Freedom to Learn
Honouring young people’s voices, needs, and dreams in intergenerational community
We are a living network of people and places honouring young people within a wider intergenerational exploration of how we might live, learn and grow together.
We see the impact of adultism on young people’s lives, and acknowledge that we live within extractive and harmful systems beyond what any of us can meaningfully shift alone.
We recognise that we each carry different lived histories, and we come together to make space for multiple ways of being, where learning can flow more freely and where we can support one another in finding our own paths and communities within the wider web of life.
By showing up in this way, we hope to grow the conditions for real change, together.
The Forum
13-17 August 2026
The Beeches, S33 0DA
Every year we co-create a four day in-person gathering. It’s a dynamic and fun space to imagine, create, play, and rest, woven together through our relationships with each other and the land that hosts us.
You may resonate with some of these threads…:
SCHOOL’S NOT COOL
Our members are at various stages of questioning the education system, exploring alternatives, dreaming up more equitable futures, experimenting with different approaches, actively divesting and co-creating alternative ecosystems of learning.
NO ONE RIGHT WAY
We recognise that education happens through relationship with other beings and our environment and so we welcome diverse perspectives and ways of knowing. We listen with curiosity to honour difference and find mutual understanding.
INNER WORK, OUTER ACTION
We engage in deschooling and decolonising as lifelong processes that ask us to remain humble explorers. We see both inner work and outer action as essential practices towards radical systems change and co-creating new realities.
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE
We develop our own embodied understanding of what works for us alongside others also finding their own way. In an atmosphere of mutual learning we share our stories and become woven into each others.
COMMUNITY
Practising ways of living outside of the mainstream can be isolating – we weren’t meant to do this alone. Having community, both online and in person, expands our capacity to keep caring about what matters. It feeds our courage to make the changes that feel scary to make, and can bring more joy and ease along the way.
SOMEONE TOLD YOU ABOUT US
You’ve heard from a friend that we’re a wonderful, welcoming bunch of people. They attended the forum and cried whilst singing, squealed as they swam at night, and ate the most delicious Palestinian food. They’ve had conversations at a network call that put their mind at ease, and others that have expanded their visions. And they’ve suggested you might like to join us.
Join our online network
Connect with our wider network of people and spaces through online gatherings, peer support and shared learning.
“we learn how to face our shadows, how to compost our “shit”, and how to weather storms together”
Vanessa Machado De Oliveira