibility for the stewardship of their place. They will present a framework with a regenerative perspective, empowering you to start your own bioregional process while ensuring all voices in your community are included through a decolonizing and intersectional approach.

This module examines the theories of change shaping feminist cities and introduces the concept of co-evolving mutualism and its application across scales. It engages in practices like ‘mapping with your feet’ and ‘exposing mental models in the open air’ to uncover overlooked narratives from those who have been largely absent from urban planning. The module also introduces the concept of leverage points, emphasizing how targeted interventions can create lasting systemic impacts.

Participants will be invited to:

• Consider how to move beyond a zero-sum perspective while reflecting on how cities that work for women and girls can ultimately benefit everyone;

• Develop and apply an investigative regenerative framework tailored to their own contexts;

• Critically evaluate the impact of tokenistic consultations versus practices of deep listening;

• Identify effective ways to intervene in urban systems, organising leverage points in main analytical categories.

Tuesday, May 6

Tracking the Living Landscape / Embodying Ecological Consciousness
Facilitator: Joel Glanzberg (Pattern Mind)

Through movement and storytelling, we will use a pattern perspective to reconnect with our original human art of tracking and wayfinding within the patterns of the living world. Building on the disciplines of Tracking (pattern seeing), Living Systems Thinking (pattern thinking), and Permaculture (pattern design), we will explore how developing our pattern mind can help us see, plan, and act regeneratively in our lives, communities, and bioregions.

This week explores how to design to increase rather than limit women, girls and children’s options in green spaces such as parks, gardens, woods, nature reserves, playing fields, and community allotments. The emphasis is on design that supports less confident groups – young girls, people with health conditions or impairments, and the elderly – to stake a claim to their green areas. This module also explores the need to increase the proportion of land given over to a wilder, less cultivated and the acceptance of wildlife’s right to evolve and diversify within urban environments.

Participants will be able to evaluate the importance and applicability of the following leverage points:

• Cultivating biophilia;

• Redistributing land use and budget allocation for equality and gendered landscapes;

• Creating conditions for wildness;

• Growing and foraging for health and wellbeing;

• Designing adventurous playgrounds for children and carers;

• Maximising use of available local resources in urban interventions.

Tuesday, May 13

Bioregional regeneration as a pathway to community resilience and planetary health
Facilitators: Daniel Wahl, with Brad Robertson, Joe Holles

Daniel Wahl will briefly reflect on the significance of bioregioning in the context of regional community resilience-building through the regeneration of social cohesion, local economies, and local ecosystems. He will also discuss the significance of the bioregional scale as the most effective approach for contributing to planetary health before introducing the ongoing work in Mallorca. Brad Robertson will share insights into the community-led marine stewardship and regeneration efforts of Save the Med. Joe Holles will highlight critical aspects of the work of Fundació Iniciativas Mediterrani in creating three place-sourced and context-serving associations focused on Palma, the Tramuntana mountain range, and the ‘Pla’ (the plains/rest of the island) over the last 8 years. He will also share his experience in the recovery of 250 hectares of ancient olive groves in the Tramuntana and how our collective collaboration contributes to the ‘Regenerative Renaissance Project’. Together, we will reflect on how the groundwork of building networks of trust and relationships based on shared care, love, and attention to place over the last decade and longer is now slowly coalescing into a bioregional approach for the Soller Valley, the Tramuntana Mountain Range, the island of Mallorca, and the Balearic archipelago.

Since fostering gender equality is a fundamental trend of the 21st century and an essential aspect of good urbanism, this week is an invitation for the participants, to embrace the exciting, liberating and unprecedented prospects that come from designing cities that work for all. Thus, together we will weave the insights of the previous weeks and focus on developing a mosaic of visions that could be leveraged by the participants themselves. If we cannot imagine the future we want to create we will never get there!

Tuesday, May 20

Good Work: Where are the Jobs and Livelihoods in Bioregioning?
Facilitator: John Thackara

This "follow-the-money" session asks: Who is doing this work—and getting paid for it? What can we learn from them? One starting point: many funded activities already align with bioregional principles, even if they go by different names—such as regional or rural development, ecological restoration, natural farming, food system transformation, or landscape design. We will hear from practitioners engaged in bioregional work, even if they don’t all use that term.

This week examines the practice of active travel – traveling with purpose using one’s own energy – through modes such as walking, cycling, wheeling, and scooting as a way of life. The discussion focuses on policies and practices worldwide that support the transition from car-centric to people-centric cities where traffic is evaporated, and people work with nature to create places that function at a speed conducive to living well.

Participants will be able to reflect on the importance and applicability of the following leverage points:

• Devising a library of women-tailored bike saddles;

• Making practical cycle awareness training mandatory for drivers;

• Designing ‘fresh air routes’ and low emissions zones from the perspective of women and infants;

• Rethinking the bus fare system for ‘trip-chaining’, and redesigning buses for encumbered travel;

• Delineating and flowing through cycling infrastructure.

Tuesday, May 27

Building Infrastructure for Bioregional Resilience and Regeneration
Facilitator: Stuart Cowan

The Buckminster Fuller Institute is working to support commons-based, shared infrastructure for bioregional resilience and regeneration. In this session, we will explore existing and emerging tools and processes that can support bioregional initiatives in sensing, mapping, knowledge systems, planning, governance, and finance.

This week explores the nuanced distinction between perceived safety—a subjective fear based on judgments about the possibility of harm—and the direct experience of feeling unsafe due to actual harm or threat. The focus is on strategies to expand the use of public spaces in the evenings and the role of natural surveillance, ‘the eyes on the street’ and ‘the guardians who belong’ in enhancing safety perceptions and deterring criminal behaviour.

Participants will be able to evaluate the importance and applicability of the following leverage points:

• Building confidence thorough easy-to-access self-defence training, and seminars on rights of women and domestic violence.

• Working with men to redistribute power, balance representation and transform legal and planning systems.

• Improving natural surveillance by design.

• Scheduling regular patrol walks by ‘wardens who belong’.

• Expanding the use of public space in the evenings by creating favourable bio-cultural-spatial conditions.

• Co-creating transitional safeguarding public spaces for young women.

• Co-designing places with (not only for) teenage girls.

Tuesday, June 3

Biosystemic Bioregioning
Facilitator: Melina Angel

Learn how to create a collective identity from a bioinspired systemic perspective, fostering connection and collaboration among all bioregional actors. The internal indicators of a bioregion differ from the external outcomes we seek in the world, making it essential to incorporate an internal biomimetic perspective into bioregioning. This session will showcase examples from Colombia, highlighting innovation and the wisdom of connectivity from the Global South.

This week focuses on sense of place that speaks about meaningful relationships between people and specific locations and its three manifestations as place identity, where individuals define themselves through deep interactions with a particular locality; place attachment, an emotional bond that fosters a sense of belonging and connection to the environment; or place dependence, where attachment arises from functional reliance on a specific location. By exploring these dimensions, participants will gain insights into how to enable sense of place to evolve in communities everywhere.

Participants will be able to evaluate the importance and applicability of the following leverage points:

• Developing spaces for gathering and belonging;

• Designing urban extensions while evolving the whole;

• Shifting from a mentality of maintenance to an attitude of care;

• Co-developing sympathetic infrastructure enabling a sense of co-ownership and care;

• Practising a culture of deep listening in the design and development of local plans;

• Infusing beauty into cities’ form and function;

• Developing inter-generational housing for a maturing humanity.

Tuesday, June 10

Bringing together ancient and modern knowledge and practice in Hawaii
Facilitator: Udi Mandel, Kelly Teamey and Kū Kahakalau

This session brings together indigenous Hawaiian and other multidisciplinary systems of knowledge and practice, featuring examples from Hawaiʻi Island. We will explore how learning with and through a key species in the bioregion—such as the hala tree (Pandanus tectorius in Hawaii)—can serve as a bridge between indigenous knowledge, scientific disciplines, the arts, and land stewardship, fostering mutual flourishing. Additionally, we will share insights on how supporting traditional stewards of culture and land helps regenerate Hawaiian foodways while promoting the flourishing of aloha ʻāina—a deep, reciprocal love and care for the land and sea, which sustains all life.

Tuesday, June 17

Artistic practice, the Story of Place & Community Resilience
Facilitator: Eileen Hutton, Dr. Brendan Dunford, Maeve Stone & Katerina Gribkoff

As creative practitioners, artists have honed capacities for storytelling, for making the invisible visible, for understanding the language of cultural values, and for being adept at systems thinking and fostering connectivity. These are essential methodologies for enquiring into the story of place and how it functions. With contributions from Burrenbeo, this webinar will introduce the Burren region as the context for three socially and ecologically engaged case studies: the MFA in Art & Ecology programmes at Burren College of Art, along with PhD candidate Katerina Gribkoff, and the Creative Climate Action project The Time Machine, as presented by Maeve Stone of Cracking Light Production.

Tuesday, June 24

Bioregional development: putting life at the center
Facilitator: Eduard Muller

Based on many years of working with bioregional development in Costa Rica and many places, Eduard Muller will walk through the diverse strategies for defining the limits of a bioregion, based on social, political, and geographical-ecological characteristics. In addition to discussing culture, identity, and the formation of governance structures (from the viewpoint of the Global South), the session will explore how to establish regenerative economies for inclusive development. Examples of regenerating conditions for life through land management practices, including regenerative agriculture and holistic grazing, will also be presented. Lastly, the session will explore how to build capacities across bioregions to co-create solutions.

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Have questions? We’ve got answers.

No previous experience is required. All you need is a passion for community building and collaboration.

The course is designed to fit busy schedules with around 10 hours per week of flexible study. Though highly encouraged, Live Sessions are not mandatory and are recorded to be watched later.

Yes! The course provides hands-on tools you can apply immediately in your community.

An energy systems course explores how energy flows through living, social, and economic systems, and how these flows shape resilience, equity, and long-term sustainability.

No. This course is accessible and experiential, combining systems science with practical tools and real-world applications.

Entirely online with live sessions, group discussions, and self-paced assignments. You’ll have access to experienced facilitators, a supportive learning community, and rich resource materials.

Yes. The course is designed for people working in community development, sustainability, education, social innovation, and regenerative design.

Participants have life-long access to the course material. Though the course has a defined length, participants can go back to the material any time after the course completion.