Training & Facilitation

We design and deliver training for practitioners, organisations and teams working in the environmental, education and community sectors. Sessions range from half-day workshops to extended programmes, delivered in person and online, nationally and internationally.

What we offer:

Community Engagement & Public Participation: designing and delivering meaningful engagement with diverse communities; active listening; co-production; working with hard-to-reach groups; managing difficult dynamics and conflict in community settings.

Outdoor & Nature-Based Learning: forest school principles and practice; place-based pedagogy; therapeutic dimensions of outdoor learning; risk, safety and comfort; working with children with additional needs or complex backgrounds.

EDI in the Outdoors: understanding and addressing structural barriers to access; working with marginalised communities; decolonising outdoor education; inclusive practice in nature-based settings.

Evaluation & Evidence: designing evaluations that actually work; translating community insight into usable evidence; communicating impact to funders and policymakers; arts and health evaluation.

Action Learning Facilitation: designing and facilitating action learning sets for teams and practitioners; peer support and reflective practice structures.

Knowledge Exchange: connecting research to practice; public engagement with research; working across academic and community boundaries.

Where we’ve delivered it:

Mel is a Training Associate for NCCPE, Talk Action, Knowledge Change Action and Independent Thinking Ltd. She has delivered training for a wide range of organisations including:

• National Centre for Public Engagement in Research: public engagement training for researchers
• Environmental Standards Agency, Scotland: community engagement and stakeholder communication
• Local authorities and NHS trusts: community participation and co-production
• NGOs and third sector organisations: evaluation skills and knowledge exchange
• Universities: outdoor education, early childhood and environmental humanities
• International commissions in Spain, Italy, Finland and Namibia

All training is tailored to your context. Get in touch to discuss your needs.

→ info@freerangecreativity.org

Mel and the team deliver bespoke training on request. Recent clients have included Embercombe, Plymouth University, Amichi del Boschi (Italy), World Jungle and the Institute for Outdoor Learning.

More programmes available to book:

Introduction to Forest School – taster days, INSET days, higher education groups and twilight sessions.

Visiting lecturer for Forest School training – talks and workshops to guide trainees through the wealth of research and theory that backs up Forest School practice.

Get Creative Outdoors – adventurous and stimluating ways of using art, music, voice, drama, movement and writing. Create your own focus from a menu of choices.

Working Therapeutically Outdoors – exploring the skills and approaches involved to ensure wellbeing and the transformative potential of outdoor practice.

Improvisation – ways into improvising with music, voice, drama and words. Indoors or outdoors.

Going Feral – an immersive programme exploring both natural and urban environments using the expressive arts. A new year-long programme will be launched in 2016, alongside our creative ecotherapy programme.

Visiting lecturer
Mel is currently a visiting lecturer on the Creative Arts Therapies Foundation Degree at City of Bristol College, teaching outdoors and participatory arts.

She has recently worked as an associate lecturer at Plymouth University on the BA in Education Studies and MA in Outdoor Learning, developing the Early Adventures module, leading experiential field trips and sharing best practice.

Talks and presentations
Mel is a popular and engaging speaker and gives regular presentations, for both academic, professional and popular audiences. A list of her recent talks can be found on her website.

Booking
For training bookings, usually Mel is hired directly by local authorities, schools, colleges and organisations to work with a group. We don’t run open courses where we manage the bookings and marketing as that is not cost effective. If you are interested in booking training for your group, please contact us.

For Going Feral courses, bookings are managed by Beccy Golding