Sports, Outdoor Learning and Wellbeing
Bushcraft and Outdoor Learning Academy
Practical outdoor learning where the lesson is the task in front of you: building the shelter, lighting the fire, finding the way back. One part of a personalised programme for young people aged 5 to 18.
Building Confidence Through Experience
Some Young People Learn Best Outdoors
Outdoors, instructions have obvious consequences, effort is visible, and success is something you can stand next to and look at. For a young person who has spent a long time being told how they are doing, that shift is worth a great deal.
Bushcraft sessions ask young people to work together, solve practical problems and take responsibility for their part in a task. Along the way they build skills that have nothing to do with sitting still, and confidence that quietly does.
At a glance
- Part of a personalised programme, not an add on
- Adapted to individual abilities and confidence levels
- Practical tasks with a visible result
- Team challenges that build communication
- Available across the 5 to 18 age range
What a Bushcraft Programme Covers
Activities are chosen to suit the group and the conditions, and are always adapted to the confidence of the young people taking part.
Shelter Building
Working out what the ground gives you, then building something that actually stands up. Planning, cooperation and a result you can test.
Fire Lighting and Outdoor Cooking
Where appropriate, young people learn to light and manage a fire safely, and to cook on it. Patience is not optional here, which is rather the point.
Navigation and Map Reading
Reading the ground against a map, setting a bearing and following it. Practical mathematics that never once looks like a worksheet.
Team Building Challenges
Tasks that cannot be completed alone. Communication, listening and sharing responsibility, learned by needing them.
Environmental Awareness and Conservation
Understanding the place you are working in and leaving it better than you found it. Care for surroundings, and for other people in them.
What Gets Built Out There
A young person who has just kept a fire going in the damp holds evidence about themselves that nobody can argue with. That is the real purpose of the outdoor programme.
Across a placement, young people develop confidence and self-esteem, emotional regulation and resilience, teamwork and communication, leadership and responsibility, and respect for themselves and for the people around them.
Growing Stronger Every Day.
Local Authority Professional
The mentoring and practical pathways have transformed this young person's engagement. They have developed confidence, improved attendance and are now looking positively towards their future.
Young Person
I didn't think I'd enjoy education again, but everyone believed in me before I believed in myself. I've made friends, achieved qualifications and found something I'm really good at.
Also in this part of the programme
Sport, Outdoor Learning and Wellbeing
Therapeutic Equine Sessions Academy
Working alongside horses to build trust, communication and emotional awareness. Often a good first step for young people who find busy environments hard.
Sport, Outdoor Learning and Wellbeing
The wider strand this sits inside, including sport, gym and physical development, with every activity adapted to individual abilities and confidence levels.
Talk to Us About a Placement
Referrals are accepted from Local Authorities, schools and Multi-Academy Trusts, Virtual Schools, and from families where appropriate. A first conversation commits you to nothing.