26 March 2026
Following the release of Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision, Niki Roach sees firsthand how the King’s Foundation charity is translating the monarch’s philosophy into practice at its estate in Scotland
Planet Possible has received the Audience Choice Award for Best Science Podcast at the NYC Podcast Awards 2026. Host Niki Roach and the whole CIWEM team are delighted by the community of support that’s grown around the podcast in the five years since its launch during Niki’s tenure as president of CIWEM.
Earlier this year saw the release of Finding Harmony: A King's Vision, a film telling the story of the life of King Charles III and his belief in the principle of harmony. To explore how that vision of harmony is coming to life, and what it means for our environment, communities and the economy, Niki travelled to Dumfries House in Scotland.
An hour south of Glasgow, this 18th-century manor house and 2,000-acre estate is home to the King's Foundation, a nature and sustainability charity founded by King Charles in 1990 to build sustainable communities and transform lives. In this episode, Niki tours the estate with Dr Simon Sadinsky, executive director of education at the King's Foundation, learning about its interdisciplinary approach to everything from health and wellbeing to textiles to regenerative agriculture, and the impact of its work at Dumfries House.
If you’d like to listen along, you can find the podcast episode here, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favourite platform. Follow the podcast to stay updated on our monthly deep dives into pressing environmental challenges.
Now, over to Niki and Simon…
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Niki Roach: Well, good morning, Simon. Thank you for welcoming me to a beautiful Scotland on a very sunny morning.
Simon Sadinsky: Thank you very much. It's a delight to have you here at Dumfries house, which is the headquarters of the King's Foundation and our living laboratory, if you will. I’m so excited to show you around.
NR: Where are we going to go first?
SS: I thought first we'd show you some of the education and training that we do on the estate. We train in the region of 9,000 or 10,000 students a year here across a really diverse array of disciplines and so we have an opportunity to go and see some of those education centres, see some of our community facilities, and just learn a little bit more about how harmony sits centrally in our work here.
Social prescribing
NR: What's happening in the health and wellbeing centre?
SS: It's a really wonderful facility where we do a range of community health programmes, all grounded in the relationship between access to nature and our wellbeing, and our version of social prescribing - so how we can use the estate and everything it offers as a form of health creation. One of the first things that we did when taking on the estate was bring together local stakeholders from across various spectrums, including from the health and wellbeing sector, so local GPs, pharmacists and others, to understand what the local needs were and how this estate could help inform practice, but also looking at how do we prevent ill health, rather than simply treat poor health? And what relationship can Dumfries House play in that journey?
So out of that was born this beautiful health and wellbeing centre that runs a diverse array of programmes, everything from prediabetes and weight management through to women's health, fertility, menopause, chronic pain and fibromyalgia, a range of areas have been identified in collaboration with local GP practices. When people come to us, they're referred to us from the local GPS. And to give you an example of how it may work with prediabetes and weight management, people get referred to us, they work with our team of inhouse specialists and health and wellbeing staff and consultants that we work with. That’s working with dietitians through to a range of complementary therapies.
Then they'd also go out on the estate and work with our teams here. So because we have a catering and hospitality training school, they'd come and work with our education chefs about how to prepare healthy meals. They'd go and work with our gardens team about understanding where their food comes from and the principles of healthy eating with our farming team. They'd work with our outdoor centre team around access to nature and exercise outside of a gym environment. So really, it’s this idea that within the estate and within nature are the opportunities to create tool kits for health creation and health maintenance across a really diverse array of areas. It's a wonderful centre, free of charge to the public, free of charge to the NHS, and very much about collaborating with the system, as opposed to working outside of it.
STEM education
NR: Okay, so we've driven to the STEM Centre, which is surrounded by these beautiful mature trees. You can probably hear a bit of bird song in the background. This is not a bad place to do some learning. Simon, tell me what's happening here.
SS: This is one of our education centres on the estate. This is our STEM Centre – science, technology, engineering and maths, with a particular emphasis on engineering. It delivers primary and secondary school education, each with a slightly different focus. So for primary school, it’s about building awareness and enthusiasm for the STEM subjects, and for engineering in particular. So many of these subject areas that we're learning, through to the way our system works, we learn in silos or educational vacuums. And what that means is that when we go on and we practice, we practice in these professional silos, which is inherently unsustainable.
So sitting at the heart of everything that we do here is broadly this idea of interdisciplinarity. So you can't have a conversation about sustainable textiles without having a conversation about food and farming, without having a conversation about science and engineering, without having a conversation about how we manage our land and our built environment. And yet, in education, certainly, those conversations aren't happening in a collaborative way, and too often they're not happening in practice either. And I think that is one of those fundamental parts of harmony, which is the idea that in nature, everything is interconnected, nothing is separate. And yet we have sort of segregated ourselves from that understanding of our part in nature, being a part of nature, not being apart from nature, as His Majesty would say.
NR: I am very excited about seeing how those connections come to life in practice. Let's go and have an explore.
Interdisciplinarity
NR: Okay, so we’ve just come around to the side of the education centre. There's a beautiful river flowing through the middle here. What are we looking at, Simon?
SS: We’ve paused here just to point out a really beautifully designed traditional structure – although a new build – that sits in the sort of forested landscape, our STEM outdoor classroom. The reason I wanted to point it out is because it's indicative of our building craft programmes that we run on the estate. So in the UK, there are something like six million pre-1919, or traditional buildings, all of which require specialist repair and maintenance. Within the heritage sector, I think there's something like a third of crafts people nearing retirement age, around two thirds not actively passing on their skills and knowledge. Not for a lack of desire to do so, but there are some structural challenges with that.
And so we've got this real looming skills crisis in that area, but we also really firmly believe that it's not just about the repair and maintenance of our historic fabric, but actually, how do we understand what sustainable new construction looks like? A lot of these techniques, approaches, materials, have a huge amount of relevance to sustainability as we think about the future of construction and our built environment. So we run a range of training programmes that are higher level, so they're not for schools age group.
We're not teaching people how to use a chisel, as it were. They come in as craftspeople, as often quite talented craftspeople who may be working in more mainstream construction, or maybe feeling quite siloed within their area of work. And they join us for between nine months and a year, depending on the programme. Usually it’s cohorts of around 12 students; a really interdisciplinary mix within that cohort. So you'll have blacksmiths, joiners, timber framers, stone masons, plasterers, thatchers, stained glass artists, it’s a huge range. It’s a free programme, they get paid a monthly bursary of around £1,500 to £1,600 a month, depending on the programme.
They spend a lot of their time here at Dumfries house, including designing and building what we call our ‘live build’ structures, which we're looking at now, which is an opportunity for students to work on their own trade, but also work across disciplines. So they do everything from the design and working with the architects through to the construction. So a really wonderful example here, but you'll see examples of their work scattered across the estate.
Textiles and design
NR: So we've just popped into the textile centre. It's a room full of people looking extremely industrious. Like something off The Great British Sewing Bee for British TV viewers: mannequins everywhere and sewing machines and beautiful textiles. But what's actually happening in that space?
SS: If you look at textiles, for example, it's one of the largest global polluters, and there's a host of reasons for that, including offshoring of production, the regional specialisation of skills. So things are being sent all around before they get to you. But part of the challenge with addressing sustainability in that sector is ensuring that we have the manufacturing skills in the UK to onshore production. In the UK we do wonderful design education. We're perhaps a little less focused on the manufacturing skills and the manufacturing at scale.
So at the centre we just walked into we have a range of different programmes, so everything from working with job seekers and training them in the use of industrial sewing machines and fairly entry level manufacturing skills, but which the industry has told us [job seekers] need to enter the sector. They can kind of upskill once they're in, but the industry doesn't have the time, the money or the ability to really provide that foundational training. So we provide that foundational training for employment in the local area. We then run programmes for design graduates who come from incredible design schools all over the UK, and they come and they live with us for six weeks at Dumfries House, teaching them all about batch production, so how to make in multiples.
And then the students we just saw are our highest level programme, post graduate programme, largely run in collaboration with Chanel. And that is really about designing and creating a sort of capsule collection of garments, hundreds of garments. So the idea being that when they leave, they're better equipped to either open their own small business or move into local industry or international industry.
Catering and hospitality
NR: So right across the road from the textile centre is your catering and hospitality school. So what's happening in here?
SS: I think it's really indicative of the King's Foundation's approach to Dumfries house: which is first and foremost local community impact. This place is a community asset. It's not just for the community, but of the community, has been done in consultation with and in collaboration with the community. And a part of that is having what we would call heritage-led regeneration: the role that this heritage asset can play in social, economic, health, educational and other outcomes in the community. And then the second layer of impact is that more systemic industry level impact. So how do we use this place as a living laboratory, as ‘seeing is believing’ for the change that we think the industry can and should be taking across these areas?
The catering and hospitality training centre is an interesting example of that local impact. It's an area where there is the remnants of a really strong tourism industry, but also through the work of Dumfries House, that tourism industry is really growing. So we run a training programme here, which takes learners, many of whom are NEET - not in education, employment or training – and trains them on a six-week really intensive all day, every day, course, in both front and back of house, catering and hospitality. They would start by doing both, and then specialise in the area that they want to focus on.
NR: I'm really interested in, once you get beyond the walls of this beautiful estate and this extremely well supported piece of training, are people staying? Are you seeing the benefits of this kind of programme? Is it having the impact that you hoped it would have?
SS: Do you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot, and it sounds a bit like a cliché, but it's this idea of the importance of aspirational education. And I think whether you're looking at textiles, craft and construction, or catering and hospitality, particularly the early years of your career, can be pretty brutal, right? It's not amazing pay at times, it’s long hours, it's a lot of grunt work, if you will. But what we feel really strongly is that if within your education and training, you show where you can get to if you stay within this – when we're talking about catering and hospitality, it's very luxury led, and their placements are down in London with Jamie Oliver or other places like that, and our textile centres are collaborating with these incredible partners like Chanel, that's not just to partner with them for the sake of partnering with them.
It's because the exposure the students are getting is hugely inspirational and aspirational. And so what we find is that when people leave these programmes, they're moving into the sector first, and then they're staying in the sector.
So we did a survey of students after 10 years of leaving our building craft program: 80% still working in construction, which for the sector, is hugely high. But I think even more importantly, 60% were actively passing on their skills and knowledge. So I think there's this amazing idea that if you show where people can go to in their career, but also you show the importance of their role, not just as practitioners, but as that next generation of teachers, as that next generation of ambassadors, then it has huge impact on young people going into the sector and staying in the sector.
NR: You're showing them what's possible and I think that's absolutely wonderful.
The education garden
NR: So we find ourselves now in the public walled garden. It's beautiful. At this time of year, there are crocuses and snow drops just coming into full bloom. It looks fantastic. And I can see there's some construction work happening in the distance. And that's your education garden. Is that right?
SS: That's right. So we have a really wonderful education garden here in the estate, which works with primary and secondary school children and teaches them essentially where their food comes from; about some of the principles of organic gardening; the byproducts of our gardens, and how those can be used. But it really is from seed to fork. And so when students come in, it's all seasonal, it usually involves some element of planting, of harvesting, and then of working with our chefs to actually cook a meal out of what they've harvested that day.
Regenerative agriculture
NR: So a little bit of a surprise: as we're driving around the estate, we've stopped and hopped out of the car. There are some calves and some beautiful, full-size cows. So talk to me about how agriculture is fitting into all of this, Simon?
SS: All the animals that you see on our farm here are rare breed and so there's a real focus on the importance of preserving rare breed animals, partly because there's a lot we can learn from them: they're very local to their environments. And so it's not just about preservation for preservation’s sake; there are increasingly fewer places to train, and particularly if you're looking at how do you farm in a more regenerative way. So that's part of the challenge we tried to address.
NR: One of the things that I took away from watching Finding Harmony was the relevance of rare breeds. And as you just said, this is not about having them just for the sake of having them – the importance of having that diversity so that we don't have a monoculture, be that in agriculture, but also in livestock. So actually, if there is disease or if conditions change, that actually you've got breeds that are locally adapted to those.
SS: There’s a wonderful quote in the film, which is something along the lines of, it's not just about climate change, it’s also about biodiversity loss, and that through that biodiversity loss, we're actually losing every day our ability to address the challenges that we face. Because there is a lot that we can learn from so many of these species that are being lost. So I do think that idea of biodiversity remains fundamentally important, and it's a real challenge for us.
NR: We've popped outside and I'm looking over a fence at a model of a sheep, but not any model of a sheep. It definitely looks a bit different. What am I looking at, Simon?
SS: We have a sheep and then next to it we have a cow, and there are actually only a few of these really going around, they're quite new and unique. They're essentially calving simulators. They enable our learners to practice a whole range of situations and scenarios in calving and birthing in a very accurate, lifelike way, but without learning on animals themselves, both for the sake of the animals as well as for the learners. Particularly when things can go wrong, it can be a traumatic experience sometimes. And so again, what we're trying to do with the centre is, because it's very practitioner focused, there we have the ability to test and to trial with these models. But then we're actually in a working byre [cattleshed] where there are cattle, sheep, they're learning about how to handle them, how to process them, how to work with them. So it's a little bit of everything.
NR: So just whilst we're reflecting a bit, how many people, from an education perspective, roughly, come through Dumfries House every year?
SS: We train around 16,000 students a year across the foundation, and that includes our sites across the UK, Highgrove, two centres in London, Dumfries House, as well as a number of international permanent centres that we have as well. Dumfries House, at some point in their journey, will serve as a home for a lot of students on those programmes. So probably knocking on around 10,000 students a year will come across the doorstep of Dumfries House. The vast majority of those are local to the area, but also it's a chance for us to take students from our other programmes, centres or sites and give them access to what we teach here, and, if nothing else, access to nature.
Harmony with nature
NR: So we've headed inside the beautiful Dumfries House, sat in this glorious room on this lovely, warm day. I want to think a little bit now about the things we've seen on site, and how we pull all of that together and scale it really Simon. So thinking about the film to start off with: tell me a little bit about what harmony is.
SS: Harmony at its most fundamental, really, is this idea that we are a part of nature and not apart from it. And it sounds like such a simple philosophy, but actually, I think if we really think about what that means, it means understanding what are the relationships between things, how do we find balance in nature, but also between the various parts of nature ourselves. What harmony boils down to is this idea of an interconnectedness of our relationship with nature, or being a part of nature. But what that actually means is that it's not just this deeply philosophical exercise. It is grounded in this real sense of history and this real understanding of how people have, for much of our time, understood our relationship with nature, and how those like our Indigenous communities and traditional people still see themselves as integrated with nature. But we've lost a lot of that connection. Many of us have lost a lot of that connection. We see ourselves as being able to dominate nature as opposed to being a part of nature. And that informs directly how we think about how we learn, how we teach, how we practice and how we do so in an interconnected and more holistic way.
NR: So we talked a little bit about the 16,000 or so people that come through the doors here at the King's Foundation each year, not just at Dumfries House, but across the UK. If I was to be a little challenging, though, this is a beautiful bubble of perfection where you can control a lot of the variables – how applicable is the work that's happening here to the wider world?
SS: What we would certainly say is that the principles that underpin this place – whether it's our learners who are coming here or our practitioners that are convening here – those principles of practice and the lessons that we learn here are equally translatable outside of contexts like Dumfries House. Whether it's our projects in the built environment or other sites across the world, or whether it's those people who've been inspired by what they've seen here, or this philosophy of harmony. The film has some really wonderful examples in India and Guyana and Afghanistan. There is really remarkable work that is taking place where there is a synergy with what has been learned here, and this idea of being a living laboratory but in a really locally embedded way, with local partners, local identities, local sense of place, but with that fundamental understanding of harmony.
NR: So what does success look like for the King's Foundation?
SS: I think it's twofold. First, success is on those that we work with directly. So I think success for us is on the communities surrounding places like Dumfries House. It's on the 16,000 learners that we have here, the hundreds of thousands of people who come and visit our properties or engage with our community projects or health and wellbeing centres. So I think success in the first instance is, how can we make a positive impact on the lives of individuals and communities?
I think the secondary impact is, how can we contribute to that wider systemic change in sustainable practice in the areas in which we work? And doing so through a lens of harmony, of seeing that all of that systemic change, has to happen in a more integrated and connected way.
NR: And how successful have you been, particularly in the latter? You can see that on an individual level you're having an impact. And we were chatting to one of the guys that works in the farm, and he was saying that of the last cohort, four of those people are going on to work in farming directly. So you're clearly having an impact on individuals. But if I was again to be challenging, what is that impact more broadly that you're having?
SS: Growing and tremendous. I think we've learned a huge number of lessons along the way, whether that's at Dumfries House or on our other sites: lessons of what has worked as well as not worked. Going back to that somewhat remarkable capacity to convene as well, is that what we've created, I think, is this incredible network of practitioners, of alumni, of change makers, in the broadest sense of the term, who are inspired by, but also inspiring us and our own work. So I think there's this real sense of a community being developed of change, around us – and we see that with a lot of the young people we work with. I think there's a real nervousness, a real fear at times around some of the challenges that we face, in the sense of helplessness. And I think if, if nothing else, what we've seen is the empowering nature of this work for those individuals, but to have a wider impact moving forward.
NR: So I'm really keen to zoom out a little bit. You talked about in the film, the examples of Rajasthan in India and Afghanistan and Guyana. For listeners that might not yet have seen the film, tell me a little bit about how the work that's happening here in a country estate in Scotland is translating to Georgetown in Guyana and to Rajasthan and Afghanistan.
SS: The president of Guyana came to Dumfries House – a remarkable individual, and you'll see that in the film. There’s a really incredible history in Guyana around preservation of the rain forests and what that means, in this real sense of what the sustainability of that country looks like. But he came to Dumfries house and was really struck, I think, by that idea of the interconnectedness of these things, about that principle of harmony. And so he went back and felt really strongly, and he speaks beautifully in the film about how those principles from Dumfries House he saw could be embedded within local contexts in his areas; interconnecting conversations around Indigenous knowledge, with food systems, with agriculture, with looking at the future of the built environment in Georgetown and with all of these component parts. But seeing that what is so relevant here, this idea that all of those things are connected, is equally relevant in that context.
And what's beautiful about that is that we're going on elements of that journey with him, and so it will directly inform our own learning and our own knowledge. So it really is this sort of give and take of bringing these projects to life.
And very similar, if you look at the example in India, where the person who's leading on that truly spectacular project spent some time here at Dumfries House. Obviously he had been doing his work [before coming here]. In some cases, it's that there are people who have felt like they have this sense of connection with nature – and another really wonderful part of that convening of this idea of harmony is that it's also bringing those people in who've been doing remarkable work, but maybe haven't known how to describe it, or known how to create a movement around that, or who it just really resonates with. So I think the film is a really wonderful example of capturing stories where we've been directly involved, or whether, actually, we've seen just the remarkable work happening and wanted to be a part of that journey and learn from it as well.
NR: You talked about aspirational education. It feels like that's happening at a very practical individual level, in terms of inspiring the catering student and the textile student. But also, actually, how do you inspire people to go and make change around the world, wherever that might be? I think that definitely struck me when I saw the film, was that you were a sort of seed for what's possible, really, which an amazing thing to be doing.
SS: I mean, it is such a cliché, but I think I do feel really strongly about the importance of seeing is believing. And the idea that you can scream from the rooftops for however many years about some of these issues: the need to rethink the way we manage our land, the way we look at our health and wellbeing, how we design and build our communities. But unless you have somewhere you can put that into practice, where you can actually demonstrate, ‘look, this works, this makes an impact, we can monitor and evaluate it and see the change this is creating’, it's that much harder to create that wider systemic change without those examples. And so I think that's really where places like Dumfries House and these international projects really come into play: saying, ‘this isn't just fanciful, this is grounded in practice and this works and there are lessons that we can all learn in our own individual contexts around this’.
NR: So let's talk about growth for a minute, because one of the things that struck me in the film was when His Majesty talks about the challenges of growth in the 1960s and almost that getting out of control. And we find ourselves at a point where, certainly in the UK, the government is talking about growth all the time. How do you reconcile the work that you're doing here with that desire for growth?
SS: I think the film actually touches on it. I think they were talking about the growth of our industrial agriculture and things like that, which were in many ways very important in terms of feeding our populations and ensuring that we had food production that could cope with rapid growth and all that came with that. But without checks, without an understanding of the cost of that growth, it has a tendency to sort of run wild, as it were. Take something like economic growth: Dumfries House has had a real impact on growth of the local area, whether that's around supply chains that [meet] the needs of the estate, whether that's new hotels opening up, whether that's around all these other areas. But it has done so through the lens of nature first and foremost and I think that's a really interesting perspective of how we explore growth, understanding what the cost is, as well as the opportunity for growth.
And central to the King's Foundation is around sustainable development. It's not just around looking backwards for looking backwards’ sake or keeping things as they were for the sake of keeping things as they were. It's about, what can we learn from the lessons of the past, and how can that inform future growth in its many forms?
NR: I was certainly struck by the Guyana example around the importance of biodiversity that they talk about in the film, and that actually you can't have growth without also having that breadth, I suppose. Whether that's species in a rainforest, whether that's, as we've seen here, the rare breed, but actually, monocultures aren’t resilient as an environmental system. So thinking about how you can do growth but do that in a way that is resilient.
SS: Yeah, I think what struck me about harmony from the first time I read the book – as it was back then – and learned more and more about it and have become obviously deeply involved in it now, is this idea that, because everything is interconnected, an intervention in one area will almost undoubtedly have an impact on another. And unless we start thinking in that sort of wider systems way, we're missing those connections, we're missing those gaps. And even well intentioned interventions have the possibility of negatively impacting or positively impacting but in a way that we don't know or understand or control. And so I think this really lovely idea – that actually seeing things through that lens of circularity of the ecosystem and the fine balances that exist within that – gives you a really different idea of how you think about the work that you do and the impact that may well have on other parts of our system.
NR: I was struck as I was walking around and thinking about that principle, that actually you shouldn't have unintended consequences. If you're thinking in a systems way, they're just consequences, and you should know about them.
We are coming towards the end of our time together. I feel better just having been here. It's just glorious! This is social prescribing happening already!
A couple of final questions for you, really. One is for people that haven't yet seen the film, Finding Harmony – when they do see it, what do you hope they take away from it?
SS: I think what the film shows wonderfully is that this is also a very personal journey of His Majesty, and back when he was the Prince of Wales as well. And this idea that this is a philosophy that was born over time, and that through the work of his charities and others, a huge amount of thought and experimentation and learning has gone in to that. What I hope people take away from the film is that – and it sounds horribly cliché – they’re not in this alone. I think that this idea of community, in the broadest sense of the term, is a really powerful one, and one that hopefully shines through in the film. That whether you are students studying textiles, or you're someone moving in to farming and agriculture, or you're a practitioner who's looking at how they do things differently, or wherever you may come from, that the challenges that we face around climate change, biodiversity loss are huge – but actually that there is something aspirational and hopeful about the fact that there is not only this underpinning philosophy, but actually this community of people who are working collaboratively in an integrated way to create change. And I think that's a really wonderful thing.
NR: So final question for you, then. You know what's coming. I'm passing you the now famous Planet Possible magic wand. Give it a wave, Simon, what do you want to make possible?
SS: One of my favourite moments here at Dumfries House is an annual summer school we run that brings together a huge range of students from across the world, many different countries, joining us across a range of different disciplines. They can be architects, designers, artists, craftspeople. And they spend three weeks here on the estate, essentially exploring each other's trades and practices. And I think what is so wonderful about that is it's one of our longest running programmes – we're just coming out of our 35th anniversary year – what's amazing about that is just sitting back and listening to the conversations that are happening and eavesdropping.
And it really is just this remarkable thing where people are not just enthusiastic to be there, but actually feeling this incredible desire to share their own knowledge, to share their own learning and to learn from others in this pretty remarkable little ecosystem where they're living together, working together, understanding each other's trades and practices, getting hands on and just spending three weeks creating a system of knowledge exchange. And so my magic wand would be for more opportunities like that at scale; that that's actually built into the way in which we learn and the way in which we practice. This idea of knowledge exchange, of shared learning and of tackling some of the challenges we face in a more cohesive way.
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