Skogsmulle comes to the UK
In late July 2015, Siw and Magnus Linde, and Karin Kajsa Kallstrom visited from Sweden to deliver the first Skosgmulle training in the U.K. For 3 weeks, they travelled from South Wales to Manchester, from there to Aberdeen collaborating with ourselves and the wonderful Rose Joyce and Juliet Robertson to lead 3 groups of training, focusing on different elements of Skogsmulle and its application in early years outdoor learning and teaching.
As we have previously blogged, the movement towards bringing this celebrated pedagogy to the U.K. has taken many years, and much travel, even pre-dating our own connection with Siw and Mangus Linde over 5 years ago. The origins and progression of our experiences with Skogsmulle can be found here and on Creative Star; however, we want to reflect on an amazing few weeks spent with amazing and like-minded people.
What became abundantly clear from hosting the training in Wales, attending the training in Manchester and speaking with our Skogsmulle UK partners is that there is not only a huge need to have a credible outdoors and nature based pedagogy in the U.K. but that there is also an appetite from individuals and groups to be part of a “movement” or ” method” from the ground up.
What made the training so special was the enthusiasm and skill-set of all who attended, with many trainees sharing positive and negative experiences of how they are trying to encourage more outdoor based learning in their settings.
Ladybird training group in Manchester
The next steps. We have begun work on the establishing the working groups and have collated feedback from the Wales course Skogsmulle Training Evaluation PDF. We also have preliminary dates in place for a visit to Mulleborg, I Ur och Skur; “Rain or Shine” pre-school for Spring 2016, and Skogsmulle UK’s 1st birthday in July 2016 which will be celebration of this years launch training as well as outdoor learning as a whole. We very much hope our Swedish visitors and other Skosgmulle enthusiasts return for this event. The 2016 celebration is the pre-cursor to August 2017 when the Skogsmulle International community will visit Dare Valley Park for the Symposium event. We believe that by 2017, there will be many examples of Skogsmulle becoming embedded into settings and practice, some of which we hope to draw upon when our colleagues from Japan, Sweden, Latvia and more visit for the symposium.
In 2012 in Japan things were just ideas and dreams for Skogsmulle in the UK, we can only imagine how much will be achieved in the next 3 years.
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Click here to visit the Mulleborg www
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