Katie Kendall (2011/12)

I come to Embercombe looking to make life a deeper experience. I am excited by the opportunity to collaborate and share a piece of land with other people and to direct the skills I have acquired so far towards something more meaningful and useful.

I feel especially drawn to being with the land, to listening to it and working with it. I hope to explore ideas around rights of passage and discover how they can be made relevant today. I am exploring this myself as a student on the Trackways year course, where the teaching of ancient practical survival skills are the catalyst for understanding how to live more deeply with the Earth and with other people. I am experiencing how speaking in circle and in ceremony can bring honesty and authenticity to actions and intentions.

Embercombe is giving me the chance to deepen this work, to meet in circle, to be challenged to go beyond what is comfortable and ask myself some difficult and delving questions. So far beyond the discomfort of this lies a chance to be discerning and catch a glimpse of what it truly means to be alive.

I am here as the land based learning apprentice. I come having spent the last 8 years living in Bristol working in the community running forest school, bushcraft and gardening courses with children, young people and families. I taught forest school skills to adults and set up and ran a therapeutic allotment for adults with mental health issues. However, being at Embercombe has felt like the first day of my own education. An educational journey based on knowledge and trying things out rather than on the acquisition of information. Since coming here I have witnessed countless young people touched and changed by the opportunity to learn experientially and feel passionate about sharing this approach with as many children and young people as possible whilst I am here.

Moon Leith (2011/12)

Stepping into my role here at Embercombe feels like stepping closer to my own heart.

Challenging, scary, humbling. Joyful, loving, freeing.

I feel I am here to connect. As the ‘Open’ apprentice I have created a role description that supports me to do that in many different ways; with the land, people, and myself. Being here for a year feels like the first year of a life that is really and truly mine, that I have finally found my path and I am learning to walk it.

I part hold Volunteer Pastoral support, I am one of the Catalyst core team, I intend to gather growing food knowledge, I am gaining coaching and facilitation experience, and I bring an artistic/craft background.

Owen Shiers (2011/12)

Growing up in the wilds of West Wales, spending my childhood making dens, rope swings and rafting down rivers, you could say I’m a bit of a country bumpkin at heart. I feel we all are, deep down beneath the veneer of civility. I arrived at Embercombe having realised that there was something fundamentally wrong with my lifestyle, and indeed the breakneck speed with which we live our modern lives - a dysfunction which is so pervasive that we accept it as completely normal. I wanted to go feral for a while, living in sync with the seasons and as simply as possible.

Embercombe is an experiment in a different way of living and learning. It offers an open canvas for exploration. My personal focus as an apprentice revolves around the site and infrastructure - offering support to the site manager, as well as involvement in build projects and facilitation of groups from school children to corporate clients. I also help co-ordinate and run the Wildcraft course, which is a week-long immersion in bushcraft and nature awareness for teenagers. In addition to this, I carry a strong passion for music and am interested in how a re-union with the arts and creativity may help us live more harmoniously.

Mel West (2011/12)

I came to the garden apprenticeship with a hunch that I would learn as much about myself as I would about growing plants. I have a deep love of nature and have found sanctuary and inspiration in many wild places and gardens. I get a real buzz from planting a seed, tending the plant and then retrieving a vegetable a few months later. I love working the land with a group of people. I love spotting wrens, robins and bullfinches perched outside my window when all the leaves have fallen off the trees. Coming to Embercombe was the beginning of an intense and wonderful year-long journey for me. I have learnt much about growing rhythms and working with changing weather patterns. I am aware now of the garden’s potential as a therapeutic space that allows people to develop their thoughts, ideas and dreams. Talking amongst the plants can be a powerful vehicle for change. I value all the people I’ve shared my time with here, the conversations, the deep learning journey, the music, the sunsets, the moon rises, swimming in the lake, the owl calls, the ever changing face of Hay Tor and the wildness of the Dartmoor elements. I have discovered the wonders of natural bee keeping and I plan to continue this when I leave. I have learnt wild craft skills that I will share with others in the future. I am passionate about wild spaces as vehicles for change and gardens that provide spaces for people to just be.

Daniel Burston (2010/11)

I aspire to be a peasant.  I am learning to garden.  I aspire to live with this piece of land in as full a way as i am able.  Embercombe brings many teachers in human, plant and elemental forms that bring me inspiration for my journey.  I have simple dreams in this life, which are at once enormous and radical too.  I struggle, I dream and I hope to take small steps along a path which my heart guides.  I am learning to love.  I enjoy baking sourdough loaves, fermenting vegetables, turning inedibles into mushrooms, gazing at dark skies and starry light, being underneath old beech trees, sharing the intimacies of life with those I live with, and learning to drive the red tractor.

Melanie Horne (2010/11)

Melanie grew up in Wiltshire with a love of making things and a questioning mind.  One of her earliest memories is asking her parents “Where does the sky stop?!”  The desire to explore some of the ‘bigger’ questions in life lead her to a BA in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.

Following this she worked in administration, before beginning an MA in Museum Studies at Leicester.  A while into her MA, Melanie acknowledged that the course was not stimulating her and that she was no longer happy living alone in a shiny modern flat!  She left the course with a Postgraduate Diploma and became a self-employed facilitator.  She worked at Glasshouse College, part of the Ruskin Mill Educational Trust and for Museums Sheffield on their Positive Activities for Young People project, delivering creative workshops throughout the city.

Melanie later worked for the Bath Record Office, stimulating a fascination in the ‘detective’ work involved in uncovering somebody’s family tree.  In addition, she sold ice-cream to help save up for travelling.  It was doing these two seemingly unrelated jobs alongside one another that helped her to realise that it was people that really interested her; their stories, their histories and the choices they had made.

Wanting to visit somewhere that was ‘off the beaten track’, Melanie travelled through Alaska and Canada in 2009, meeting incredible people and getting involved in exciting projects along the way.  Returning with a new sense of purpose, deepened self-awareness, a need to be in nature and a great deal more confidence, Melanie knew that it was time to take some more brave steps.

After working through the Winter, Melanie left her flat and her job to volunteer at Embercombe for a month.  Feeling immediately at home, Melanie got involved in many aspects of Embercombe work and life.  After three months she became an Apprentice and has since been helping to develop and deliver the Future Jobs programme.  As part of another project, she recently created the first edition of the Embercombe Volunteer Handbook.  Melanie is also developing the Wildcraft programme for young people and throughout the year is receiving bushcraft training from expert Mark Lane.  She will organise the course and facilitate it alongside other volunteers in August 2011.

Kate Leppard (2011/12)

Kate Leppard started her apprenticeship in Land Based Learning in August 2010. Her focus is on Land Based Learning delivery, planning, evaluation and  development. Her aim is to fuse together her knowledge of Permaculture and art as a tool for social change. Kate also sits on the council as the female representative for Artists and Artisans.

Kate has spent the past seven years using art as a tool for social change with young people at risk of social exclusion. During this time she worked with young refugees and asylum seekers and their families, tribal/rural women in India, young people excluded from school and inner city estates and the youth offending team, creating and implementing art projects to raise self esteem, develop social and personal development.

In 2008, Kate completed her Permaculture design course and has since been working to fuse sustainability and art as a tool for transformation. In 2009, she taught an introduction to Permaculture for international students in Vellore with Buddha Smiles. At the end of 2009 she organised/directed a month long art festival in India, Dream Surfing Art Festival (www.dreamsurfing.net) based on social inclusion, creativity and co-creation.

Kate is currently inspired by learning Wildcraft skills with Mark Lane is preparation for Embercombe's summer programme, organising school visits and facilitating programmes. She is also developing an interactive map of Embercombe. She started her Forest Schools practitioner qualification in January 2010.

Jessie Watson Brown (2009/10)

Jessie joined the Embercombe team in autumn 2009 as an apprentice. She continues to work with Embercombe in a number of ways; she cares for the bees, works in the kitchen, and sits on the council in the seat of the land..