Seeding the vision
Wilder Ways started with a yearning to live more fully, a desire to reimagine education and nurture young people in nature coupled with a courage to vision sustainable communities.
Supported by community, a core group of us spent a year meeting, visioning and designing what became a very successful pilot year. One that nurtured and grew 10 young people and many adults that acted as mentors, skillsharers, volunteers and visitors along the way.
Supported by community, a core group of us spent a year meeting, visioning and designing what became a very successful pilot year. One that nurtured and grew 10 young people and many adults that acted as mentors, skillsharers, volunteers and visitors along the way.
What is Wilder Ways?
Wilder Ways is a rites of passage school run weekly for young people aged 12-16.
Since 2017 Wilder Ways has been offering place based education with a diversity of approaches and .
We have a woodland base camp on Falkland Estate, Fife and we also wander widely throughout Fife and Scotland.
At our heart the encompassing principles of connection to ourselves, our community and our landscapes are our guiding and grounding forces.
Inspired by the 8-shields movement, permaculture and nonviolent communication we have built a curriculum that looks to nature as our teacher. The role of the mentor is to create a space for everyone to travel through together and in their own way with empathy and compassion.
Through these connections we support each person to discover their own interests and gifts.
At our basecamp and on regular field trips we foster a sense of place by exploring and discovering the stories of our history, culture and ecology, our trees, rivers, weather patterns, animals and people.
Who is Wilder Ways for ?
We have weekday sessions organised over terms where we work on larger themes and projects. These often suit home educated teenagers.
We also have weekend sessions that are designed to be stand alone and we have many teenagers in school that come along.
We have a focus on outdoor learning but within that embrace a large variety of activities, skills and approaches that will increase confidence, resillience practical abilities and almost most importantly enable us to have fun.
We also have weekend sessions that are designed to be stand alone and we have many teenagers in school that come along.
We have a focus on outdoor learning but within that embrace a large variety of activities, skills and approaches that will increase confidence, resillience practical abilities and almost most importantly enable us to have fun.
How it Works
We have a lot of amazing guest teachers and mentors who we visit or come to us - everyone brings their own energy and experience to the group both participants and mentors.
Some of the things we have got up to:
- making fires
- exploring plants as our medicine and food
- fishing and eating our catch on the beach
- camping under the stars
- making baskets with foraged materials
- building sheds
- tanning skin - animal skins that is - although being in the open air has also had an effect on our own skin
- tracking - inner and outer
- games - a lot of games
- navigating by the natural world
- storytelling skills
- bird language
- working on our environmental science national 5 collectively
- learning how to set personal goals and have accountability
the list just goes on - read our blog and get in touch to find out more...
Where do we gather ?
We have a regular meeting point though we are semi nomadic and tend to roam to places within relatively easy distance of our base camp which is near Pillars of Hercules in Falkland Fife - we also have been known to go much further especially on holidays - some of us get here by public transport too and lifts.
Get in touch for any more details on accessibility.
Get in touch for any more details on accessibility.