On The Hill is a non-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) providing outdoor education opportunities to children, young people and families.
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I’ve been working with young people since 2010 when I worked on a residential school program at Embercombe. Since then I’ve worked for a number of forest schools, one to one with young people and on residential programs for different organisations including Embercombe, On The Hill, The Cherry Wood Project, World Challenge, and the Cambrian Wildwood.
For the last 10 years I’ve been living close to nature and the elements and in 2014 I took 6 months out and travelled to America to learn how to live out in the wilderness near the Canadian border. After 4 months together a group of us walked out into that wilderness to live off wild food, wear clothes we’d sewn from animal hides, feel the rain on our skin, feel the cold lake water wash our bodies and feel deeply alive, together.
This experience and experiences since inform my work and a large part of my passion to work with young people in nature.
We live in a time where nature deficit disorder is a very real thing, mental health issues are on the rise and screens are replacing trees for our young people. It never fails to be powerful to watch the changes that a group go through after a week of waking up to birdsong, working in a garden, eating around a fire, and falling asleep to owls, and to watch the therapeutic power of nature.
I am highly committed to bringing forward a message and an experience that nature is in fact our home and a place of fantastic wonder, miraculous beauty and endless fun.
Tina spent ten years living within a land based social enterprise Embercombe, working throughout many realms of the organization as well as with groups and individuals, supporting them to move more fully towards the life that is uniquely theirs to continually discover, express and celebrate.
She brings this experience to On the Hill and Oxen Park, endeavouring to meet the challenge and extraordinary privilege that stewardship of an area of land seems to her to require at this time, guided by the particular skills and loves of the individuals involved.
She also carries forward a lived understanding of how engagement with the outdoor environment, using natural materials, and encouraging the deepening of relationship to each other and with ourselves can nourish and resource our lives.
She is a breathwork practitioner, coach, potter, plays with an interactive theatre group and loves the polytunnel.
I am passionate about the role of education in shaping and informing our relationship with the world around us and have worked for over a decade in the environmental sector as both practitioner and researcher in multiple roles. I have worked with organisations seeking systemic social change, such as the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), and the Field Studies Council at Slapton Ley. I completed my PhD research in early 2018, focusing on relational aspects of residential outdoor learning.
When not at my desk, I can be found leaping into rivers, hiking on Dartmoor or contemplating the vibrancy of life on the allotment. I remain committed to practical action, outdoor adventure and the importance of a restorative education through which we might fall back in love with this magnificent world.
My current work focuses on supporting educators to work creatively and to infuse their practice with principles of deep sustainability as well as running workshops, facilitation and teaching.
Underpinning my work in education is the deeply held belief that it is the duty of Educators to do everything they can to encourage children to develop a responsible, loving and caring relationship with the natural and gardened world. By doing this, we help them to understand that our well being is inextricably linked to the rest of the life on Earth.
My lifelong investigation into how children truly learn about the world they inhabit began in my own childhood. Growing up on a traditional farm in Devon offered me a foundation in many practical skills, including animal and plant husbandry. As a young man, I spent 11 years in Andalusia, bringing up my own children, building, farming and performing street theatre. During this time I worked alongside many people of all ages and backgrounds. I became inspired by the diversity of modes of learning that I witnessed, and developed a yearning to explore a new education.
Since then I have worked as an outdoor learning Teacher in Steiner schools for ten years then lead a land-based learning initiative at Embercombe for 10 years, worked as an outdoor learning consultant and now I lead programs and run the farm at Oxen Park.
Tom Lowdays
I am a professional drummer, teacher and workshop facilitator with a growing interest in living simply on the land and sharing my experiences.
Through my facilitation practice I hope to convey a sense of well-being so that participants can improve their confidence and self-esteem.
Of all my work at On The Hill I am most passionate about the school residentials, where group activities combined with the need to feed, shelter and support each other creates an intensive community building exercise. This leaves you by day 4 feeling like every staff member and young person is part of your extended family. The glow of mutual support continues on long after the camps, and even now I look back on residentials from years ago where I can remember feeling truly supported by someone who I really hardly knew. In this age where we live such segregated lives, are so independent of each other, this experience of having the real need to give and receive support and to have your efforts valued is incredibly strengthening and nourishing. Both as an adult and as a child. Through this you take home the knowledge that you can rely on other people, but perhaps more importantly, that you can trust yourself.
When not working at the farm, I also work as a visual artist and graphic designer and you can find some of my creative work on my website: www.aliceduthie.com
I didn't have a good relationship with school, but my childhood was full of adventure, spending whole summers outside in the woods and rivers which was where I felt most at home and where I still feel most at home.
I feel I understand some of the struggles that children and young people experience today and want to honour my own experience by supporting them in the ways that I can.
So, I have put myself into the mix with kindness and openness and play and laughter and feel great pleasure and pride in being part of such a great team.
From studying Human Geography as my degree, I learnt how interdependent as a species we are to our natural world. With this knowledge and the state of the environment, I was compelled to plunge into the world of environmental activism.
I co-ran Plastic Free Totnes, a community organisation aiming to reduce single use plastic consumption in the local area, and was involved in the local Extinction Rebellion group as the co-Art Coordinator. Both roles made me realise that creativity, education and having fun, are vital if we are to raise awareness of environmental issues, and ignite change in others. I believe working with young people here at On the Hill, is a gentler and more sustainable version of activism, bringing these three elements into play.
On a personal level, exploring and living in tune with nature are aspects of my life that allow me to thrive. It underpins how important protecting this wonderful world is, and all that live on it.
I love the outdoors, I always have. I love being among the trees and grasses and seeing sun sail through the sky. To me this is where we are meant to be as a species, we are meant to walk this land, to sit back and find our place in it all. This is why I do this work, I want to be part of giving this opportunity to others. To have the space and time to step outside our normal day to day life and marvel in the exquisite simplicity that is around us all the time.
I have worked with different organisations over the years to bring this passion to young people. I worked at Embercombe as an apprentice Gardiner to learn more about growing food and helping on the education programmes that happen there. More recently I have been working with an organisation called Wildwise taking young people into the wild places here in Devon. Looking at ancient skills of fire craft, camp craft and many other bush craft techniques. This has given me a more in depth understanding of the natural world.
I also have been a part of on the hill helping to create the site that is the beautiful place you can visit today. I work alongside the diversely skilled staff team there to deliver programs.
I have been fortunate enough to have grown up around many of the people that are part of this project, making it a natural transition for me to be of assistance after spending years of youth enjoying the land.
I am currently based up in Scotland finishing my degree in Mechanical Engineering but love being able to offer support (mainly technical) whenever possible. If I can't be there in person at least my presence can be felt remotely.
I've worked alongside Jo and Tina to get this exciting new project up and running from spring 2017, And i'm truly loving it!
I'm usually found up in the garden, in the orchards attending to the new apple trees we have planted. If you don't find me there, i'll be mowing the garden green areas or raising the beds in the circular garden we created back in the spring last year and which already have some amazing produce growing!
I'm very excited to be working with On The Hill to keep growing produce, working with young people out in the elements, and making a difference to the world. It's a pleasure to be working alongside such an amazing team and to be making more and more vibrant plans for this space.
Paddy Randall is a facilitator and programme lead at On the Hill. When Paddy first visited On the Hill there was immediate synergy with his core beliefs about his work in secondary education with young people. A year later he had become an integral part of the team: “Living here has enabled me to come back into relationship with myself, with others and the land, and continuing my work here brings the young people back into that possibility.
"My work for Hill Tribe brings together my professional training in movement and dance and a deeply held belief that we really need to be fully embodied beings in order to navigate the world today. And the world today doesn’t set us up for that - this is the gap that I see in schools & education today. Hill Tribe is meeting that need - to have embodied, connected, community-focussed young people."
Hannah Brunskill is a workshop and programme facilitator and founder of Taiko Journey.
With 15 years of experience teaching, performing, and creating connection through powerful taiko (Japanese drum) experiences, Hannah is passionate about us responding to what calls our hearts and making strong those threads that bring us back into connection with ourselves. Her work has taken her around the world - to Japan to meet some of the first players of taiko as we know it now, to Hawaii where taiko has built strong communities around Buddhist temples, and to California many times for training, and to learn about taiko’s significance in the Asian Civil Rights movements of the 1970s. Hannah travelled to Palestine in 2014 and led a drum-making workshop so that groups of teenagers had drums to learn on, and to play at the Bet Lahem Live festival that year.
Hannah works with drums and our relationship with the land to bring us closer to knowing who we are, and how we are in the world.
“Co-leading Hill Tribe with Paddy for the first time was an absolute joy. Our backgrounds and interests work together to call people into their bodies, asking them to be present, to show up for themselves and for others. The shapes we take around our work on the farm may look at first very different, and then you see that throwing a hay bale, chopping wood, lifting a sack of potatoes, sweeping a floor, they all require us to align at our centre and be present. This flows into the work we do in the Cob Barn around and with the drums - it requires a lot to step up to a drum and lean in to the unknown, and what comes out, and how that is heard and responded to, can be a significant experience. Our bodies are aligned in a strong stance, we feel everything is possible, and that nothing is certain, and we experience that whether playing alone or in part of a group, we are seen and heard, and valued for being there, for showing up for ourselves and others. "
Flora Pethybridge is a song and voice practitioner, working as a counsellor and facilitator in a diverse range of healthcare, education and nature-based settings.
Using story and sound to explore the ways in which we can tend to the beauty and complexity of being human, her work is about supporting people to find an embodied and authentic relationship to voice and their own unique expression.
