The aim of this page is to provide an overview of the work currently being undertaken by the Glastonbury Trust, All the projects are current for the academic year 2009 - 2010.

Forest School - The Glastonbury Trust funds or supports Forest School at several schools in the Glastonbury and Street area. We have trained Forest School Leaders to facilitate this. We run Forest School sessions on a weekly basis with some schools and Forest School 'taster' days with others. We own a share in a 16 acre nature reserve, which we are developing for use as our 'off-site' Forest School base.

 

Glastonbury Garden Projects - We have funded and project managed the creation of gardens in three local schools - St. Dunstan's Community College, St. Ben's C of E Primary and St. John's Infants. The pupils maintain the gardens by running after school gardening clubs. We also fund garden and landscape projects at Crispin School, Street.

 

Labyrinth Project - Our work with temporary and permanent labyrinths is designed to develop  outdoor learning across the curriculum. We work with teachers to create activities involving temporary labyrinths and have designed activities with Art, English, Geography, Maths and Science themes. We have begun work in three new schools this year - North Cadbury Primary, Castle Cary Primary and Winsham Primary - financed through the Healthy Schools Plus initiative.

Supporting Home - Educated Children - We have recently begun supporting a new group to help home educated children in the Glastonbury area. Our support comes in the form of advice, mentoring and bursaries. Our aim is to help all interested parties in the town to work together to provide a range of skills and experiences for our home educated children.

Teacher Training in Outdoor Learning, Spirituality & Emotional Well-Being - Through our conferences, training days and INSET packages we are encouraging teachers to think about spirituality in education in new ways, as well as exploring ways to deliver the curriculum outdoors. Leaflets advertising our different training packages can be obtained by writing or emailing us.

Volunteers are welcome in all areas. We are particulalry keen to recruit volunteers to support our gardens, particulalry if they are parents or grandparents! We also welcome volunteers for our Forest School activities, including helping us maintain and improve our woodland site.

We are also looking for people who could teach specific craft skills, either to Forest School groups or home-educated children.

We are particulalry interested in offering support to individuals or groups who would like to set up schemes to develop inter-generational activities with a focus on community cohesion and/ or sustainability.

Please refer to our CODE OF PRACTICE for our mandatory safeguards for volunteers working regularly with children.