11/10/2026
🐴 Helping horses, helping people — the value of learning together.
In her 2021 master’s thesis, Swedish researcher Mia Harri explored the Penytrip Project as it operated at the Welsh Institute of Therapeutic Horsemanship in Porthmadog, North Wales. She wanted to understand what made groundwork sessions meaningful for young people who needed support, using observations and interviews to explore the interactions between young people, practitioners and horses. As we're now launching the Penytrip Project at Clwyd Special Riding Centre, this research feels particularly relevant.
💚 One central theme was “Helping Horses”: young people contributed to the training and rehabilitation of rescued horses, while working with those horses supported their own learning and development.
The study highlighted safe spaces, communication and learning skills for everyday life. It also explored how groundwork could make participation accessible to young people who could not, or did not want to, ride.
For us, this reflects what we want to build alongside our core RDA provision: sessions where people and horses can help each other, and where time spent on the ground is valued in its own right.
Read the study: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1623423&dswid=7127
DiVA portal is a finding tool for research publications and student theses written at the following universities and research institutions.
