Three day Facilitator Training Course 2026
About the course
The Children’s Forest Facilitator course provides participants with a nature immersion experience in a beautiful Sussex woodland. Participants will experience the Four Step journey of the Children’s Forest and explore the theory and practice behind it.
We create a connective learning experience that will enable and inspire you to create your own Children’s Forest Planting projects. Through nature connection practices, practical knowledge and ancestral skills we explore connective ways to engage children with nature.
The Facilitator training incorporates experiential, theoretical, practical learning and experience, so that you can feel confident to seed your own Children’s Forest Planting.
Who is this course suitable for?
This course is designed for people with previous experience of working with groups in a nature-connection setting.
What you will gain?
- An opportunity to expand your tools and deepen your practice in nature with children.
- Introduction to the skills and knowledge to plant Children’s Forests with your groups.
- Direct experience of planting trees with children in the months following, facilitated by the CF team.
- Practical ecological skills, information and experience, enabling you to tend community and biodiversity in a Children’s Forest.
- You will be welcomed into the community of Children’s Forest facilitators pending completion of all three parts of the course.
Our training is in two stages
STAGE 1:
Children’s Forest Facilitator Training
£600 (standard rate) / £750 (supporters rate) / £450 (concessionary rate) for 3 day camp October 16-19th 2026, with food included. Danehill East Sussex (payment plans are possible)
This is a fun, connective experiential long weekend where you will learn the 4 steps of the Children’s Forest journey and the philosophy that inspires and informs the way we work.
On the final day of the training you will learn how to tend a Children’s Forest so that it thrives into the future.
STAGE 2:
Experience Planting a Children’s Forest
We highly recommend that participants attend a planting project to gain first hand experience during the planting season, at no additional cost.
You will join in with a Children’s Forest planting project and experience the first 3 steps of the process in practice with the children.
About the tutors
Anna Richardson: Anna has been a nature mentor and trained forest school leader for over 20 years, working with children of all ages and mentoring adults in plant lore, foraging, nature connection and bushcraft. The 8 Shields deeply informs Anna’s work and approach. She is passionate about connecting to nature through creativity and reverence for life and is also a forest school trainer through Circle of Life Rediscovery and has co-authored two books : Learning with Nature and The Children’s Forest and is the founder of the Children’s Forest.
Pippa Johns: Pippa has 25 years experience of working with land, designing and making ecological gardens that produce food for people alongside providing habitat for abundant wildlife and building soils. She has worked on Organic farms and smallholdings and has taught Permaculture for over 20 years. Pippa is passionate about inspiring people to develop their own connection to a piece of land to grow food for families and communities. She has designed and taught on Permaculture design courses, been a tutor for the Permaculture Diploma and developed her own courses in ecological gardening and connection gardening. She has created the first Children’s Forest tree nursery, facilitating children to grow native trees from local seed, for planting Children’s Forests.
Erica Shorter: Erica has been learning and playing in nature as a Forest School Leader and Nature Connection Mentor for over 10 years. She is happiest wandering barefoot in the forest and brings a flavour of deep nature connection into her work with children and adults. She is informed and inspired by the 8 Shields and is passionate about creating spaces for people to feel deeply connected with nature and their inner landscapes.
Jack Durtnall Jack is a musician, nature connection facilitator and forest school leader who came to nature connection work through an innate love for nature and folk song, inspired by the life-work of Jon Young and the 8 Shields. Jack’s background is in music. As well as his role leading workshops and facilitating on plantings, Jack co-leads the Children’s Forest Tree Choir and is part of the team bringing through the Song Forest project. Jack is part of the Folkadelix band, hosts a monthly jam session at the Hop Yard in Forest Row and performs solo shows.
STAGE 1: Children’s Forest Facilitator Training including Tending
Oct 15 -18th 2026
Course Content
Over these days you will be guided through the four step journey of Experiencing, Imagining, Planting and Tending a Children’s Forest program. Our aim is to support you to engage children as co-creators of their world.
As we journey through the four step process we will first experience each step as would children whilst planting a Children’s Forest. We then discuss and reflect upon each step, engaging with the philosophy as well as the practicalities of planting a Children’s Forest.
On the last day, we will explore all aspects of tending a Children’s Forest from young trees into the future. This will include practical aspects of caring for a young forest, crafts and activities to increase and enhance biodiversity, tracking and recording changes in the environment, supporting connection in children and communities, creating community learning and celebration opportunities.
We also explore our role as caretakers – reconnecting us with the positive part humans can play in the health of our ecosystem. The tending of a newly planted Children’s Forest offers children and their communities a place to develop connections with each other as well as the land and the family of species with which we share the world. Here we develop heart connection as well as knowledge and ecological understanding. We will explore the practicalities of looking after the trees; the creation of habitats for wildlife; surveying the site and reporting with advice from ecologists.
Throughout the three days we will explore ancestral skills, games, music, song and storytelling. The culture of Children’s Forest is informed, amongst other practices, by the 8-Shields model, which is inspired by the living elements of indigenous practice as shared by Jon Young.
In the evenings we gather within a circle of oak trees around the fire as a tribe, sharing songs and stories in the fire light together in the ways our ancestors have done for thousands of years. Throughout the course we will enjoy three meals a day of delicious food.
Forest From Seed Training Course
October 13th – 14th 2026
The Facilitator course aligns directly with our Forest From Seed training, which will now take place immediately beforehand on October 13-14th.
For those wishing to undertake both trainings – the two courses are designed to work hand-in-hand and taken together, offers a more integrated journey – from seed to forest, and from embodied connection to shared facilitation – creating a deeper, more embodied learning experience rooted in relationship with trees, place and community.
During this two day training you will:
- gather wild tree foods and medicines of the season
- explore how to harvest with respect and care, preparing the seeds for planting as part of the reciprocal cycle of life.
- learn how to set up your own tree nursery and grow healthy, locally sourced trees with children, families and communities to grow trees for Children’s Forests and other tree planting initiatives.
- explore the tending processes needed over a year to grow trees from seed to sapling, looking into details such as growing methods and mediums, and pests and problems as well
- learn ways to support communities to come together to grow, honour and celebrate trees of all ages with songs, stories and more.
STAGE 2: Participating in a Planting Project
Get in touch for dates (TBC)
About
The last part of the Facilitator Training is participating in a Children’s Forest Planting Project with children and the facilitation team.
We highly recommend that participants attend a planting project to gain first hand experience during the planting season, at no additional cost.
This important experience helps to bring the theoretical and adult based learning of part 1 into the practical application of planting a Children’s Forest. You will be part of the journey with the children and team, experiencing forest time, creative imagining time and the planting of the trees.
If this is not possible, it can be arranged for a member of the Children’s Forest team to attend your own planting project to guide and advise instead (depending on location).
What does a planting project involve?
We usually work with 30 children over 3 days on a planting project. You are welcome to participate for all 3 days or at minimum for a day and a half in order to see one group of children through all three steps.
DAY 1: Step 1 & 2
Forest Experiencing & Imagining
The first group of 15 children spend the morning session in the forest exploring, playing and experiencing the mature woodland to set the scene for the journey ahead.
In the afternoon the children visit the planting site and drawing upon their experience in the woods, imagine the trees they will plant and the animals that will come and live there. Through art and poetry, story and games we activate future generational awareness.
DAY 2: Step 1 & 2:
Forest Experience & Imagining
The second group of 15 children come for the same experience as the first group.
DAY 3: Step 3
Tree Planting
In the morning the first group return for the planting of the Children’s Forest. With games and simple ceremony we reconnect with care for the land and plant wishes for the children of all species together with the trees.
In the afternoon the second group arrive to repeat the planting journey of the morning session. When the trees are planted we celebrate the new forest together.
Course Fees
The price includes camp and delicious home cooked organic meals and drinks for three days.
- Standard fee: £600
- Supporters fee: £750
- Supported fee: £450 (limited availability please apply)
We are committed to making this training as accessible and inclusive as possible therefore have a limited number of concessionary spaces reserved for those in financial need.
Please pay at the level comfortable to you. Paying the supporters fee enables us to offer concessionary rates to those in need. Payment plans are possible, please contact us for details at [email protected].
Terms & Conditions
A non refundable deposit of 20% will secure your place on the course. Please read the current version of our terms & conditions.
“The Children’s Forest Facilitator course has been the most inspirational training I’ve ever been on.
…I feel like I have been physically shifted in my heart after these four days. Your knowledge, your love and your organisation of the days have been so gratefully received.”~ Rosie
