Listening to your self, and exploring the world in the way that is meaningful to you and your own sense of curiosity and purpose. Being able to choose what, when and how you want to learn and do things, based on what feels right to you.

Being self-directed means tuning in to your most authentic self and working from that place forward. It means listening to and trusting our innate knowings and questionings, and being guided by the sense of interest, curiosity, and problems that come from this place. Self-direction enables us to explore the world around us in a meaningful, relevant, and contextual way, aligned with our own state of readiness and need. It results in us picking up the knowledge, tools and skills that are necessary to be creative, knowledgeable, problem-solving, self-aligned and self-actualised people in the world.

Understanding your own agency and autonomy, and the freedom and boundaries that come with that. Being able to say an authentic yes, no or maybe, and respecting the boundaries and consent of others.

Consent-Based Education is the ethical counterbalance to self-direction. Consent is a process that needs to happen when one person’s self-direction comes into contact with another person’s self-direction (or the environment). Consent creates the opportunity for people to say yes, no, or maybe to what they participate in, to ask for more information if they need it to make an informed choice, and to change their minds at a future point if needed.

Consent-Based Education can only exist in environments that are trust and accountability rather than fear and shame based. Behaviour is regulated by authentic relationship and open and direct listening and communication rather than through means of coercion, reward or punishment. For consent to be meaningful, it must be freely given, informed, and coming from a deep sense of self. As facilitators, we endeavor to provide the community with the information, affirming culture, and critical lens that they need to make an aligned and informed choice about how they wish to use their time whilst there.

Consent-Based Education requires, and places in high regard the spiritual, intellectual, emotional, bodily and creative agency and autonomy of all people, whatever their age or stage, and the personal boundaries that accompany that.

Anything can be potentially interesting and meaningful . Curiosity, problem solving and learning doesn't have to be limited to subject silos or traditional value judgments about what is important to learn about and what isn't. 

Ed Positivity is an education philosophy that combines self-direction and consent culture with a transcendence of traditional subject siloes, and biased notions of subject and activity value. It addresses conscious and unconscious biases that presume that there is some information/knowledge/activity that is inherently superior or suitable as opposed to other information/knowledge/activity, and instead reveres each person’s own unique needs and processes around living and learning – so long as it isn’t harmful to themselves or others.

An Ed Positive approach welcomes questioning, curiosity, rest, and interdisciplinary thinking and doing. It embraces exploration and critical thinking. It is open-minded to the many different motivations and manifestations of an individual’s path in seeking knowledge, solving problems, and learning in general. Ed Positivity respects all learners unique, personal, and often private journeys in understanding the world around them and their place in it. Ed Positivity is based on a belief that given the conditions that meet our own basic needs for growth, we will do our best to grow in the way that is right for us.

Young people should have the chance to influence and co-create decisions and solutions that affect them. We can understand and manage risk together, and conflict can be navigated in an open and honest way.

We believe in people be involved in the decisions that affect them. At the Cabin and the Lodge, we work to solve problems and make decisions together. We do this through our opening and closing meetings at the beginning and end of each day, and also through additional 'community hygiene' meetings to address whole community issues as they emerge. We also co-create the plans for what we do when we are together. Everyone in the community has equal opportunity to put something on the plan for the day, or to raise an issue.

We believe in sharing risk management processes. Where a risk needs to be managed, we ask those involved what agreements we can make to best do this. We know that in communities that care about consent, conflict occurs and is important. We know that conflict, brought out into the open, explored and well navigated, is a sign of healthy relationships and community. We see conflict as a mismatch in needs and/or a mismatch in understanding. Where conflict arises, we support people in navigating it themselves, as well as providing mediation where that is helpful, to increase understanding and find ways to meet unmet needs.  

People under 18 have human rights. Experiencing that all starts in the way that we are treated in childhood, and the way we learn to be with and treat others and our environment.

What are children’s rights?

Children have human rights. This is laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed by the UK in 1990. Included in this are the rights to have a voice that is taken seriously. Under 18s have participation rights, including rights to influence their lives and have their say in matters that affect them. They have the right to access information, to play, and to have dignity in their experience of education - a process enabling them to grow to their fullest expression. They have the right to know their own human rights, and the human rights of others. They have the rights to privacy, to be free from discrimination, and to have their own thoughts and opinions. They have the right to be treated as real people, not people 'in the making', or the property of anyone else, but as real whole people in the here and now. We believe in respecting children. 

What is our commitment to equity, inclusion, social and environmental justice?

Going even deeper in explaining our commitment to children’s rights: we are committed to equity, inclusion, social and environmental justice and to being a welcoming and inclusive space for all children, young people, families, and facilitators. We are proactive in creating a space which enables everyone to express themselves and be themselves, and to be accepted for who they are. We recognize that identities are complex and multi-layered, and that children and young people are at a particularly sensitive stage for exploring, reflecting and ‘growing into themselves’.

We want to bring in resources, materials, people, and activities which will enable us to create spaces for exploring and affirming experiences and identities, including those relating to gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, dis/ability, social class or culture, and age. We will reflect on and challenge our own cultures and practices and we initiate and welcome critical feedback and discussion relating to this. We also know that we are not separate to, but are part of the natural world, that we exist in an ecosystem where everyone and everything has an important part to play in regard to the health and wellbeing of that ecosystem. We know that feeling in connection to and care for the ebbs and flows, rhythms and ways of the natural world is an essential part of being in connection with and caring for ourselves.