Category: Blog

Treacle Valley’s Ukrainian Adventure!

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This week we have welcomed a group of Ukrainian children to Treacle Valley for one of our infamous adventures!

The children came to us on Monday and Tuesday for two days of outdoor activities. We built dens in the woods, swung around on hammocks and played loads of outdoor games including Swedish Kubb! The children made their own healthy bannock breads with natural ingredients and we made pancakes for lunch too, all cooked over the campfire. We spent as much time as we could exploring nature and interacting with it, and even our lunches had a foraged theme – some of the braver children tried eating a stinging nettle!

Then on Wednesday night everyone came for an overnight camp, with sleeping bags and teddies in tow. The weather was a little wet but nobody seemed to care! The highlight of the overnight camp was the amazing night walk where we found traces of deer in the woods, a fresh sparrowhawk kill, and listened to the sounds of bats echolocating as they swooped above our heads.

This camp was possible thanks to Social Farms and Gardens, a fantastic organisation who encourage communities to get outside and grow together. They have partnered with the Hilden Fund to get more children outdoors and enjoying nature together, and they kindly provided the funding to allow this camp to go ahead. We are very grateful for the support.

Thank you also to Yuliia and Ash from Torbay Community Development Trust for all their help in co-ordinating, making lists of children, finding spare sleeping bags and organising transport; the amazing Karina and Anya who came as volunteers, we couldn’t have done it without you; our own team Rich, Jo and Elaine who worked so hard throughout the camp; and finally to Freddie and Alex who took on the role of peer helpers and made sure all the children felt happy and safe.

What a great camp!

John Muir Award – volunteering at Treacle Valley

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These are some of the activities we have participated in as part of our John Muir Award this year. Our sessions have had a profound impact on the woodland, encouraging wildlife and allowing more young people to safely access the wood.

Developing base camp
Learning woodland skills
Making nest boxes
Helping to build the compost toilet
Compost toilet almost complete
Building foundations
Spreading gravel for the base
Digging the floor area
Plant ID
Identifying plants using iNaturalist
Nest boxes
Cutting wood and managing resources
Building a new fire pit
The woodland in winter

Job Vacancy: Alternative Education Tutor

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A photo of one of our directors in the woods

Job Title

Alternative Education Tutor

Job Description

Alternative Education tutors support our young people by planning, delivering and evaluating 1-1 and small group sessions. The programmes we run incorporate activities such as art, gardening, science, environmental education, forest/beach school and bushcraft, with an outdoor element always at the heart of the programme. They are differentiated both at programme and session level to maximise engagement and to ensure our offer is student-centred. The young people we work with on these sessions are usually struggling to access mainstream education and require high levels of individual support.

We are not purely an intervention service and we aim for all our students to leave our programmes with an external qualification or award of some type. The successful candidate will be delivering accredited lowland and environmental leadership courses at L2 and L3 and will hold an outdoor walking leadership qualification – for example South West Summer Moorland Leader or Mountain Training Lowland Leader. You will also have a background working with young people with SEND. This role will involve working with young people on a 1-1 basis in remote locations and you will also be required to drive young people to sessions in your own vehicle.

The postholder will primarily work during the week at term-time, although we also run weekend community sessions and holiday projects through the school holidays and you will need to be available for these sessions as and when required. This is an exciting time to join us because our woodland site is rapidly being developed for educational use and we are looking for people to help us realise our vision for the site.

Responsibilities

The post holder will have the following responsibilities and duties:

  • Planning and delivering a programme of activities, either on a 1-1 basis or with small groups as required.
  • Assessing young people’s documentation (eg EHCP) to ensure activities planned are differentiated for the student’s needs.
  • Ensuring session costs remain within an agreed budget.
  • Collecting and transporting young people in own vehicle as required.
  • Keeping accurate records of the student’s provision plan and completing any other required administration as required (eg half-termly reports, attendance at or reporting to reviews, evidencing awards)
  • Managing safety and risk on their sessions and reporting any areas of concern to their supervisor.
  • Following all Taleblazers policies and procedures, particularly those with reference to safeguarding, and raising safeguarding concerns in an appropriate and timely manner.
  • Contributing to the blog and social media.

Person Specification (Essential)

  • Outdoor walking leadership qualification – for example South West Summer Moorland Leader or Mountain Training Lowland Leader
  • Experience of working with young people with special educational needs (min 1 year)
  • L3 First Aid qualification (Outdoor or Paediatric)
  • L2 Safeguarding
  • Other Mountain Training/Forest School qualification
  • Student-centred approach
  • Enjoys working with young people outdoors
  • Ability to work and plan independently
  • Empathic, calm, patient and friendly
  • Can do attitude – wants to make a positive difference to young people
  • Buys into the wider ethos of Taleblazers and shares our interests

Person Specification (Desirable)

  • Previous employment in SEN-facing role
  • Teaching qualification
  • Experience and training to support working with specific SEN presentation(s)
  • Experience in advocacy, counselling or student support
  • Experience of assessing EHCPs, designing interventions and reporting on their outcomes
  • Willing to contribute to organisational development

Please contact rich@taleblazers.org.uk for more information and an application form.

Application deadline: 20/07/2024

Expected start date: 01/09/2024

Donations to Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team and John Muir Trust

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We take our obligations as a not-for-profit Community Interest Company very seriously. Being a CIC means the directors of the company do not benefit personally from the success of the business; any profits that the company ultimately makes will benefit the wider community and, more specifically, the organisation named in our ‘asset lock’. In our case, this means that any profits Taleblazers ultimately makes will be donated to the Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team based in Ashburton.

However, we intend to be running Taleblazers for a very long time! This means that DSRT could be waiting a long time before sharing any financial success. We have therefore decided to make a donation of £250 as a New Year’s gift to DSRT, as a kind of interim statement of our ongoing investment in the community and our desire for other organisations we love to benefit from our success.

Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team are a voluntary charity who help the emergency services to search for and rescue lost, missing, injured and vulnerable people. We most frequently associate them with finding lost walkers on the moors but they are also active in helping to find vulnerable people such as people with dementia, children and people experiencing mental health crises. Over 90% of their income is from donations and we are delighted to be in a position to support them.

At the same time, we have also decided to donate £100 to one of our favourite charities, the John Muir Trust, who conserve, protect and restore wild places across the UK. We share their passion for wild places and their John Muir Award programmes are central to our education work.

Introducing… the ACE Project!

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We’re delighted to be able to announce a pilot project for families of children with SEND, which we will be running every Thursday morning from 18th January until 28th March 2024. We’ve called it the ACE Project because it brings together three things that we love at Taleblazers – art, craft and the environment. This project is being run as a pilot project for the Localmotion Environment group and at the end of the programme we would love to have your feedback on what we should do next to develop this idea!

We will run alternate weeks at our bases at Treacle Valley and at Cockington with a different focus each week. At Cockington we will run an art-based programme, while our Treacle Valley sessions will be focused on traditional crafts and conservation. We want to create friendly and welcoming spaces where you can come and meet other families of children with SEND, learn some new skills, be inspired and have some fun.

Children are very welcome to attend and depending on their age and numbers we may provide alternative activities for them so that parents can relax and enjoy the sessions.

To sign up, please complete our Microsoft Form by clicking here!

Job Opportunities

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Rich, Victoria and Kev looking into the camera

Come work for us!

Are you passionate about the natural world, history, heritage and arts? Are you able to communicate your passion to young people, particularly those who are disengaged from mainstream education? Can you inspire people to see the world with fresh perspectives?

If so, get in touch!

Alternative Education Tutor (Art, Bushcraft, or Primary)

Alternative Education tutors support our young people by planning, delivering and evaluating 1-1 and small group sessions. The programmes we run incorporate activities such as art, gardening, science, environmental education, forest/beach school and bushcraft, with an outdoor element always at the heart of the programme. They are differentiated both at programme and session level to maximise engagement and to ensure our offer is student-centred. The young people we work with on these sessions are usually struggling to access mainstream education and require high levels of individual support.

Full job description and application form:

Job-Description-Alternative-Education-TutorDownload
Job-Application-Form-Alternative-Education-TutorDownload

Creative Associates

Creative Associates work with Taleblazers on workshop delivery and public events. They are creative people who can tell stories in several ways and bring our history and heritage to life. Our communities and landscapes are full of tales: historical, myth and legend, and the role of the Storytellers is to shape those stories into forms that people – young people in particular – can engage with. 

Job-Description-Associate-CreativesDownload
Job-Application-Form-Associate-CreativesDownload

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