FREE Course Places worth £500 for Commoners and those Working on Commons

Farm Business Opportunities - Course starting October 2023

Thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Foundation for Common Land and Our Upland Commons project is pleased to announce that we are offering 12 fully funded places, to the value of £500, on a new set of farming courses recently launched by the University of Cumbria.  

Bursary places are available to: 

• Common rights holders 

• Anyone working on a farm with common rights, including family members 

• Commons owners, including private owners 

• An employee of an organisation owning or working on common land 

Working with the University of Cumbria on their new short courses in upland environmental land management, a new programme of courses aimed at farmers, land managers and advisors will cover: 

• Farm Business Opportunities - Register now for Bursary Places (see link below)

• Upland Farming for Net Zero; developed with the Farm Carbon Toolkit - Coming - January 2023

• Mapping Environmental Assets; developed with Land App - Coming - June 2023

All 3 courses are accredited and provided through the University of Cumbria’s Institute of Science and Environment. They will take place in October, January and June and each one will run for 8 - 10 weeks on a part-time basis. A total of 24 hours of learning will be spread across online evening lectures, workshops and farm visits. The first course, Farm Business Opportunities, will take place this October. 

Further details on the Farm Business Opportunities course are available here

Provisional Timetable for the Farm Business Opportunities Module

To secure your bursary and a place on the course, you will need to pay an attendance deposit of £100 which is refundable if you attend 80% of the course. There is no geographical boundary to those wishing to avail of the bursary however, it should be noted that some of the sessions will take place at the University of Cumbria Ambleside campus and on farms within the Lake District. 

To apply for a bursary place on the Farm Business Opportunities course, fill in this form and send it to keira@foundationforcommonland.org.uk.

You can also contact Keira if you have any issues accessing the form.

Please visit the University of Cumbria website for details of the all the courses.  

Contact keira@foundationforcommonland.org.uk with any questions about the bursary.