Finding a forest school site
Finding a forest school site & what you need
Whether you do forest school or outdoor learning, you need somewhere to do it. This is just a very quick rundown of places you could potentially find a site if you're self-employed.
The first one is…
Private owners:
If you own your own site, that's brilliant. You can more or less do what you want. But if you don't, you're going to have to find someone who has a site and is willing to let you use it or find a site and then find out who owns it.
The way I found my first forest school site was by telling everybody that I knew that I was looking for a site and eventually someone who I didn't actually know that well (I was telling anyone who would listen) said that their uncle's farm had a small woodland that had been used for woodwork for a while, and he might be willing to let me use it. So I called him up and it went from there.
The site I use now, that's the Wye Valley Sculpture Garden site, I think I met Gemma in the pub! The site I used before that I stumbled upon and I found the owner and asked if I could use it.
It's all about keeping your eyes open and telling everyone that you're looking for somewhere to use and making phone calls and looking at Google maps and leaving no stone unturned.
Private owners could also be things like City Farms and other organisations, as opposed to government-owned things like schools, councils, and Forestry England, and its counterparts, which are all government organisations and we're going to look at them now.
Schools:
If you're working in schools, then there are some that have decent grounds and forest school areas already, that would be ideal. You could very well end up working with a school to develop their grounds, which means that you'll have more of an influence, but some schools don't have a lot of green spaces. So you might have to create that space. One of my students has had to bring in lots of planters with small trees and bushes to create a greener environment. You're not always necessarily going to have these beautiful verdant spaces. You might have to compromise on two trees and a bit of Tarmac, but then that will be about the imagination and the resourcefulness that you bring to it.
Councils:
If you want to use public parks, you have to get in touch with your local council. I know Bristol is reasonably open to people using public spaces, probably not for fire and tools, but people do take groups out into parks.
If that's an option for you, you've got to explore whether that suits the group that you're with. A public space that feels safe for you might not be safe for, or feel safe for for the people who are with you. Think about how parks are used and who they're used by. This particularly comes down to socioeconomic groups, gender, and race. A middle-class white man walking through a park will have, or can have, a very different perception of that space compared to a black teenage boy. So if you're going to use public spaces, you've got to really think about what would feel safe your group, as opposed to what will feel safe for you.
If you do want to use parks, then you should get in touch with your local council parks department and see what they've got to say.
Forestry England etc.:
What used to be the Forestry Commission is now divided into Forestry England, Natural Resources Wales, and Forestry and Land Scotland. They have sites and quite often have regional learning teams. Certainly in Bristol, when I was there Forestry England had a team that dealt with people who wanted to use their sites.
They had a fee structure that depended on what activities you were doing, and they had learning agreements and site agreements.
What equipment do you need?
These are all good options, finding somewhere to run your outdoor sessions, but what do you really need to have in terms of facilities in order to run your sessions? The answer is not that much.
Trees:
If you're doing forest school, then you really do need trees, if possible. I know not everyone does manage it, but in an ideal world, you need some kind of greenery.
It's going to be quite challenging to do a lot of the activities if you don't.
Shelter:
You need to provide some kind of shelter. Shelters can range from a tarp that you put up when you arrive, to a permanent round house or barn and everything in between. Parachutes are popular, but they're becoming more and more expensive as demand goes up and they can be quite bulky if you have to take them up and down all the time. Whatever you have, you need a way of sheltering your groups from extremes of weather, either lots of rain or lots of heat.
Having a roof over our heads makes people feel safe. So even on gentler weather days, having shelter of some sort can help people feel safe, particularly if it's the first time that they've come into your outdoor space.
Toileting facilities:
Toileting facilities is something that you are going to have to give more thought to than you probably want to! If you're lucky, you'll find a site that has proper toilets, and then that's not a problem that you have to think about. Hooray! The alternative is that you're going to have to find solutions yourself. This can be anything from portable camping toilets and a pop-up toilet tent, to permanent compost toilets. Either way, you are going to have to think about how to deal with any waste. And if it's contained, for instance, inside the camping toilet, what are you going to do with it afterwards?
Some people do the whole latrine thing and dig trenches. I think you've got to know your groups really well and that they're okay with that if you want to do that.
If you've got very young groups who wear nappies, for instance, a nursery group, or in some instances, older children, you're going to have to think about how you are going to change nappies when needed.
Changing nappies in the woods doesn't sound easy in the context of an organised session and what you can do with your own child when you're out and about, wouldn't be acceptable in the context of an organised setting.
It needs to be away from other children, it needs to be dignified and requires quite a lot of logistics and forethought.
Then you also have the dirty nappies to think about afterwards. A lot of places have nappy bags that they carry around, which just sounds gross.
Vehicle access:
Parking or vehicle access is important in most cases, even if you're working in a school, if you got a lot of kit in your car, or even on a bike trailer, you need to be able to get your vehicle and your kit as close to your site as possible.
If you're running events where people will be dropping off individual children, then you need some good parking facilities. For me, organising parents picking up their children in cars was the most stressful and the most dangerous part of any session that I did, particularly birthday parties. It just hated it. Even when we had a large car park, it was stressful because people in cars quite often do silly things. Proper parking, if you can get, it will make your life a lot easier.
Water:
You're going to need clean water. So if you can find a site that has a tap that has a drinkable supply, you won't have to come up with creative ways of transporting water. If that tap is as close to the woods as possible, then you have hit the jackpot.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and found it useful. It forms part of my Start Your Forest School Business course, designed to help you set up your own forest school or outdoor business. I get asked about this information so often, I decided to put it into a course!
The course is open for enrolment 3 times a year and in the meantime, you can sign up for my FREE Wild Ideas Masterclass to help you form your business ideas. You’ll also be the first to know when enrolment for Start Your Forest School Business opens.