My name is Jonny and I hold space for young people to learn and grow. In 2019 I helped to set up the Awen Project, and since then have been working with groups of 8-15 year olds to co-create a free-to-attend democratic learning community, The Awen Tribe, that shares the forests of Dinas Powys, with hazel dormice, rabbits, woodpeckers, buzzards, butterflies, beetles, and the numberless host of other wild spirits from wilder realms. 

We do a lot of things at Awen: consent-based democracy, social entrepreneurial projects, human-scale education, learning outdoors (exclusively and all year round), socially engaged art projects, peer-assessment, public exhibitions, even normal lessons on occasion… but the stuff we do that I feel is most vital, is the stuff we are most missing in broader society: building and sustaining a meaningful community, engaging with nature as a constituent part of it, and exploring the soul and stoking it’s fires.

We do a lot of soulful education, some of which to the outside eye can look a little bit witchy. Tribal ceremony, initiation rituals, the constructing of seasonal threshold archways, co-writing and performing songs with drums and guitars and whistles and dances, oaths declared before friends and family, “crossing the swamp”: these wild journeys are the “magic” of the Awen tribe, and they are performed by our young people unfailingly with the utmost seriousness and intent. 

I am also notably an accidental educator. My background is in music and writing, and I never had a plan to go into education. When I ended up stepping into a classroom temporarily, to fill a gap, I found that not only did I have a talent for communicating with young people and helping them engage with their passions, I also loved it. It is my opinion that people turning towards education as a career in their 30s and 40s (rather than in their early 20s, straight out of university) can bring emotional maturity and expert skills to the table. These would be very useful for the mission ahead - that in which we all will surely play a part: the reformation of the education system.

https://www.theawenproject.com/