Do you feel the call to unwind and reconnect with a beautiful earthy community? Are you longing to see your kids deepen their connection to the natural world? Village Camp Rekindled is what you have been looking for to ease your weary heart and soul. Rediscover your inner wild. Come alive with a vibrant community of humans. Immerse yourself in the wonder and wisdom of nature. Gather around the campfire, share stories, songs and earth-based skills.
‘Attending Village Camp was a turning point in my life… There was a magic at camp that has stayed with me, long after my tent was packed away. I left feeling so inspired, it was a remembering, an opening to possibilities for living that I had never conceived before.’
Becky, a mentor and mother of two young children.
~Come and reweave our village together~
Village Camp Rekindled is an opportunity to sink our roots deep into nature connection and allow the earth to support all aspects of our collective lives. Let us welcome you to the village!
You’ll arrive with your tent and camping gear to a warm bush welcome and settle into our beautiful surroundings as village life awakens around you. For four days we will explore the natural world around us, create fire without matches, share earth-based skills, play games, share stories around the campfire, laugh and sing, and take a much-needed breath of fresh air.
Each morning, awaken to the gentle, melodic tunes of our morning singers (or earlier to the morning chorus of local birds!) After breakfast, you’ll gather with the whole village for a check in circle and community games before the kids and teens go their separate ways for a morning of play and adventure.
Roo & Joey Program (paused) We are sensitive to the fact that the practicalities of camping with a toddler or younger child will probably mean that parents can’t participate fully in the adult program, as parents with older kids can. We want to support these parents to come to camp, immerse themselves in the magic of earth and community and be a valued part of the village. Should you need extra support from the village we’re here to help! We have in the past offered a program specifically to meet the needs of this stage and age of life of our villagers. Perhaps in future as our exciting new community-led approach plants its roots deep in the earth the Roo and Joey program will return – will you be the one to bring your gifts into this space?!
Kids venture into the wild to experience a free-flowing exploration of the surrounding bush with our experienced nature connection mentors. Together the mentors and kids immerse themselves in story and song, play games, follow their curiosity and creativity as they wander and explore, find animal tracks and practice wild skills and crafts. Over the days, they will open into a deep awareness of the wild world as they connect with plants, earth, animals and each other.
Teens in our village feel empowered to lean in and co-design their own journey. We’re excited for this new emergent adventure as our new community-led approach comes to life. There will be plenty of opportunities to deepen their nature-based skills and exploration, lead and honour rites of passage, weave their energy in with the adult program, or offer service and supported to mentor younger kids. In the past our blossoming future adults and their experienced nature mentors journeyed further afield on an epic overnight adventure!
Adults will have the opportunity to create their own personal journey of adventure and discovery here in our village. Held by the fabric of our interconnected threads, amongst new friends and old, there’ll be plenty of space for sit spots and solo bush adventures, to share and practice earth-based skills and to deepen your nature observation and ecological literacy. The archetypal ‘wild child’ will come alive through games, nature play and other spontaneous connective activities. Some folks might opt for deeply connective adult-sharing circles where parents and adults alike are held in a safer space to share how folks are really travelling.
In the past we have offered a wellbeing space, a soft space that can welcome you if you’re not feeling like participating in other ways or just want somewhere to relax by yourself or with company. We have no such physical offering this spring and invite each and every one of us to continue to weave wellbeing magic throughout the village as we go about our days. As we have done all these years. Let us keep our hearts and eyes open so we can catch and tend to each other wherever we land, under the shade of towering gums, curled up by the fire in the Willum, at the dishwashing station after dinner or anywhere else your hearts may lead you. We invite each and everyone of you to hold that space or step into it as only you know how. Please reach out if you need any support, from a pillowslip to a compassionate heart.
With our village reunited after adventurous mornings, the afternoons are free-flowing. Villagers play with new friends, practice new skills, share their talents or just chill out. Some might wish to head off for a wander or take some quiet time to rest and relax.
As the sun sets, delicious smells waft from our fabulous cooks in the kitchen and with song, hungry villagers gather to share in wholesome home-cooked dinner around the fire. A natural storytelling space opens as the day’s tales of adventure and discovery and laughter bubble up to be shared. When the fire dies down and the stars come out, tuckered-out little ones are sung off as they wander off to their tents. Some nights lend themselves to after-dark bush adventures too, before sleeping close to the earth and waking to the morning chorus again.
‘This camp is organised from the heart and holds connection to oneself, land and community in a truly caring balance.’ Village elder, mother and artist.
‘From 2 kids saying “Do we have to go” to “When is it happening again?- I don’t want to leave!”’ Journalist and parent of two boys 7 & 9
Will you join us to weave the threads of connection to community and nature? Who and what will you bring with you for this magical experience?
–Logistics–
Who is this for?
This is a family friendly, drug and alcohol-free event, with the program open to all. A true village embraces all ages and faces, we welcome diversity!
Program:
Tickets include a Welcome to Country, youth nature connection mentoring and facilitation, morning and evening village program, camping accommodation (with flushing toilets and hot showers!), hot camp-cooked dinner each night and a deeply connective opportunity to reweave the village and tend to the world we want our young ones to inherit.
Participants need to bring a tent and camping gear.
Morning mentoring program for children 4 years and up: 8:30-12:30.
Adult offerings of sharing circles and time in nature with a beautiful like-minded community keen to connect and share earth-based skills, nature observation and ecological literacy.
*All of our mentors have Working With Children Checks and we have qualified First Aiders.
The kids return to the responsibility of their parents for lunch and an open space afternoon.
Dinner is served around 6 and an evening program follows.
All members are welcome to participate as much or as little in the activities as they need to feel at home in the village.
Food:
Each villager or family will bring their own breakfast, lunch and snacks. Depending on fire restrictions, there may be some space for campfire cooking, but if you want cooked breakfasts or lunches it’s a good idea to bring your own camp cooking equipment.
Wholesome vegetarian dinners will be provided and shared around the campfire at the Willum in the evenings. The Willum is a space to share stories from our day full of adventures, sing songs and relax in the atmosphere of the village. After the evening program we will head back to our camps for a restful sleep to prepare for a new day of fun and adventure!
*We are able to cater for vegan, gluten free and dairy free dietary requirements if notified on booking. If this isn’t you, you will need to bring extra food to supplement.
Ticket Pricing:
As part of dreaming into what a sustainable community-led village camp looks like we have
updated the ticketing model to be simpler, clearer – and cheaper!
All tickets for program participants (adults and children) are the same price, with a lower
price for joeys (children who are too young to participate in the program).
Prices for this camp are:
Adult: $430
Child 4+: $430
Joey 3: $170
Joey 0-2: $50
All tickets – including volunteer tickets and joey tickets – include a contribution towards the
Village Fund. The Village Fund celebrates the diversity of our community by acknowledging
that not all of us have equally abundant access to funds. While some of us are able to
support the village, others – including many of the essential volunteers and mentors who
make camp possible – need the village’s support to be able to gather with us and share their
gifts. If this is you, and you need the support of the village, you can enter the code ‘fundme’
at checkout to have the Village Fund discount of $50 per ticket applied. For those finding
themselves in a place of abundance, you can also make an additional contribution to the
Village Fund at checkout 🌱
We will be chopping wood and spinning the hand drill stalk ready to welcome you back into the community and nature again, will you join us for a yarn around the campfire these school holidays?
‘We left with a deep sense of belonging and community. A connection with the earth, ourselves, and each other’. Village Parent
Weaving the Nest
A Community-led Approach to Camp
Firekeepers’ Village Camps have changed lives. The connected vision and devotion of a few shining souls has started a fire! One that our nature-connected community is passionate about tending. It’s been a long while between camps, in spite of our incredible community’s best efforts to revive the embers. Things have been tough and muddy and a lot has changed.
But recently, over a weekend in May, a group of passionate Firekeepers villagers gathered to explore the possibility of a Village Camp renewal. We had a variety of voices – adults, children, teenagers; those who’ve been deeply involved in running Village Camp for many years and those who are newer to the community; people who have been participants, mentors, support crew, wellbeing and organisers.
Over the course of two days, we shared about the gifts of Village Camp and nutted out the challenges and blocks that led us to overstretch ourselves in the past. We looked at the challenges we got bogged down in and at the small and not-so-small ways in which we found ourselves trying to do too much, trying to be too much. Our aim, then, is to return to the core elements that make village camp magical: NATURE CONNECTION and COMMUNITY.
With this lens, we asked ourselves: what can be stripped back? How can we come back to trust in the essence of coming together in nature with an intention to connect? Then we brought our collective energy to the question of how to rekindle this fire into something stronger and deeper. And what we came up with was, well – it takes a village! A community-led village.
A group of folks stepped forward at that time to carry these questions forward and to bring to life a renewed Village Camp in spring. This organisational crew we called the Nest: a passionate group of villagers willing to weave a container for our Village Camp embers and bring them to life for camp this spring.
This is an exciting new time for Firekeepers and the Village Camps we have all come to know and love. The vision is that our Rekindled community-led approach to Village Camp will provide an opportunity for every valued member of our community to contribute to the tending of our village fire. An invitation for new willing hands to hold while other hands take rest.
It’s true that Village Camp has always been brought to life by the incredible devotion and service of a great number of beautiful humans. It is in the glow of their collective efforts that we gather now!
The difference being that there are ten weavers of this organisational Nest – twenty hands busily sharing the load of programming, crafting comms, managing logistics, coordinating mentors, crunching numbers and brewing magic…
Dear village, this emergent approach is in its infancy and will need all the love and support we can shine on it. Much like other volunteer-run community-led gatherings, the hope is that our beloved camps will be raised by the village for the village. And all the necessary roles and responsibilities for bringing camp to life will be lovingly passed from one outstretched hand to another.
Nestlings in turn are gifted with the opportunity of community collaboration and repair, a safe place to share and nurture their unique gifts and skills and the cup-filling joy of service for the benefit of all beings! We’re dreaming into all the things we love about our village with a juicy invitation for you all to come pick up a thread and help us to weave our next nest.
We can’t wait to rekindle this fire with you all!