Woodland Journeys is the work of Jenny Archard and collaborators.
|
Jenny Archard is a group facilitator, forest school leader, trainer, wilderness guide and outdoors woman. She lives in a small village in East Devon, UK, between the sea and the Blackdown Hills. Collaboration, communities of practice and co-creating are core to her way in the world. In 2019 her focus is on practice, gratitude and simplicity.
Having studied Psychology, then becoming a breathwork and relaxation therapist in her early twenties, she went on to work in community development, co-operative development and rural enterprise support. Travel and volunteering abroad gave her wider perspectives on community and nature; visiting credit unions in Fiji; volunteering on permaculture projects in Australia; helping research green turtles in Malaysia; co-leading facilitation training in Ghana. She has studied and practiced group facilitation since the 1990s, studied group facilitation methods with ICA:UK , group-work practice with Relate, leading Action Learning Sets with Millennium School for Social Entrepreneurs, and more recently the Way of Council trainings with Pip Bondy and others. In the 1980s she learned structural consulting and 'Art of Living' with Robert and Rosalind Fritz , and still uses this approach to creating her own life. In 2005 she became a qualified Forest School practitioner and the focus turned toward supporting people's wellbeing through connecting with nature and the 'wild' of our inner and outer landscapes. She chaired the Forest school Association South West group, and still helps with regional gatherings and bigger events for practitioners. Jenny has been part of a group working with one lineage of Native American Medicine teachings from 2007-2018. That work is now rooted in these lands, where she spends so much of her time in the woods or walking the hills, moors and cliffs. In 2010 she initiated work that led to the setting up of Neroche Woodlanders, a social enterprise in 100 acres of public forest estate in the Blackdown Hills AONB. Much of her work takes place there. I she co-leads this with her partner Gavin Saunders, and supported by fellow directors, staff and many wonderful volunteers. Answering a long held call, in 2017, she trained with the School of Lost Borders in California in the USA on their 'month-long training' to be Wilderness Guide. She also makes time to get out on, in or next to the sea. Her passion is for lives well-lived, rich in every dimension, that are respectful of our Earth, our communities and our place within nature. |
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. Wendell Berry |
CollaboratorsJane Embleton
Fern Smith
Fern is an artist and Wilderness Guide based in Wales. She is dedicated to creating conditions for dialogue and transformation in the areas of social justice and spirituality. She is also a theatre practitioner, arts producer and facilitator with over 30 years of experience and is currently researching and teaching in the areas of leadership, creativity and the ‘art of living.’ Her private practice as a craniosacral therapist, celebrant and coach underpins this. www.emergence-uk.org |
|
