Date and Time
Sat, 8th Nov, 2025 at 10:00 - 16:00
KEYNOTE TALK:
The Children’s Forest 
The Children’s Forest works with forest school practice to help restore nature connected culture and restore our land through the planting of trees for the children now and yet to come. They work with games, ancestral skills, creativity, crafting, song and storytelling. These weave with the practical skills of tree planting and how to bring ecology into tending practices to support biodiversity.
The talk will introduce the 4 step process and the elements that are woven into the delivery of Children’s Forest projects.
To learn more, visit the Children’s Forest website.
During the day you will take part in 3 workshops.
Please indicate your workshop selection in order of preference when booking. We will do our best to meet your requests. This will be on a first come, first served basis.
1. Music pedagogy and song sharing – workshopping putting songs into practise in outdoor environments with Pippa Wright.
Pippa is a professional musician and early childhood music specialist, who commits to fostering meaningful connections through the joy of musical play and singing.
2. Green woodworking – Hazel crafts, making woody flowers with a knife and the gipsy flower machine, hazel whistles and “winding a withy’, with Maurice Clother.
Maurice is a forester and green woodworker based in rural Herefordshire. Using sustainably harvested native hardwoods, he makes a wide range of items for sale from turnery to furniture, tree bogs and other timber framed structures, chestnut fencing and gates. Maurice has long had a fascination for traditional woodland crafts, and has researched the subject exhaustively, and been lucky to be able to develop his skills and understanding of the ways traditional woodland crafts can swiftly transform wood into useful and attractive items. The use of hand tools and the skills our ancestors possessed are still accessible to us today; we just need to sharpen up those old tools and make the journey into the wood! Maurice has been a teacher of green woodwork since 2001 and offers courses in a canvas covered workshop, within the beautiful woodlands on the slopes of Marcle Ridge. Find more information about Maurice and Touch Wood here.
3. Bird Connection with Tom Genders.
Tom is an artist and life-long bird enthusiast and has led bird walks at Hellens. He is a teacher and educational lead for a biodiversity initiative in Warwickshire which has included tree planting workshops and bird surveying. Tom is currently conducting an ongoing bird survey of the Hellens site for us. Find more information about Tom here.
4. Exploring fibres, easy natural dying techniques and wet felting with Toni Pettitt.
Toni is a Forest School Leader & Company Director of Branching Out. Toni’s career path emerged from inviting different groups to share and experience her and her husband’s semi-ancient woodland. She enjoyed the challenge of creating engaging activities for the different groups and seeing the positive outcomes from doing so. From here, Toni was funded through Shropshire Hills AONB to complete her level 3 Social Forestry Practitioner qualification. Toni is also co-founder and director of Knighton Woodland Tots CIC and completed her Forest School Leader level 3 qualification through the CIC 3 years ago, and has been delivering Forest School sessions ever since. Toni has now accumulated experience in working with schools, holiday clubs, home education groups, parent & toddler groups, family referrals for therapeutic intervention, individuals with additional behavioural needs – to name but a few. Toni is an avid reader on all things environment (a confessed worm and soil nerd), and is passionate about sharing and instilling a love of the outdoors in people, encouraging people to take that closer look at nature, and reaping the benefits that this brings about in individuals and for the environment. Branching Out Forest School & Social Forestry
5. Children’s Forest Workshop
The workshop will be a taste of a planting project, including nature connection, story, craft and imagination. The Children’s Forest – As above!