Roberta Hollis
You're invited to join the Climate Resilience Weekender, hosted by the Climate Psychology Alliance.
Dates: Friday 30th May - Sunday 1st June 2025
Location: Heartwood Social Farming Centre, Peak District, UK (The retreat will take place in a rural setting and you will be sleeping in a dormitory)
Who can apply? People aged between 18-30 years old
Cost: Thanks to funding from the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global, the retreat will be free. However, you are requested to pay £30 to cover food expenses (£10 per day) and you are encouraged to bring your own snacks. You will also need to cover your travel costs.
More Information
An opportunity to rest and recuperate; the Climate Resilience Weekender will help you to reconnect with the more-than-human and other young people who care about the climate and polycrisis. There will be held spaces to process some of the difficult feelings that come with being climate aware, as well as nature connection work and practises to support resilience.
The weekend will be hosted by Sarah Hinds and Pete Visscher, both registered therapists and Climate Psychology Alliance members with many years experience of supporting students and young activists. They will be joined by Miriam McDonald, who regularly hosts groups of young people at her farm to engage in nature connection work.
Note that The Resilience Project has supported in the creation of this event, but will not be facilitating the event. The event itself is hosted and funded by our friends at the Climate Psychology Alliance. All facilitators have received safeguarding training and have up-to-date DBS checks. All facilitators are experienced in supporting young people who experience climate distress, and people who endure different forms of oppression.
About The Facilitators
Miriam McDonald, Director of Heartwood CIC
Mim (she/her) is a director of Heartwood CIC and the land management lead at High Leas Farm. She has a bachelors degree in ecology and over 15 years of experience in land work. She wrote the book ‘Emergent: Rewilding Nature, Regenerating Food and Healing the World by Restoring the Connection Between People and the Wild’. Her approach at High Leas centres around trying to understand the historic roles of humans (including other, now extinct, members of the Homo genus) in ecosystems to better understand how modern people can fit into the “wild”. She has a deep belief in the benefit that people can gain from connection to the more than human world but also the benefit that people can bring to the “wild” if given the opportunity.
Sarah Hinds, BACP Accredited Counsellor
Sarah (she/her) has been supporting youth since setting up a youth counselling service in Hampshire in the 1990s followed by a domestic abuse outreach service in the early 2000s. She then worked in Universities for over 20 years counselling staff and students. Sarah now runs The Garden -an outdoor personal development and therapy centre in Derbyshire. Her work is accredited by the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) and registered with BAPAM (British Association for Performing Arts Medicine). She is a Sesame (dramatherapy) practitioner and offers therapeutic support for the CPA (Climate Psychology Alliance).
Sarah is also a folk musician and writer and enjoys creative collaborations. She is passionate about creating opportunities for people to slow down, connect with themselves and the more than human. She believes that everyone is unique and brings a particular gift to the world and enjoys bringing people together to create community and connection.
Peter Visscher, Integrative Transpersonal Psychotherapist
As student counsellor, Peter worked for over fifteen years at different universities and colleges. Offering one-to-one support to students from many diverse backgrounds, Peter also designed and delivered group workshops, tailored to particular needs rather than resorting to manualised approaches.
With a background in the visual arts Peter studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Arnhem. At Swansea Print Workshop, Peter helped facilitate arts-based community workshops. Peter has an MA in human resources from the University of the West of England, especially focused on organisational behaviour, plus a University of Wales MA in integrative therapeutic counselling.
Peter completed their psychotherapy training at Re-Vision which has a ‘soulful perspective'. Peter is concerned about climate change denial, and how loss of an authentic inner sense of self can be reflected in feeling disconnected from each other and our natural environment. I agree that,
‘To be a psychologically aware human being in our society today means to embrace the ecological inter-connectedness of all things and to know with every breath we take that we are dependent on this living system of our environment.’ *
Peter is UKCP accredited, BACP registered, and a Climate Psychology Alliance member.
* From the UKCP’s ‘Environmental, sustainability and Climate Change Guidelines’.
Application
To submit an expression of interest, please complete the following form: https://form.typeform.com/to/ffNhQgK5
The deadline for applications is Monday 31 March 2025, 23:59 GMT
To bring the essence of TRP, we'd love to see applications from our alumni! While this opportunity is open to all applicants, some spaces will be reserved for TRP alumni (previous Circle participants and Co-Hosts)