Highbury Orchard – Stick Around 2019

Stick Around is a Forest School for adults who wish, in part, to manage their well-being by being outdoors. Highbury Orchard Community CIC has been running well-being sessions for four years, and has a close following of people from a variety of backgrounds.

As a Permaculture project, HOCCIC connects people and land, by caring for both. Just as there is a diverse range of trees and plants, so it is with our participants. We aim to reflect the community’s diversity. We especially welcome people who are taking care to manage their mental health, because natural outdoor spaces are calming and stimulating in just the right quantities.

Accessibility
▪Sessions are Pay As You Feel on the day, so that everyone can join in whenever they can.
▪ We positively encourage a mixed group, as together we can best provide mutual support. Leaders offer activities that can stimulate or challenge at various levels of ability.

Simple Rituals and Structure
▪ We offer a range of ways to monitor our well-being during the session that allow people to reflect on their inner world as well as the world outside.
▪ An emotional check-in score on signing in.

▪ A few minutes of yoga or guided meditation, or with a quiet reflection on a stone or a plant.
▪ The Five Ways to Well-Being to monitor and appreciate what we have been doing.
▪ Discussion time at the close of the session often with a warm drink.

Activities
▪Activities are inspired by the season, by individual project work that flows over from one week to the next, and by opportunities to give to the wider project – such as making signage for the site.
▪ They include conservation and gardening work in the Orchard and its immediate surroundings, seasonal / wildlife walks, bushcraft, and craftwork using found natural materials (for example, willow, hazel, stones).
▪ We aim to make some products that can be sold to support the Stick Around programme.

Support
▪ We support participants, and listen when they wish to share concerns.
▪ Our leaders can signpost individuals to other services when needed.

Stick Around is an all-inclusive outdoor programme for adults, where you can:
▪Engage with nature through being active.
▪Be playful & experimental, making things with wood.
▪Make friends.

DIRECTIONS
By bus:  The 50 or 35 from the city drops you off at Valentine Road. Walk back a few yards and cross the busy junction into Highbury Park.
By car: Enter the park at the junction of Shutlock Lane/ Dads Lane and park in the designated car park, B13 8NZ.
Either way, you would now be on the main path which stretches between car park and High St.

1. Walk along the main path into the park. Notice the ancient Henburys brick wall, carved log benches, a large triangular stone in the open green space, and an incoming path.
2. Turn your back to the wall and walk along the incoming path. Follow it along a line of mature trees.
3. Turn right at a dirt track which leads uphill to a brick floor, orchard garden and sheds. You’ve arrived!

 

Highbury Orchard hope to recruit new participants during the autumn. Stick Around is collaborating with General Public in their Pomology Project for the arts and well-being. Sessions are Pay As You Feel.

Event Location

Highbury Orchard

Event Organiser

This event is organised by Highbury Orchard CIC