About

Learn hands-on about how to build a sustainable and regenerative world.

Rizoma Field School is a family business run by Ashley and Patrick. We split our time between Uruguay and Chicago — bridging the gap between sustainability in the Global South to the Global North, finding ways to draw on similarities and learn across contexts. We run experiential learning trips both in Colonia, Uruguay, and in the midwestern United States.

The project of Rizoma Field School is three parts: research, teaching, and activism. In our research, and especially in Ashley’s book, we ask questions about the adoption of sustainable technologies, social structures, and communities of practice. We seek to publish this research in accessible language so that others might learn and adopt sustainable livelihoods. In our teaching, we incorporate experiential learning; students spend time doing hands-on work with farmers who live sustainably, and we then discuss what students are seeing through the lens of scientific research. As activists, we work with local networks like Slow Food Uruguay, as well as international networks like The Degrowth Institute or SCORAI to help build connections and support political movements.

In our courses and projects, we consider how to take on this task by melding classroom learning with field experience. How do you set up a cyclical waste system and why is it important? How does social equality contribute to a resilient society? How do economic systems impact how we interact with nature? What are the ways in which our micro decisions scale-up and how do we consider those decisions in daily life? We can contemplate these questions through the lens of history, philosophy, literature, cinema, art, agriculture, sociology, and environmental studies. We want to teach you both the philosophy and practice so that you may bring these principles to your corner of the world.