About the only silver lining to the horror of redundancy – assuming your employer didn't just go bust in the night – is the lump sum. How about using it to head off and do something completely different, asks SANDRA O'CONNELL

Cookery

You don't have to have seen Julie & Juliato appreciate how a stint at the world's best-known school of culinary arts can change your life and your career prospects. While a large part of the fun of that film was watching Meryl Streep get to grips with French at the Cordon Bleu institute, the good news for Irish foodies is that the school has a London campus where you can study for the prestigious Grand Diplôme – your passport to the culinary world – entirely in English. If the price of the nine-month course, at £23,355 (€26,150), is a little too rich for you, just dip a finger in with the first stage, the Basic Certificate, which you can work toward in 11 weeks for £5,240 (€5,900).

cordonbleu.edu

Photography

The renowned Magnum agency runs workshops that are open to both professional photographers and curious amateurs. They include On the Road, with Nikos Economopoulos, which aims to combine spontaneous photography with the joy of the journey. The next tour, which takes place from February 7th to 14th in Cairo, involves snapping by day, editing by night and discussing your best images into the wee small hours. The goal is to help participants develop their own styles. The course costs €1,100, including accommodation. Other tours slated to take place in 2010 include ones in Istanbul, Beirut, Tirana, Sarajevo and Marrakesh.

magnumphotos.com

Acting

Nothing promises to bring out your latent luvvy as effectively as a stint at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Film Institute, in New York. A four-week intensive acting workshop that runs from February 26th covers such topics as Strasberg’s famous method, voice, movement and scene study. Registration is on a first-come-first-served basis, and no experience – or audition - is required. The tuition cost is $1,500 (€ 1,050).

strasberg.com

Sailing

If you feel like sailing off into the sunset but don’t want to fork out for a boat, how about crewing for someone else? Sunsail runs RYA Competent Crew courses, a first step in turning landlubbers into employable crew members. You’ve a choice of schools around the world, including in Australia, the Caribbean and Thailand, and each five-day course will see you complete 160km at sea in tidal waters, including four night hours. A course in the Greek resort of Vounaki, including flights and accommodation, costs about €850.

sunway.ie

Wine management

Turn wine from a hobby to a career with a wine MBA from BEM Management School, in Bordeaux. The course looks at the global wine business, promising to equip participants with management acumen, market insight and leadership skills. As the course is run on a part-time basis, you need to be on campus for only 12 weeks of the 22-month course. These are made up of six two-week sessions in Bordeaux, London and Adelaide – which gives you plenty of time to sample the end product, too, in the interest of research, of course. The course costs €25,000.

bem.edu

How to run a BB

Property values may be falling, but you can maximise the value of yours – and give yourself a job at the same time, with luck – by converting it to a BB. Ceodllys Uchaf is an award- winning guest house in the Welsh county of Carmarthenshire whose owners, Val and Keith Harber, run courses weekly from October to March that include everything from how to set up credit-card facilities to whether or not to offer evening meals. The cost, with accommodation, is £485 (€550) for one person or £685 (€765) for a couple. At the very least it will save confusion about who all the strangers in the dining room are.

coedllyscountryhouse.co.uk

Massage therapy

Economies rise and fall, but people will always prize their wellness, which is why training as a masseur can pay dividends. Head to Thai Massage School of Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, for a 25-day professional programme that could set you up for life. For 40,000 baht (€835) you get 150 hours of tuition in classes that run from Monday to Friday. As well as lectures on topics such as professional ethics, anatomy and pathology, students get practical experience, working on real patients. The next course starts on April 19th.

tmcschool.com

Art restoration

Escape into art with a course at the Lorenzo de’ Medici Academy, in Florence. Each summer the Italian organisation opens up its restoration labs, teaching the ancient art of fresco and antique techniques for oil and tempera painting. Working on 16th- and 17th-century paintings, students learn how to bring them back to their original state. The course also includes a week at the town of Rocca Imperiale, in Calabria, where the class gets to work in the church there, restoring 15th-century murals and wooden sculptures. The course costs €3,100.

lorenzodemedici.it

French

Living in France doesn’t only net you the language: it also gives you a crash course in the art of living well. Head for the south of the country and you should get sunshine, too. Institut Linguistique Adenet, in the buzzing university city of Montpellier, can accommodate speakers of all levels on its courses, which start weekly. It promises experienced teachers, top-notch technology and groups of between three and 10 per class – while its accommodation unit sorts out the practicalities for you. A four-week course in July costs €900. When you’re not studying, sights not to be missed include Carcassonne, Avignon, Provence, Camargue and Canal du Midi.

ila-france.com

Bookbinding

Shepherds Bindery in Wiltshire, in England, teaches the noble art of bookbinding. Courses for beginners cost £500 (€550) for three two-day sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday each week, including lunch. Mondays are study days, where for a small extra fee students can work in the bindery on their own projects. Accommodation is available in local BBs or hotels. By the end of it you’ll have been introduced to the most common techniques and principles of binding books by hand, including grain direction and adhesives, sewing techniques and paper folding. And you’ll be guaranteed to have produced your own book, which is more than most of us can say.

bookbinding.co.uk

Yoga

Three months at the Yoga Institute in Mumbai could see you on your way to becoming a fully fledged yoga teacher. The Indian institute, which was founded in 1918, counts itself the world’s oldest organised yoga centre. Its intensive teacher-training course, which costs 50,000 rupees (€760), includes expert tuition and four meals a day. The programme begins three times a year, with the next one starting on February 1st. Yoga has a reputation as being good for mind, body and spirit; the school also requires that “a yogic atmosphere of positivity and sincerity be maintained at all times”. How refreshing would that be?

theyogainstitute.org

If you'd rather not go so far from home

You don’t have to go abroad to change paths. Ballymaloe Cookery School, (cookingisfun.ie), in Co Cork, is Ireland’s answer to Le Cordon Bleu. Graduates of its 12-week certificate course have traditionally found themselves in demand everywhere from ski chalets to private yachts, not to mention setting up their own catering companies and restaurants. Career advice is included for those who want it; others take the classes purely for the love of food. Courses, which take place year-round, start at €9,795.

Of course there are skills and then there are skills. When the oil runs out, capitalism fails and commercially produced food becomes just too scary to eat, those who know how to live off the land will have the upper, if grubby, hand. The Institute for Permaculture and Nature Awareness (ipna.ie) is a bushcraft school in the Ring of Kerry that runs a three-month intensive naturalist training programme every summer. This residential course, which costs €2,500, covers topics as diverse as wilderness survival, natural medicines and animal tracking. Green building, permaculture and bird language are also covered, as are ancillary skillssuch as longbow making and self-defence training. Sorted.

If the present is getting you down, how about burying yourself in the past at Achill Archaeological Field School (achill-fieldschool.com), a training ground for anyone interested in archaeology? Much of its work centres on the deserted village of Slievemore, where its excavation uncovers artefacts spanning 5,000 years. Since it was set up, in 1991, several thousand students from 21 countries have taken part, and you don’t have to be on a college course to join them. A six-week module from May 31st costs €4,250, including accommodation.

Finally, a qualification in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) is a good career safety net in any climate. If her Harry Potter books don’t work out, JK Rowling might just fall back on hers. As well as providing a way to make a living, an internationally recognised one can be your passport to see the world. Atlantic School of English and Active Leisure (atlantic- english.com), in Schull, Co Cork, has four-week qualification courses for €1,450, plus about €80 a week for shared accommodation nearby. After that, the world’s your oyster.