Outdoor learning is the basis for the brand-new college in the Brecon Beacons National Park the Black Mountains College (BMC). Its aim is to create a future where nature and humans thrive. BMC was founded as a response to the climate and ecological emergency and focuses on the challenge of our times: how to build a fair and just society within safe planetary boundaries. Education, specifically outdoor education is central to understanding our current situation and preparing for a different kind of future.
Vicky Cullen from the BMC told Welsh Country:
“Our learning, or should I say outdoor learning model, is applied across all courses, integrates the head, hands, and heart, multi-sensory protocols, outdoor learning, and multiple hierarchies of knowledge or ways of knowing.
We have three strands of study options: Higher Education, Further Education, and Short Courses.
- Our vocational further education courses include one-year-long Level 2 NVQs in Regenerative Horticulture and Coppicing & Greenwood Trades. They invite students to think critically about wider global issues and systems, whilst teaching through outdoor learning, practical skills that are in high demand. We are now taking applications to start in September 2022!
- Our higher education programme comprises of our very own Degree: (BA) Arts, Ecology, and Systems Change, in partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University. This uses experiential and problem-based outdoor learning, practical skills and arts-based training in cognition and perception alongside more traditional activities of reading and writing.
- Our 2022 short course programme covers a range of topics from practical skills like composting, tree planting and regenerative growing, to in-depth explorations of how to transform systems that are exacerbating our unsustainable economy and how to adapt and prepare for an uncertain future. We offer one-day workshops, residential camps, and bespoke training.
Learning in context, on the land, in ecosystems, within economies and social structures and organisations is what applied, experiential and problem-based outdoor learning is all about. Embedding the college and its activities in the community and the land means that often the learning will have positive social and ecological outcomes too.”
