ABOUT OUR TEAM

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.

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Tina spent ten years living within a land based social enterprise (www.embercombe.org), 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, endeavoring 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 love my work with On the Hill. As a Director I can use my skill set to help shape us as an organisation, working to my personal and professional values of nurturing relationship to self, others and our natural world, while asking challenging questions of each.

I believe in lifelong learning, compassionate enquiry of ourselves and others and nurturing these relationships.

We need fundamental and radical systems change to meet the challenges of this time, and the practices at On The Hill are working to play a part in this change as best we can.

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I have worked with young people and with creative teams in diverse environments for over 20 years, beginning my practice in Devon in Youth Work and Theatre production.

I gained my BSC in Youth Work Practice and trained as a teacher of  Lifelong Learning while living and working in Bristol, where I worked with both voluntary and statutory organisations. For many years I ran the Prince’s Trust Team programme and developed other youth volunteering and creative peer mentoring and mixed media projects. I have a strong commitment to facilitating youth participation on projects, and encouraging a sense of agency, reflection and responsibility amongst young people.

My teaching practice has developed in a variety of settings from schools, delivering social, emotional and health education to FE colleges, foundation learning settings and in the outdoor environment.

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I am currently focusing on building our partnerships  locally and globally to widen our reach and collaborate more. We have recently become members of Catalyst 2030 and are part of the Thriving Communities programme.

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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 envrionmental 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 realtional 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 sustianability as well as running workshops, facilitation and teaching.

After spending much of my childhood exploring in nature, working with young people outdoors has always felt right. I have been volunteering with the charity Forest School Camps since April 2018, after having attended the camps as a child. I have also worked as a 1-1 intervention worker for a local Forest School organisation and then as a pastoral and curriculum tutor with small groups as part of their school. After spending a season living and working at On The Hill a few years ago, participating in all of the residential programs and the day to day life on the farm, I gained a real respect for the team that make up the project, the methodology they use and for the land itself as a place of learning and community building. I have continued to work with them as a freelance facilitator ever since. 

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’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.

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  https://wildwise.co.uk/ taking young people into the wild places here in Devon. Looking at ancient skills of fire craft, camp craft and many other bushcraft 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 am a creative facilitator, artist, forest school practitioner, fire maker, coach and planter of seeds. I have worked in a diverse range of educational settings from working in the classroom to leading groups up mountains. Over the last decade I have worked alongside young people to support them to build relationships and to thrive at home, school and in their communities.  

From an early age my passion and love of the outdoors found me sleeping under the stars, singing around fires, adventuring with little in my pack and making from only what is in the natural world. It is this creativity, simplicity, awe and wonder that I strive to share and use to empower, connect and build resilience in young people.

I now live and work in Cornwall developing programs that combine the creative arts, bush craft, nature connection and therapeutic youth work. I am the Founder of Creative Roots (www.creativeroots.earth) and TIDE forest school for girls.  I have worked as a member of  On The Hill’s Education team,  have lead groups for over 12 years within Forest School Camps alongside being an occasional lecturer with Plymouth university. More recently I have completed a postgraduate certificate in therapeutic education and worked as a senior therapeutic practitioner for the Art Room in Oxford before returning back to Cornwall in 2017.

Basket making, cob, felting, weaving, painting, natural dying, inventing, fire making, story telling, camp fire singing, stalking, foraging, cooking, carving, listening, adventure, playing and group work…. Are just some of the things I bring to my work at On The Hill.

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.
 

I began working with young people when I decided to build a travelling Jewellery making workshop and visit music festivals. I hadn't really anticipated how much they would love beating copper and how much I would enjoy helping/letting them explore the material and expand their ability.  I then moved to Embercombe and became their Land Based Learning Facilitator (aka Education Apprentice). Working on week long residential camps with children aged eight to eighteen was amazing and I learnt a lot. 

I am a qualified Forest School Leader and I also work with adults, facilitating processes with a view to personal and social change.  I enjoy working at On The Hill because I think in order to grow healthier children we need to plant them in some decent soil, not literally of course! My passions include making things out of reclaimed or natural materials, dancing, cycling, bushcraft, swimming in cold water and growing vegetables.