The Isle of Avalon Foundation began life in 1991 as The University of Avalon, with the original vision to re-establish Glastonbury as a great centre of sacred learning. In 1995 it changed its name to The Isle of Avalon Foundation.

Today, The Isle of Avalon Foundation runs a wide variety of educational programmes and courses and has certainly increased its portfolio since those early, visionary days. These programmes and courses put us at the cutting edge of teaching and learning in the fields of contemporary spirituality, the new age and personal development. What we do can be seen to fall into four basic programmes of study:

• The Higher Education Programme
• The Training Programme
• The Vocational Programme
• E-learning Programmes

The Higher Education Programme

This is one of the newest areas of the work of the Foundation, being developed during the latter part of 2004. The aim of this area of work will be the creation of a Centre For The Study of Contemporary Spirituality & The New Age which will be an academically based research and teaching centre aimed at developing further links with universities as well as running our own programmes.

The basic programme in this section is the university field trip programme which has been designed to give university students a chance to come and study various forms of contemporary spirituality in the field. We have already run several field trips for universities, had students on placement and have also provided a training day for Christian clergy to introduce them to this area.

The Training Programme

The training programme consists of a range of courses we run that train people to practice in various areas of contemporary spirituality and healing. In this context we mean practice in a professional sense, and all of the courses have been designed with such professional concerns in mind, not least of all because of the need for insurance. All of the courses can be taken purely for interest, as the professional element of the course is done through a range of assessed work, that in many courses can be optional.

The courses in this programme are:

• The Call of the Shaman
• Shamanic Practitioner Course: The Warrior in The Heart
• The Way Of The Bard

The Vocational Programme

This programme of courses are for those people who want to study a particular tradition within contemporary spirituality or other relevant skills, such as divination. These courses are open to anyone, and although some courses offer forms of initiation into a particular spiritual tradition, the courses themselves can be taken for interest only as any initiatory aspect is purely optional.

The courses in this programme are:

• Priestess of Avalon
• The Shamanic Journey*
• Past Life Regression & Manifesting Your Dreams*
• An Away Day With the Faeries*

* Denotes a one day or weekend course

We are in the process of developing other courses in this area which will include Reflexology, Spirituality & Work and Clowning.

The E-learning Programme

In order for us to be at the cutting edge of the delivery of modern educational courses, we have started to plan a series of e-learning programmes which are likely to be done in partnership with another organisation. We may also develop some distance learning programmes. We would hope to have something in this area during 2006.

For more details of all our courses, please look at the Course pages.