Riversmeet

21/10/2026

Article 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child reminds educators that education contributes to the development of the whole child, including their personality, talents and respect for others and culture.

This connects beautifully with the Southwest part of the Art of Mentoring model.

After exploration and activity, children need opportunities to make meaning from what happened. A disagreement during a group project can become a conversation about relationships. A construction that collapsed can become a chance to consider what might work next time. A discovery outdoors can become a story shared with the group.

Educators can support this process by listening first, helping children name what happened and offering questions that invite reflection.

Sometimes the learning becomes clearer once the activity has finished.

An invitation for educators: what happened today that might be worth revisiting before everyone goes home?

Read more about children’s rights: https://www.unicef.org.au/convention-rights-child-summary

13/10/2026

My friend is helping this band in Uganda to get off the ground. Can you help?

To create an exciting, vibrant new concept that develops talent and sustainable careers in Uganda's entertainment sector - The DanceBand

11/10/2026

Some highlights of Riversmeet Harvest Festival, made possible thanks to funding from Zero Carbon Cumbria and Food Cumberland and the generosity and graft of everyone who participated and contributed, especially Patrizia for her lovely food and sharing her skills and Rick as our host once again at Danaway. We left full of delicious, local organic food prepared by many hands and full of gratitude for the abundance of this harvest season and lovely human and more than human connections 💚
- three huge pots of suspicious soups cooked on the fire (suspicious as they contained lots of unknown veg, according to one of the children - who came back for seconds of more suspicious soup 😋)
- Sol's soul cake
- Many hands chopping for chutney
- Fire-baked bread
- Marrow and ginger jam, Pickled snozcumbers, apple chutney
- Children leading the apple juicing (and drinking)

05/10/2026

The first Sunday of the month is our volunteer day - yesterday we gathered, shared food (including some delicous freshly harvested apples baked on the fire built by our teen and tween volunteers), continued with building the fence for the new lower garden area, harvested some yakon from the polytunnel (a 'novel' food Rick grows which none of us had ever tried before) and generally hung out enjoying being together. The same lovely volunteers who join us on these days also support our events for home educating families and drop-off days for older children - book your space here and experience why we all love it so much! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/riversmeet-community-cooperative-84743348883

05/10/2026

On Saturday we had the pleasure of spending the day at Lorton primary school's apple day - what a great event! A community coming together, celebrating the harvest with lots of fun activities and going home with a bottle or several of delicious fresh juice! We brought along some fun things to do with crab apples - making apple c***r vinegar, engineering a crab apple ball run and making tiny crab apple people 💚🍏💚

21/09/2026

After a day spent at loggerheads with Eventbrite, our next three monthly home ed family meets are available for booking! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/danaway-wildlings-rooted-in-nature-a-monthly-home-education-group-tickets-2001892025939?aff=oddtdtcreator
At our meet last week we were dying cloth with buddleja, making campfire pizzas, cooking up hedgerow syrup, hunting for bugs, harvesting apples and corn, removing dead trees from the orchard....each month our plans will revolve around jobs on the permaculture homestead, along with nature-based games, activities and crafts in an inspiring setting to build connection and skills. This is a friendly and welcoming community and we'd love to see you there!

A monthly home education group for the whole family, exploring seasonal rhythms and building skills.

21/09/2026

The next three months of Wild Collective are available for booking now! Places are limited so book your young person's space early to avoid disappointment. Yesterday we were preparing and cooking a delicious stew over the fire, making ash-baked eggs, carrying out an experiment to test soil health, harvesting apples and playing games. Every month is different and guided by the young people who attend, but always with a focus on time outdoors building skills and connections. Food is always part of what we do - growing, harvesting, cooking, and everyone's favourite part - eating! If you have any questions or your child would like to visit the site first, please get in touch.

18/09/2026

A further survey, this time for Cumberland Council for their Holiday Activities and Food programme. If you attended one of our HAF funded events during the school summer holidays, could you take a couple of minutes to fill in their survey? You can find it here. We would love to host more of these events at Danaway so we will be applying again - your feedback might make this more likely!

Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey about your child’s experience with the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme. Your feedback is really important to us – it helps us understand what worked well, what could be improved, and how we can continue

18/09/2026

Have you attended one of our events for young people and families at Riversmeet in 2026? If so, we would love it if you could complete our short survey (no more than 5 mins!) to help us review our offer and continue to provide high quality events and opportunities for the next two years of this programme, which is generously funded by the Ernest Cook Trust.

Thank you for joining our events at Danaway homestead! We hope you and/or your children enjoyed the event, we love organising these for our community and we always want to offer a valuable and connecting experience for those who attend. We want to hear your feedback so we can continue improving our....

18/09/2026

We have a couple of spaces available on our Wild Collective meet for older kids and teens this weekend - 1 to 4pm on Sunady 20th September. We'll be making a fire and cooking on it, doing some pewter casting, helping out on the farm, possibly some woodcraft and friction fire, shelters and anything else the young people dream up! This is a small, friendly group of young people who enjoy spending time together outside and learning new skills. Booking essential, please book here:

NATURE CONNECTION AND SKILLS BUILDING SESSIONS FOR AGES 11-16 - These monthly sessions focus on Fire ~ Food ~ Shelter ~ Tools