FOREST SCHOOL (OCTOBER 2018)

Hello from the IMMA class of 2019!
We will be documenting our journey as a collaborative group throughout 2019.

We'd like to look back to one of our first workshops as a group, when we visited Platt Fields Park for a forest school workshop kindly organised by IMAA member Ruby Unsworth.

We visited the Forest School as part of an exploration into the outdoors, and as an attempt to distance ourselves from the confines of the studio.

The forest school was ran by Colin Unsworth, an educator who is interested in alternative schools and the possibilities of outdoor learning. Forest schools are growing in popularity, especially in Scandinavia. A recent article from the Guardian mentions the benefits of forest schools on younger children's education"Educators and policymakers across the political spectrum are increasingly convinced by the growing heft of evidence about the exponentially positive impact of learning outdoors"

There are various mushroom species and some varieties have healing properties, and the differences between edible and poisonous species. It felt very freeing to be outdoors, and connecting with nature.
Colin educated us on the benefits of forgaged fruits, including this wonderful blackberry jam
and we the collected wild mushrooms from treetops, including a variety that we later fried in coconut oil and ate.