Homepage Contact details:Upper Swainswick House, Tadwick Lane, Bath BA1 8BU,01225 858251, rachel@playingoutdoors.org

Swainswick Explorers
Swainswick Explorers are based in a small, rural village near Bath and are run by an enterprising family with a passion for offering children positive experiences outdoors.  We provide a unique service in the local area as qualified playworkers that organise adventurous and stimulating outdoor play and learning opportunities for children.

We work with children via our holiday and after school play schemes and parties, providing opportunities for them to play in natural countryside. We also work with teachers who want to provide a whole class outing to a local natural feature, e.g. a hillside, woodlands or open countryside.  We also design and run explicitly Christian walks relating to the R.E. curriculum for teachers and school groups e.g. Advent adventure. With Annie Lywood of Bath Forest School, we design and run Viking Days for schools. We act as experienced outdoor guides on the journeys so that a group can explore and learn outdoors for long periods in different conditions.

Through knowledge of the surrounding areas and carefully building relationships with local landowners, we have established a really good network of appropriate wild spaces in the local vicinity to take children.  Most sites can be walked to and a circular route through varied countryside often forms a key part of the sessions.  Rope swings, campfires and dens are all set-up and taken down in-situ to help facilitate environmental play.  Certain sites have particular qualities for different types of play, e.g. good locations for mud rich in natural clay or woodland with good den materials.

Our play and learning activities are fundamentally child-centred and flexible, developing freely as the children and wild spaces interact with each other.  Skills such as tree climbing, tool and fire lighting are introduced with adult guidance and support, and are utilised and developed for play contexts instigated by the children themselves.  Imaginary play and storytelling spontaneously arise whilst playing outdoors, and these elements are sometimes augmented with planned/equipped activities.

In summary we take people out of their everyday experiences.  Some of our activities are to do with risk taking.   Experiencing the outdoors with people often provides opportunities for sharing faith. 

These are our broad objectives which show the underpinning values and principles of our play practice against which we can evaluate our work: 

Swainswick Explorer’s (SE) 7 Play Objectives

• We extend the choice and control that children have over their play, the freedom they enjoy and the satisfaction they gain from it
• We recognise the child’s need to test boundaries and responds positively to that need
• We manage the balance between the need to offer risk and the need to keep children safe from harm
• We maximise the range of play opportunities
• We foster independence and self-esteem
• We foster children’s respect for others and offers opportunities for social interaction
• We foster the child’s well-being, healthy growth and development, knowledge and understanding, creativity and capacity to learn.

Edward and Rachel Leigh-Wood are Play Leaders (Diploma in Playwork Level 3) and have 5 years experience leading groups of children on outdoor trips.  We also have experience training adults in outdoor play and natural crafts and hosting training sessions from our home.  Edward is a qualified teacher and has a forest school training.  Rachel has a background in arts and business.  

What did you decide to do this? The vision for Swainswick Explorers has evolved through encouragement from family, friends and our faith. We have always sought to share our faith through Swainswick Explorers.  Evangelism comes naturally as conversations about God arise out of the outdoor experience.  Now we are aiming to share faith more explicitly in our work, being encouraged to do so by our church and its leadership.We are linked with St Michaels church in Bath, where we worship as a family.  The church supports this and other local projects which share a common goal of making Christ known through offering high quality and professional work/services in the secular world. 

We are keen environmentalists as well as Christians; however our work does not have "religious" content or theme unless asked for by a specific group we may be working with, e.g. a Sunday school group. Those intersted in exploring further links of Christian environmentalism could start at www.arocha.org . Our work is not linked to this group although we are family members and support their work. Edward likes the stories of St Martin and St Francis, which are worth looking up.

How long have we been doing it? Since summer 2003.

What are your qualifications? Our love of play, people and the environment. We are both registered childminders with ofsted and are "Playleaders" having completed a Diploma in Playwork (Cachel Level 3). Edward is also a qualified secondary school teacher, Forest School trained and is St. John's Ambulance trained in First Aid at work. Both of us have completed a paeadiatric first aid. Rachel has an arts background and grew up in the Swainswick valley.

We are ably supported by our sons George 10, Tobias 8 and Arthur 5, Rosie the collie comes along as well!