Hosted by Gather
A queer space to connect with each other and the ecosystems around us. We’ll be thinking about bursting into the exuberance of summer - and creating restful space within the lush green.
We'll play nature-based games and do some crafts, tune into the world around us, do some meditative activities, have some ritual moments, drink tea, and sit round the fire with a story and some singing.
Expect silliness, grounding, community, and cosiness…and you can join in with as much or as little as you feel. Hopefully you’ll leave with some extra joy, feeling a bit more grounded, and with a sense of connection to other queers and our non-human kin.
We are creating community around Queers in the Woods events, and encourage you to come along to as many as you like. We hold them in Brighton and London quarterly to mark shifts in the seasons, and they are a bit different each time!
Getting there
Living Vital, our venue, is a project within Stanmer Organics in Stanmer Park.
Directions here.
whatthreewords ///second.dunes.switch
Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/6pnG3wQJJ6sESgFs9
If you haven't been to the venue before and would like to walk up together, you can meet us at the Village Church bus stop at 1.40pm to walk up together.
Please arrive as close to 1.40pm(at the bus stop), or 1:45pm (at Living Vital) as you can so we can start together at 2pm. If you're going to be late, please let us know - as we like to start together and finish together. But we know life happens - and if we know you are coming we can welcome you in when you arrive.
Tickets
We want to offer this session on a sliding scale basis, so that as many people as possible can join in. We need to pay for the space rental, materials, travel, ongoing costs like insurance, and to pay ourselves a modest wage. We want to be transparent and honest about navigating capitalism as an anti-capitalist business made up of people who need to pay their bills.
With that in mind, we have some different ticket prices - please be honest with your situation. We will not turn anyone away for lack of funds - please get in touch with us. If you can afford to pay more, please do so, so that we can welcome those who could not otherwise afford to come. A significant amount of our Queers in the Woods need a cost-price ticket, and it's deeply appreciated if you're able to chip in.
£5 per person just covers costs and wouldn't include a fee for us - there is a very limited number of these - please buy one of the other tickets if you have the means
£ 15 per person would pay us a low fee - please only buy this if you're low income
£ 25 per person would pay us a standard fee
£ 35 is a solidarity ticket - this helps pay for someone else to come who otherwise wouldn't be able to
We also have reserved tickets at £10 for People of Colour, working class, and disabled queers - acknowledging the extra barriers you face, and intending to extend a particular welcome to you.
The listed ticket prices are a little bit more because they also include the Eventbrite booking fee.
What to bring
Please bring waterproofs, sun cream, blankets to sit on / snuggle up in, warm clothes, sturdy shoes. Bring snacks to sustain yourself over a three hour workshop! We'll be outside for most of the session, so make sure you bring what you need to be comfy.
Bring a story, poem, or song to share round the fire if you would like to.
Access information
The session is mostly aimed at adults, but you’re welcome to bring little ones if they are babes in arms or able to participate in the activities – let us know so we can make sure we can include them.
We'll be providing tea, and there is a tap for water. Please bring your own snacks.
There are compost toilets available a few minutes walk away at the Earthship.
The venue is beautiful and welcoming, but unfortunately not ideal in terms of accessibility. It's a 15 minute walk from the nearest carpark on dirt paths. The space itself is on a slope, with grassy paths. We're struggling to find suitable accessible spaces for nature connection, so please get in touch if you know of any.
We’ll be sitting on chairs or blankets on the ground. Please let us know if you have particular needs around this, eg chairs with/without arms. We'll also be moving around, and we'll provide lots of options for sitting or being more still.
Neurodiverse friends, we really welcome you telling us your needs! We are both neurodiverse in different ways, and we would love to make sure you feel as safe and comfortable as possible. In the past this has included giving details of what will happen in the session and offering alternative activities. Everyone is always welcome to have a break away from the group whenever you like - we just ask that you let us know if you can, so we know whether to wait for you.
We want to make this session as accessible as possible. If there's anything we've missed, please let us know your access needs and we’ll do everything we can to adapt the session. Activities will be chosen based on the access needs of the group. Please let us know if it would be useful to know any more details.
We want this to be a Brave Space - acknowledging that we can’t make a completely safe space, but we can make it as safe and supportive a space as possible. In this spirit, we welcome you, and we especially welcome folks from marginalised communities. We will challenge any racism, sexism, classism, queerphobia, transphobia, ableism, or any other discrimination against marginalised people.
About us!
The session will be facilitated by Linden McMahon and Lyndsay Burtonshaw.
Lyndsay Burtonshaw (she/they) is a participatory facilitator, activist learning designer, and youth mentor. She specialises in leading facilitation skills trainings and hosting participatory away sessions, melding activist tools, somatics, arts-based activities and nature connection. Their focused yet gentle, joyful as well as real, creative and effective facilitation ensures that there is room to reflect, celebrate, to build power and channel into vision, strategy and action. It brings Lyndsay joy to work alongside incredible organisations by holding strategy away-days - in this way supporting War on Want since 2021, the Make Polluters Pay coalition since 2022, and many communities, coops, grassroots groups and social justice organisations.
Lyndsay has addressed crowds of thousands as part of the anti-deportation collective Stansted 15, including as a keynote speaker for Amnesty International. Within their role at Quaker Peace and Social Witness, Lyndsay works on the Quaker commitment to reparations, supports intersectional peace activists, and convenes regular Quaker activist gatherings.
Lyndsay was raised working class and is the first person in her family to be educated beyond age 16. She founded the Role Models Project with University of Sussex and BACA school, and negotiated its development to an academic module. Since 2021 she has mentored working-class climate justice activists through Friends of the Earth.
Lyndsay studied participatory facilitation with Robert Chambers and Andrea Cornwall, LifeBeat, generative somatics, and Change In Nature. She has worked as a part of collectives Queers Tours of London, Navigate and Beautiful Trouble UK. They also love fiction, day raves, the sea, saunas, and their greyhound Kima.
Linden McMahon (they/them) is a nature connection and participatory arts facilitator, and a writer; they run projects that bring together creativity, ecology, and solidarity.
Linden specialises in creating spaces for people to think imaginatively about their relationships to each other and the ecosystems they are part of, experiencing connection through creativity - contributing to community building, nature connection and ecological healing, and increasing access to the arts. You might find them co-producing ecological arts projects with young people, teaching creative writing, or facilitating workshops in the woods.
Linden loves collaborative projects, and they have worked with Kew, the RHS, Bethnal Green Nature Reserve and Back from the Brink to develop creative programmes which connect people with their local ecosystems.
They write poetry and fiction, as well as creating performances - from a spoken word show about fat liberation and exercise, to a sci-fi storytelling walk at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.
Linden has a Masters in Creative Writing & Education, and they trained with Change in Nature in 2019 and Active Hope London in 2019-20. They are currently working on a qualification in Forest and Outdoor Learning, at SCQF Level 8. They also love gardening, baking unnecessarily elaborate desserts, and making pots. You can find out more about their work on their website.
You can contact us through this page, or on linden@gatherwithus.co.uk