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Image credit: Koyo Tatsunokuchi, www.instagram.com/koyo531

For this year’s Alumni camp we visited Green & Away, in Worcester, ‘…a unique charitable events venue, working with organisations and people to create a natural, eco-friendly and creative space to come together in community, to inspire and foster ideas, to connect with nature or discover the outdoors for the first time.’

Current and past participants from UNION 19, Leeds 22, 23 and 24 programmes attended along with their families and guests from partner organisations/programmes. With an ever growing cohort, these alumni weekends give us a chance expand our networks and knowledge, to connect and reconnect. 

Friday

Our first day was a time to socialise and land in the amazing new space. Into the evening we had the pleasure of watching some work in progress stand up comedy.

Saturday

We planned our Saturday time together as open space style, attendees offered workshops and activities around the theme of Connection. Prior to the weekend the invitation was to think of ideas to share with others to learn, reflect, connect. The theme this year was inspired by the UNION Leeds collective project ‘Disconnection and Connection’. This was also open the the Green & Away volunteers, who kindly offered workshops and got stuck into our weird and wonderful ideas.

So many great offerings, they included walks along the nature trails to collect elements for mandala making, cross stitch – connecting with UNION 19 and looking forward to UNION’s future planning, clay and friendship bracelet making with questions posed around disconnection and connection, juggling, poi, headstands, comedy, poetry, nature philosophies, games around play – how we use this to talk about challenging topics and break down barriers. And more!

In UNION tradition, we planned an open mic for Saturday evening which included the newly formed for one night only ‘UNION band’!

 

Sunday

On our last day we had a structured reflection process asking…

• Where am I going?
• Where is my practice taking me?
• What is the world asking of me?

Whilst reflecting on the past year and the year ahead.

Reflections from alumni…

“Thanks so much for such a great weekend away.

Fantastic time with fabulous people. It was great to catch up with people and make new friendships.

All who understand who I am. Super supportive of my work, interests and life with family.

We enjoyed every minute. The whole weekend went far too fast and we could have spent much more time with everyone.

It was a great escape from our normal day to day to be surrounded by nature in such a creative atmosphere.

It was inspiring to be surrounded by such fantastic talented individuals and to spend time with everyone opportunity for us to also learn new skills.”

 

Special shout out to the food cooked on site by the amazing volunteers…

You can view our programme here: Alumni 24 programme outline

And for more alumni thoughts see our instagram: www.instagram.com/highlights

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