Full-Board Residential Course – On Site
Experience Black Mountain College and explore your future. How can you use your passions and skills to make a difference? For school leavers and others thinking about the world of work at a time of uncertainty and ecological crisis.
Spend 4 days with us, on the farm and surrounding mountains, understanding, reflecting, imagining and acting. Facilitated by educators, artists, scientists, activists, professionals and visionaries, you will develop an insight in how you can play a role in creating a just society within safe planetary boundaries.
We have partnered up with Welsh Water for this course. At the heart of the learning journey sits a real-life challenge around land use, food and the water cycle. Through an immersive and highly creative learning experience you will collaborate to problem-solve, imagining your future and that of food & water against the context of climate change. You will explore how you can apply yourself – personally and professionally – to deliver such solutions and thereby contribute to a more resilient future. We will work together, engaging our bodies and minds, to explore new ways of thinking and working to live well and do good.
This is an on-campus course. The course fee includes full-board accommodation in one of our bell tents (one tent hosting two people).
*This course is for those aged between 16-30 years old*
What will I do and learn?
- Acquire real-world skills that help you to imagine, improvise and problem-solve in a rapidly-changing world.
- Have an engaging, social, and informative learning experience that reconnects you to earth, nature and other people.
- Learn from inspiring people and develop a sense of agency in the face of an uncertain and climate-changed future.
- Investigate what kind of learner you are, what you may be good at, and how you can apply these skills to make a difference.
- Receive feedback and advice from experienced tutors on what the right next step might be for you.
- Cook and eat together, spend time on the land and in nature, swim in streams, sleep under the stars.
Who will I learn from? Confirmed contributors so far…
Richard Luff
Richard is former-director of the National Forest Gardening Scheme and coordinator of Oxfordshire Trees Collaborate. He used to work as a construction engineer and spend 30 years in international disaster management for organisations like Oxfam, DFID, UNICEF and the Red Cross. His life work is now focused on well-being in nature, through involvement in green social organisations and green issue campaigning/activist groups.
Natalia Eernstman
Natalia is an artist, academic, educator and activist, working across the Arts and Sciences to build community resilience in the face of a climate changed future. She worked with theatre companies, creating large scale out door productions, and has done various community projects where she uses art to create spaces where people can learn our way into an unknown future. She has a PhD, is an experienced facilitator and currently leads the MA Creative Education at Plymouth College of Art.
Alice Skennerton Barroll
Alice is a Catchment Risk Coordinator at Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. She works to identify current and future risks that have potential to impact upon water quality in the Rivers, Reservoirs and groundwaters that supply wholesome drinking water to Welsh Waters’ three million customers. Prior to this role Alice was a Sediment Geochemistry Laboratory Manager for the Earth Science Department in The University of Oxford focusing on experimental works for students and other academics.
Alice will be joined by Welsh Water team members involved in projects from restoring habitats, to collaborating with farmer clusters to improve livestock health – all through the lens of safeguarding drinking water supplies, but achieving multiple other benefits at the same time.
Alice Taherzadeh
Alice is a community food activist, facilitator, and an agroecology researcher. They are part of the Land Workers Alliance, and currently undertaking a PhD looking at how social movement learning and organising practices work to further agroecology in the UK.
Ben Rawlence
Ben is co-founder and director of the Black Mountains College. He is also an award-winning writer, activist, former speech writer to Sir Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy. His latest book The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth, describes some of the large earth systems changes underway and what this might mean in human time-scales. It has some significant lessons for how we imagine and prepare for the future.
Lucine
Lucine b.k.a ‘L U C I N E’ is a transdisciplinary artist and mental health advocate that believes in using a cross arts approach to create unique, immersive experiences for all people to enjoy and feel equal in. This focus has enabled Lucine to curate and facilitate work which engages communities on both a local and global scale, in person and online, collaborating, exhibiting and showcasing with such places as Roundhouse, East London Dance, Blackhorse Workshop, The Barbican and more. It is their wish to continuously challenge perceptions of the human experience and encourage lifelong curiosity.
Key Information
Dates: 30th August – 2nd September 2022
Time: Arrival at 2pm on Tuesday 30th August. Departure at 3pm on Friday 2nd September.
Location: the residential will take place at the BMC Campus at Troed yr Harn Farm, Hospital Road, Talgarth, Brecon, LD3 0EF.
Our campus is car-free, so we will meet at Talgarth carpark. You are free to leave your vehicles here for the period of the course.
What you need: Bring all the essentials of a 4-day camping trip away including bedding (sleeping bag and pillow). Meals and washing facilities will be provided. You will be hosted in one of our bespoke bell tents, sharing it with one other person. Tea and coffee facilities are also available free of charge. A full kit list will be provided two-weeks before the camp!
How much does it cost?
Welsh Water are proud to sponsor this event, to encourage a new generation of problem-solvers who can help us safeguard our precious drinking water supplies for generations to come.
Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Welsh Water and Ashley Family Foundation we are able to offer fully subsidised [free] places to everyone on this course. None the less, in order to spread the sponsorship and so there is a level of participant commitment through contribution, we will invite all selected participants to consider if they can make their a contribution to the course. We will set out suggested bands according to means but we don’t want money to be an obstacle to your participation.
If you would like to join us on this journey, then tell us about yourself and what you hope to learn. Spaces are limited! To apply for a place, fill in this form: https://forms.gle/uU6z7VnyY3kvyFSF7
Deadline for applications: 18th July 2022
Accessibility
This course is rated as 3 (least accessible) on our scale of accessibility. Read more about our accessibility policy on our Eventbrite page.
Please see our booking terms & conditions on our Eventbrite page for more information. When booking you confirm you agree to these terms.
We will follow the most recent COVID measures and protocols in order to keep everyone safe and healthy for the duration of the course.
CLICK HERE TO APPLY
