My guest today is Rowan Salim. Rowan is a geographer, facilitator, community gardener and storyteller who loves playing, making things, meeting people, and engaging in deep, slow learning.

She is one of the founders of Free We Grow, a self-directed, nature based and sociocratic children’s learning community in Lewisham, and Putney Community Gardens, a network of green and wild growing, playing and learning spaces on the Ashburton Estate in Wandsworth.

In Episode 18, Marina looks at:

• The empowerment educators and those who who work with young people.
  
• What we have lost since the 1920’s, in terms of children’s roaming radius!
  
• The cultural lens of risk and play.
  
• How our own risk appetite affects us and what we do.
  
• If using our hands for crafts, whittling and fire-making really is that risky.
  
• The importance of a growth-mind set.

My guest today is Tom Williams, the founder and co-director of Woodland Tribe and also the Business and Service Development Manager at Eastside Community Trust in Bristol.  

Tom has been a tireless advocate for adventure play throughout his life. 

We are going to dive into the long history of Adventure playgrounds and how our attitudes to risk have changed over the last 40 years.  

Today I am sharing my new understanding in particular about our planet’s water cycle and how we can begin to consider ways of cleaning our own water from our taps. My hope is that one day we are able to put into practice old and new wisdom, so that our rivers, water tables, seas might be restored and health again.

As the last episode of Season 2, I have added to the show notes a do-it yourself water filter kit and some links to the life-enhancing properties of bio-char!

My guest today is Deborah Barker, who brings 25 years’ experience of working in the rural economy, and creative arts in the public, private and voluntary sectors.

In this conversation, we discuss holistic ways of thinking about our ecosystem, the importance of soil, farming, and sheep and how the carbon cycles are intricately linked to the water and nutrient cycles.

In this episode, Marina looks at:

1. The difference between nature connection and deep nature connection

2. The 5 pathways to Nature Connection described by Derby University (link below)

3. How different cultures and have a very different relationship with nature

4. Why attachment to place plays an important part in our development and well-being.

Jan is a leading thinker and writer on outdoor play and advocate for high quality outdoor provision for services for children from birth to seven.

She is an honorary Professor of Practice with the University of Wales Trinity St David and strategic director of Early Childhood Outdoors, the National Centre for Outdoor Play, Learning and Wellbeing. With thirty years’ experience in education, she has developed a deep commitment to the consistently powerful effect of the outdoors on young children.

Marina talks about the importance of consent and power, and how so often we don’t realise how this operates in our lives. She also discusses some core ideas within the field of Rewilding Education and Wild pedagogy.

Topics include:

• How power shows up in our relationships & schools

• How consent and choice lead to agency and self-esteem

• The Compass of Rewilding Education

• The Touchstones of Wild Pedagogy

Max is Director of Rewilding Education, a collaboration which strives to find ways to make education wilder, freer, more grounded, and more consensual.

They are co-facilitator of Call of the Wild, a Devon-based year-long programme which supports participants to develop personal and professional skills as well as igniting a soul-level connection with the living world.

Marina talks about the link between the Climate Crisis and Mental health.

Topics include

• How the Climate Crisis could implicate self-harming

• The biopsychosocial approach

• Introducing Green care models and Green Prescriptions

• Celebrating a Natural England Grant to provide funding to train NHS staff in our Certificate in Nature-based Practice

Alan trained in medicine and qualified in 1981, worked in General Practice in the NHS, lectured at Bristol University Department of Psychiatry, and was a community NHS Consultant Psychiatrist from 1998 – 2013.  

He has been a member of the sustainability committee of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, nationally, from its origins in 2014, as Green care and Nature Matters rep, until 2022.

In this last episode of Season 1, Marina looks at:

• Risk and vulnerability
• Our need for rest and play
• Not giving up on asking 'Why!'

The book referenced in the podcast is 'Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto' by Tricia Hersey (2022 Aster Publishers)

Lily Horseman has been following the threads of play, nature, community, and connection through many different roles over the last 25 years. She came to work with children through Playwork and with marginalised families in the late 90’s. 

Moving to the Wildlife Trust in 2022 to develop nature-based play projects and Local Authority play projects, alongside working in Early Years provision, Lily set up her business ‘Kindling Play and Training’ which she launched in 2009. 

Topics include some simple ideas to improve our ability to emotionally regulate and that when we do this, we model it for others around us.

• How stress feels in the body.
• The importance of giving words to our sensations and emotions. 
• The idea of place attachment.
• A few ideas to improve our ability to emotionally regulate.
  

Alison Roy is an experienced Psychotherapist, Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist, author, specialist consultant and trainer. Her experience has taught her to understand how important our communications are and how they can enhance or inhibit our relationships in every aspect of our lives. 

• Noticing the rules that are in place and asking if we had a part in designing them at all?
• What teachers are taught in their training
• How a teaching mind-set shift may be helpful
• A classic outdoor myth
• Exploring the key benefits of this approach to learning
  
  
  

Juliet is a leading outdoor learning consultant, author of 2 popular books, who is living with a terminal illness. Before becoming a consultant, Juliet was a head teacher at three schools. Her other experience draws on a degree in environmental science, as an archaeologist, conservation, outdoor education and years in mainstream teaching, including as a Head teacher.  Her well-loved blog, Creative Star, (https://creativestarlearning.co.uk)  is a must-visit resource full of excellent outdoor learning tips.

Marina Robb talks about 'Nature-Centric Models and Holistic Worldviews.'

This model underpins our courses, and in every module of our Advanced Certificate in Forest School & Outdoor Learning, Marina gives direct examples of how this can be applied to nature-based practice.

Betsy is a leading wilderness rites of passage guide and trainer, a depth psychotherapist, practising deep ecotherapy and helping people to apply the natural world for therapeutic purposes.

She specialises in Jungian and depth-oriented psychotherapy, dream work, and nature-based healing practices. Her work is guided by non-hierarchical and trauma informed perspectives. For her, depth psychotherapy is an exploration of the rich resources of one’s inner life, along with a critical examination of the forces that silence what we instinctively already know.