Hello all. Today the glorious sunshine I’d almost forgotten has made me feel somewhat creative so I’ve decided to brave the surprisingly daunting task of writing my first ever blog entry. My name is Lyndsay and I’m one of the new Natural Communities Trainees based working with Transition Stirling. Meeting the other trainees and reading other blog entries (as a bit of incentive) I’m struck by the amazing breadth of knowledge and experience among the 2014 trainees.
My own path here has been a bit of a mixed bag really but working with people has always been at the core. My initial studies were in Social Anthropology, a subject I dare to say most anthropologists would struggle to give a concise definition of but suffice to say it’s the study of cultures and social systems. I worked with a huge range of groups as a support worker, volunteer coordinator and youth worker over several years before completing my MSc in Community Education. As much as possible I’ve tried to incorporate my love of all things nature within this, from volunteering on forest school and outdoor mental health programmes to completing research on the use of the outdoors within community education.
Anyway, my role over the next year is going to focus on developing a programme of events to help people share skills and experience across Stirlingshire. There’s such a huge range of potential events and skills people want to share, it’s almost hard to know where to start! For me, being able to help people to learn from each other is one of the most exciting aspects of what I’m going to be doing. Transition Stirling is also currently running the Wood for All project which focuses on increasing forestry skills and building relationships between landowners and community groups in order to develop locally managed woodlands. I’m also going to working with these community groups and helping arrange activities for the Wood for All annual woodland event in May.
I’m really looking forward to the next year, I’m on a mission to learn as much as possible so it’s looking to be an action packed one! I promise future blogs will have many more photos (and probably a better title), for now here’s a couple of nice mushroom shots from our woodland event site…
