Building an Outdoor Classroom By Dr Davy Walsh National Outdoor - - PDF document

• D. Walsh

Mayo Campus GMIT 2016 1

Building an Outdoor Classroom By Dr Davy Walsh National Outdoor Education Conference GMIT 2016 Intro When I was asked to do a talk, back in December 2015 for the Outdoor Con I instinctively said yes, thinking to myself that I could talk about the challenges outdoor education faces in the postmodern world. As a philosopher this kind of analysis really appeals to me and much

• f my own research is around the concept of self as encountered in adventure, which I believe

is a unique existential moment that leads to a very authentic and meaningful encounter with

• ne’s true self, which easily leads to the kind of therapeutic experience that has been

discussed already at today’s conference. Nonetheless, before I had the chance to pitch my ideas I was asked if I could do something on the outdoor project thingy that I was cooking up. Of course I said yes but about 2 minutes later it dawned on me that I had said yes to present

• r talk about something that didn’t yet exist. When I was asked to present something there

was only a lose idea and number of conversations with students and staff that lead to an inkling that an outdoor classroom would be a great project. Thankfully that inkling has become a reality and I stand here today talking about something that now exists. I feel it’s worth stating that I was originally slotted into the education strand of the conference and I was only asked a few days ago if I would mind slotting into the adventure therapy strand so what I had prepared has been chopped and changed somewhat. I should also add that I’m not an expert in adventure therapy, I have a good deal of experience with respect to using the outdoors and adventure in a therapeutic way, as have so many others in this room. Moreover, all of my postgraduate research has been in contemporary philosophy and social theory so I’m not going to be drawing on any evidenced based or empirical analysis of

• therapy. Of course the entire talk today centres around the building of an outdoor classroom

and where possible I will emphasise the kind of therapeutic impact that project had – on myself - but also on the wider community. I should say that I can only speak for myself here today but I’d like to think that my words and thoughts are shared by others who help to on the build. Furthermore, I make no claim of

• wnership over this project, nor do I claim any kind of ownership over the success and

completion of the build or the lack of planning and the lack of equipment. The idea of

• wnership does not belong to the realm of earth or wood, and in many ways that had to be

respected for this build to happen. The plan is to speak here for 10 minutes and then to walk you round some of my thoughts with respect to the build. By walking around my thoughts I literally mean walking, we'll be leaving here and we will walk down to the woodland trail where the journey began. I’m aware that this is the final talk before a break so I hope that we will be back for tea and coffees before the final speaker.

• D. Walsh

Mayo Campus GMIT 2016 2

Main The project itself grew in a very organic way, in fact the word organic is quite a good verb to describe the entire process really. The willow dictated what we did, if you pulled it too hard it broke, if you didn't pull hard enough it fell apart and bit by bit we began the process of communicating with nature. For me this was one of the real values behind this project. The connection with nature, which for me normally happens through a long exposure to the

• utdoors like ‘expedition life’ for example, however this process of small immersions in

nature seemed to have helped reset some kind of temporal balance, the circadian clock if you will, and that surprised me. From a therapeutic point this was a really positive finding because I would have always said long exposure was key, but small emersion with the right mind set seems just as successful. The build itself was the brain child of a few dedicated people who helped direct and shape the classroom and thanks to their belief in the project and their passion, work rate and skill we were able to complete the project within a very short deadline. However, a project of this kind cannot be bound by deadlines and the experiences shared and knowledge learned will always be timeless. The knowledge that is gained from a build like this transcends time. The understanding that comes with a process like this is entirely laid on the connections and relationships one makes with the self, others and nature. Therein lies the therapeutic impact of such a journey. An important, but entirely subjective truth emerges in such journeys, a truth that speaks to the very core of our being. It’s a dialogue that is hard to explain and I guess everyone experiences it differently, because it’s entirely subjective; and yet this entirely subjective truth only comes forth only through the experience and presence of either others or the elements of nature or both. According to Kierkegaard, it is the subjective truth that counts in life. How we believe is way more important than what we believe. For Kierkegaard the "passionate inwardness" relating to how we believe is one of the fundamental ingredients when it comes to dealing with anxiety and stress in our daily lives. It was a journey that started with a few basic plans and designs, quite literally been drawn on the back of envelopes and recycled paper and while the design and plans changed over the months of the build there were a number of underlying philosophies that I believe never

• yielded. The great idealist Plato, was adamant that ideas were never changing and entirely
• bjective and these ideas or forms for Plato are the building blocks of life; the foundation of

creation itself. He also insisted that the only thing that changes is the physical realm. In some respects I think he is right. We have built a classroom that will forever change because it is a living breathing entity, however the deep seated values of the outdoors and of education, I believe, will remain the same. By deep seated I'm referring to values that are grounded on a dialogical relationship, to put it another way a relationship of respect and dignity within that trilogy I mentioned earlier of the self, others and nature. The revelation of the inner workings

• f interpersonal relations, of dialogue and understanding, of compassion and indifference and
• f course the feeling of nature, is all the knowledge we need, to find some kind of peace, love

and happiness in our lives. I’m stressing and emphasising on the subjective experience of this process because for me therapy or recovery or whatever word one wishes to us, comes directly from the subjective

• D. Walsh

Mayo Campus GMIT 2016 3

level, it starts within the individual and if we take person-centred approached seriously than we have to take care to note the subjectivity that underlines any journey of personal growth. It’s the subjective experience that provides the avenue into the kind of reflexivity that is needed in any therapeutic process. The most appealing aspect to this build for me was the fact that the classroom would be a living entity. Just like the knowledge shared in the classroom which is dynamic and changing, the very structure itself would also be dynamic and changing. Not only was the building going to be a living thing we wanted to respect the environment in which the building would stand and in order to do this we adopted a minimalist or low impact approach to the entire building process. We did everything to keep the build as low impact as possible. We moved the classroom further away from the grove of trees so that we could spare the lower branches instead of having to cut them. We planted about 800 or more willow in the fields in front of the classroom so that we would have plenty of material to replace and repair the building as and when it needs it. I think we actually came out carbon positive eco footprint; remember all the willow that was cut in the plantation has already started to grew back while two thirds of the willow we cut were planted back in the ground. The minimal approach meant that the building process had to be efficient, but not in the almost neoliberal way that this word is currently recognised and used. The term efficiency today has become so imbedded in our postmodern world through the kind of scientific management that Taylor promoted in line with the McDonalization of organisations, all of which tends to fall within the economic-political paradigms that are influencing the most sacred aspects of our lives, and despite all this there lies on the other hand a much more benevolent kind of efficiency. An efficiency that naturally occurs in a relationship built on understanding, not manipulation, a relationship of respect and care as opposed to one of dispassion and abuse, a relationships of leisure not of haste. The low impact approach quite literally had to somehow balance input versus output, regarding material, waste and energy. More importantly the low impact meant that you had to become aware of the wider picture - the minimalist approach means every one of us had to open our eyes to a different view. Which lead to a much richer appreciation of not only the natural surroundings but also of

• urselves.

The deep ecologist Anre Naess once wrote said there is no isolatable ‘I’, instead the ‘I’ emerges within a broad manifold of diverse connections with both organic and inorganic

• material. He’s point is we are all connected and when you work with nature, as any craftmans

will know, you develop a very strong connection with what you are working with. There were times I felt I was quite literally becoming an extension of the feild. I remember at one point almost habitually throwing a piece of wood over my shoulder only to realise that my heart had sank as I thought I had damaged the black current bushes Andreas had discovered during the built. Conclusion It would be foolish of me not to return to my original idea for this talk before it was decided it would be about the outdoor classroom and that’s our relationship with the postmodern world we live in. The postmodern as described by many theorists is - see if this sound familiar to

• D. Walsh

Mayo Campus GMIT 2016 4

you - a complex, dynamic, ever changing, valueless world driven by economic growth based

• n a unsustainable consumerism where the self is becoming more a more fragmented. What

drove my own research was the question of how adventure could help rebalance the problems

• f postmodernism, however I realised that this built, based on the values of community,

friendship, hard work, communication, dialogue, understanding, sharing and caring all fly in the face of the postmoderm world. This classroom for me stands as a megalith against that world, it is also about legacy - which is something much more related to the grand narratives

• f the past then the future.

No more than the woodland trail that was once a wasteland, we know have an outdoor classroom that sits in lovely field surrounded by all kinds of nature but this nature would have gone unnoticed and unappreciated if not of the efforts of the core team that helped progress this build even when it felt like it was stagnating. The classroom is sitting in between a Business Centre and one of the busiest ring rounds in the town and yet when you are down there they seem to just fade away. Right, I’ve said enough. I’m going to ask you to follow me to the classroom where I’ll take any questions. Thanks