Bramblewood is blessed with an ever-growing team of wild enthusiasts who help look after it, run sessions and make exciting plans for its future. Along with a body of brilliant local volunteers, the people below are key to the running of the organisation and you may well meet them at one of our sessions.
Helen Fairest
Helen is mum of 2, a trained Level 3 Forest School Leader, Wellbeing in Nature Level 3 Practitioner, Outdoor First Aider and Mental Health First Aider. She has been running forest schools since 2012 and has worked in informal education for 30 years, in residential summer camps and training for the charity Active Training and Education. Helen is also Lead Trainer for the Summer Camps Trust. Starting out as a Speech and Language Therapist, Helen has worked with children and adults with a range of communication difficulties and adults with learning disabilities, as well as delivering training for acute hospitals to help improve access and services for people with learning disability. Helen loves beetles, ash trees, teasels and making shelters.
Jon Cree
Jon arrived in Bramblewood one quiet spring, mid lockdown, not long after the chiffchaffs took up their annual post in The Big Ash. He quickly joined the regular fauna as part of the wood, bringing with him skills in green woodworking, living willow weaving and woodland management, as well as homemade sourdough bread, friendship, songs, and long experience of training and environmental education. Jon is a founding director of the Forest School Association, and passionate about how the Forest School approach can help youngsters who find traditional schooling a challenge. Jon can often be found wending his way down the River Wye in a canoe, crafting furniture for small people, and sat round a campfire weaving a story. Jon is a director for The Bramblewood Project CIC.
Anthony Nicholson
Anthony has worked with children and young people across schools (he is a qualified teacher), children’s homes and a whole host of other settings for twenty years. His particular specialism has been working with neurodivergent children and those for whom mainstream school is especially difficult. Away from education, Ant also co-founded and ran two successful businesses, before selling them in 2022 and joining us here at Bramblewood. Ant uses his prior experiences to help Bramblewood’s behind-the-scenes business development and operations, as well as lead our midweek sessions that run in the wood with children and young people. Ant loves to sing, dance, play music and generally be silly.
Sam Owens
Sam is a mum of 3 and a nurse. Sam uses her nursing skills for NHS patients in Worcestershire, to support Forest School and as a Matron on summer camps for children. She is also a trained First Aider and Mental Health First Aider and has her certificate in Nature Based Practice and her L2 playwork certificate.
Sam is passionate about the wellbeing offerings Bramblewood has for adults and children who spend time in its leafy embrace.
Sam is genius at just getting stuck in to things. She is rarely daunted by a task, even if she’s never done it before. In this pic, Sam is fixing the floor boards onto the composting loo we built during lockdown. Sam loves looking after our sapling trees, and listening to the birdsong at Bramblewood.
Sam founded Bramblewood with Helen. You can read more about their story here.
Kamille Endzins
Kam is a mum, home educator, Forest School Leader and first aider. She has led forest school in nurseries across Worcestershire for 8 years, and supports children and young adults with learning difficulties who are living in care. Kam supports and leads sessions at Bramblewood, with a particular interest in offering outdoor learning and nature connection opportunities to home educating families. With her, Kam brings and shares with us a deep connection to the Earth and Nature (people included), her incredible aptitude for listening to and really hearing people, and a spot on sense of humour.
Laura Lewis
Laura is a mum, wild at heart and passionate about the outdoors and nurturing children’s innate natural wisdom. She has worked outdoors with children for many years, with The Earth Trust and in nursery settings. Laura has a PGCE and is training to be a Forest School Leader. She is also a qualified YogaBears instructor, and has ran Woodland Yoga Adventure day camps at Bramblewood. Laura loves learning new skills and meeting people round Bramblewood’s hearth.
Dan Fairest
Dan is a great support for Bramblewood, not just for arriving with homemade Papa Dan’s pizza-in-a-box on busy hungry days, cooking for the Monday volunteers, or for lending a strong arm when needed, but also for overseeing the Bramblewood pennies. Dan loves rediscovering his garage floor by doing recycling runs to the tip with 2 year old mountains of Helen’s “but we might just need this in the wood” hoardings.
Lucy Graham
Lucy looks after and loves her neighbouring allotment and from there discovered the delights of Bramblewood’s hazel coppice. Lucy has been a regular volunteer at the wood since its beginnings and she likes to share her skills in art, poetry and horticulture, whilst also highly valuing being a part of and supporting our mental health and therapeutic activities. She is now a volunteer Director for the the CIC, representing the local allotment community, and helping coordinate the development of the Forest Garden. For Lucy, Bramblewood’s brilliance lies in it offering a safe space where people can make connections as a community.
Leila Huwiler
Leila is mum and a Forest School Leader in training. Using all of her life experience in creativity & expression, Leila helps bring life & light to our midweek & Saturday child-led communities, as well as help others bring it out of themselves. Leila is a wonderfully-skilled dancer and gymnast and can often be seen hanging upside down, gliding across the ground or pirouetting in the woodland clearing.
Rachel Salter
Rachel is a mum of two and for several years now, Rachel has been bringing her wild brilliance, enthusiasm & love of all things silly to Bramblewood’s weekend groups, as well as being a regular fixture on out Tuesday community. Rachel is completing her Forest School Leader qualification (Level 3) and is a fabulous activist, campaigning for and creating play opportunities for more and more children in Worcester.
Emmy Wurmli
Emmy is a nature-based practitioner with many years of experience of working with people of all ages and walks of life in the great outdoors, from cities to farms, nature connection to growing food and taking action to support wildlife. She loves following her curiosity to connect more deeply with the human and more-than-human communities that we share Bramblewood with, and delights in the muddy creativity that all this brings. She loves the sound of grasshoppers, the smell of moss, the squelch of mud between her toes and gathering around the hearth, connecting across the fire.
Nat Kaufman
Nat worked in formal education for 15 years including as a Pastoral Head for 3 schools and as safeguarding lead for an academy of schools. She is a mum of three and supports other young families to be consent-led in their approach to parenting from pregnancy, birth and postnatal period to toddlerhood. Nat loves any nature-based play ideas or crafts which focus on what’s happening in the world around us, as well as finding all the wanderlust and magic which being in nature provides. You’ll meet Nat on our weekday sessions at Bramblewood.
