Back to the wild

BACK TO THe WILD

Based at Hellens Manor, Herefordshire, Back to the Wild CIC was created to help young people nurture and reclaim their relationship with the natural world.

In the 21st century, we face the results of our profound disconnect with nature. The climate crisis, habitat loss, and wildlife emergency, are forceful warning signs that humans are both losing and failing in their relationship with nature. There are those however who are waking up to the crucial knowledge of our continuing reliance on nature for health, well-being, and survival, and to our role and responsibility as a part of nature ourselves.  The instinct for partnership with the natural world was once an essential part of human wisdom and needs to become so again.

We believe that a relationship with our environment must develop in a myriad of ways and not just with left-brain linear thinking and learning skills. Our essential task is to re-engage with the natural world on all levels, employing our senses, our emotional and communicative skills, and our capacity for wonder! With compassion and gratitude we can develop the awareness necessary to genuinely understand what is around us, and so engage creatively and symbiotically with what is our only biosphere.

Hellens offers a fantastic context for this with its ancient 58 acre Hallwood, wild flower meadows, and the surrounding farmland where young people can build skills, knowledge, respect and understanding with experienced professional enthusiasts supporting them.

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Back to the Wild exists to:

  • Aid personal development for young people.
  • Facilitate better understanding of nature and our part in it.
  • Enhance positive mental and physical health through outdoor experiences
  • Share and learn new fundamental life-skills
  • Promote equality, cooperation, collaboration and harmony
  • Celebrate ancient and traditional rural skills and knowledge
  • Improve humanity’s relationship to the planet and Promote sustainable living

A little history

B2W was founded by Adam Munthe, Chairman of the PMM Charity Trust, following the Finnmark Expeditions in 2007 - a journey looking at climate change, which he led for the RGS by dog sledge through the Fennoscandia Arctic. Whilst on this journey, and on other previous expeditions, he witnessed first hand two considerable issues: How humanity’s development, in the specific context of global climate change, is impacting on the lives of indigenous people, and how critical proper knowledge of the natural world in which we still exist, is to our lives and future.

On return he began working with schools in London offering residential B2W Projects at Hellens to further young people’s understanding of the world and to inspire a greater confidence to live in the world sustainably, as part of nature not separate from it. Over the past 12 years, the Back to the Wild project has flourished and grown. Since 2016 we have received a 25% proportion of profits from the Hellens Garden Festival, which has enabled us to offer more projects each year to local groups.

Back to the Wild provides young people a place to learn new skills and meet new challenges. Activities have included sleeping in self- built shelters, camp fire cooking, map reading and navigation, coracling, foraging and woodland crafts; all delivered in a way that encourages participants to explore new ideas and ask questions both of themselves and of human culture.

The B2W Team is comprised of Kat Terry, Tim Gunner, Katrina Preston and Kieran Terry. In October 2018, we became a Community Interest Company (11653150) which will allow us to gently grow the project as we seek further funding.

If you would like to find out more about what we offer or if you know a group who would benefit from a Back to the Wild project please get in touch   Email :       b2wcic@gmail.com

B2W CIC   Founding Patron: Adam Munthe.   With gratitude for the support of the PMMCT

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