Images by Pete Scullion. Words by Huw Jordan
Despite a quiet end on our social media, the Our Trails Gathering was nothing but quiet - as we've returned to work after the festive break we find we keep returning to it and the incredibly inspiring people who joined us there. Here writer Huw Jordan shares his experience of the event, and some of his core takeaways.
It’s been a few weeks now since the Our Trails Gathering saw a collection of activists, executives, scientists, adventure professionals and more flock to the centre of London. But as I sit down to write this article, I’ve got a growing feeling of ironic dread. For an event that focused on community, communication and collaboration, it sure has left me lost for words. So, let me start from (roughly) the beginning.
Anyone who has anything more than a passing awareness of Trash Free Trails knows they punch well above their weight. I’m not saying that frivolously - I heard that exact phrase said multiple times across several of the periods of downtime before and after workshops. They have a small core team and the scale of the work that they and their A-Team volunteers do boggles the mind. The energy that is brought to Trash Free Trails projects is electric, and the atmosphere stepping into the Gathering on Thursday was no different. When you’re placed in such a positive environment, the effect is immediately elevating - even before anything kicked off, the conversations being had around the venue were deeply passionate and engaging. There were a couple of quotes from the keynote panel with Dom, Rach and Rich that really typified why this is:
“Shame is not a sustainable fuel. Respect is a healthy and efficient renewable.”
“We could just stay in our lane and keep doing what we do, or we could push for something more.”
This is the crux why this year’s Our Trails Gathering felt so inspiring. From the outset we were forming community, foster collaborations, and communicating with clarity and feeling. Between us all was a shared desire to help our trails and the communities around them flourish.
I can only touch briefly on the rest of Thursday's events. The young folks of the Alpine Run Project held an awesome panel on the work they do and the activities the organisation facilitates. They really hammered home how vital it is to facilitate outdoor access for urban and marginalised communities, and were some of the most passionate and effective speakers present at the Gathering. “These guys were born this century and they’re all better speakers than any board member I know,” whispered one audience member behind me. The evening ended with an amazing set by Louis VI, who’s ecocentric music highlighted just how many different ways there are to engage the public. I cornered him in the cloakroom afterward and we had a great chat about the relationship between science and creativity.
I heard Friday described as “The least like work that a conference has ever felt.” I couldn’t agree more. The three workshops, focused on exploring the power of connection and storytelling, were not the kind of activity you’d normally find in a cross-sector event. The vast majority of the participants didn’t come from arts backgrounds but the enthusiasm and sincerity with which everyone threw themselves into them is just another testament to the power of the Gathering’s positive atmosphere.
I was pretty pumped that my first session was focused on freewriting - it can be such a radical activity and really gives the participant space to explore both their conscious and subconscious thoughts. One of the participants in my group of four made the instinctive decision to use the word “stewardship” instead of “ownership”, which ignited a whole conversation about how we define our sometimes possessive relationship with our trails. Needless to say, we left that workshop determined to be stewards. Other groups’ conversations touched on topics like the danger of over-anthropomorphizing nature, and the importance of intersectional conservation. The latter included another standout quote from Robbie Blackhall-Miles:
“When we give people equity in natural environments, it leads to massive conservational gains.”
Workshop Two saw my half of the attendees try out an activity called Dragon Dreaming, a collective method of achieving goals with origins in aboriginal Australian practices. It was great to hear that cultural importance acknowledged both by participants and TFT - a small but meaningful gesture that again emphasised the atmosphere of deliberate, thoughtful respect. Given prompts about our past experiences with collaboration, it was reassuring that despite our differences we all viewed successful teamwork in a similar way. The concept of cathedral thinking, the idea that projects are often bigger and longer lasting than our own involvement in them, proved particularly popular. There were other surprises too - we realised that the best collaborations are often fun and involve equitable, but not necessarily equal, partnerships.
The Gathering’s final workshop brought us all together again, with the goal to discuss what changes we’d like to see in our work, and the blocks preventing us from achieving them. This was a fitting culmination of the day’s work, with a lot of open discussions and respectful debates, these propelled by the previous workshops’ emphasis on what it means to collaborate effectively. My little group of freelancers all had different lived experiences, and it was the perfect environment to share our commonalities and have our opinions challenged.
In an ideal world, the Gathering would have gone on for days and days. Each panel, workshop, and passing conversation around the coffee station sparked countless questions and avenues of debate, and each of those interactions helped forge bonds of understanding and a growing desire for collaboration. None of us were eager to leave, and all of us wanted to stay in contact (I even used LinkedIn - a big deal for me). I stepped through the doors on Thursday feeling very much alone. 24 hours later, I left as part of a collective. Ongoing positive change in outdoor spaces is undoubtedly a joint endeavour, one perfectly encapsulated by Alpine Run’s Samreen Sabeer:
“It’s not an I/Me, it’s a We/Us.”
A tremendous thank you to Huw for sharing his experience! We'll be unfurling more of the Our Trails Gathering over the coming weeks and months.
What does collaboration mean to you? Let us know!
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