Sam Wingfield
ReKindle Youth Worker
Sam has lived off grid for over 30 years, in order to live rurally and be able to be part of the environment, lessening her personal impact upon the planet, bringing up two children up as a single mum in this lifestyle, travelling and working all over the UK and Europe before settling in Newent on a squatted site owned by the Forest of Dean District Council in 2009.
She managed to change the planning on the site to give long term security as the children living there needed to settle for exams.
Still a vehicle dweller, she has been able to imbue an appreciation and connection with nature and an alternative (as opposed to consumer capitalism) lifestyle to her children, both by personal example and by the models of life demonstrated within our wider community. Both are still active members of the traveller community.
She believes that modern ways of life are failing young and old alike, fracturing communities, in order to pursue an unobtainable and unsustainable dream. We have a personal obligation to future generations to change society and attitudes, to promote new/old beliefs that will sustain and educate, trying to live life and work by choosing to try to teach and inform more sustainable methods of living.
A keen advocate of doing it for yourself, having successfully run her own portable permaculture/medicinal garden project for 15 years. Designing and maintaining a large portable garden, to use as a workshop space, helping people of all ages to reconnect to basic horticultural propagation and rural crafts, such as willow weaving. As an advocate for alternative living, this project has also been a bridge, bringing to other people a positive example of those who live an unconventional lifestyle. Several of the volunteers have been able to use their experience as a reference to accessing education or first jobs, so beneficial to all.
Recognising the therapeutic and beneficial relationship between the natural world she believes that The Rewild Project offers a pathway for prevention, for people/children to build a connection and a relationship with the natural wold that will hopefully not only give improved holistic wellbeing, but sow the seeds of an appreciation and connection with their surrounding environment and natural landscapes.
Sam previously worked at Hill Holt Woods in Lincoln - a ground breaking award winning woodland education centre, her first experience of an alternative teaching environment. Teaching BTEC horticulture/ work life skills to excluded kids and extremely disadvantaged young people, she recognised the need for different methods of communication and engagement, to develop active participation and learning, helping them to enjoy and connect with new environments.
Having achieved a first class Honours degree in Horticulture, a Permaculture Design qualification, she has been LANTRA trained since 1998.
She currently also works at Wildgoose Rural Training, a care farm on a beautiful nature reserve in Worcester, teaching learning-disabled adult and young children horticulture, heritage and conservation skills, helping people to reconnect with their surrounding environment.
Sam fully appreciates and has experienced the value and therapeutic nature of a natural learning environment, the reconnection with a real world environment, that can build relationships, develop self-confidence, a fusing of physical practical and self-developmental skills.