Campout 2024 performers and contributors
Here are some early confirmations for Campout 2024, happening over the weekend of August 8-11 at Three Pools Farm, near Abergavenny, south Wales. Tickets are available here.
Ian Banyard - Nature Connection When Ian was a teenager he realised something very valuable: learning doesn’t just happen in a classroom. One of the most important things he learned as a child was the value of solitary time in Nature. While living in the Lake District following a series of devastating life challenges in 2002, he rediscovered this valuable life lesson. Time ‘invested’ alone in the natural world, teaches many things. Most importantly, our relationship with our true selves. Wandering about in nature stimulates the senses, guides us gently into the present moment, cleanses us of negative emotions and somehow re-energises our spirit.
Ian began to notice life-lessons from nature all around him. He rediscovered his inherent ability to ‘tune in’ to his true nature. And detach from the rigid personas he had hidden behind for years. He called this powerful state of being Natural Mindfulness. When we connect we care and what we care about we protect and nurture.
Walking mindfully ‘with’ nature is an exciting journey of reconnection with nature and our true nature. Ian is offering to guide some Natural Mindfulness wellness walks in south Wales to help others energise the body, relax the mind and lift the spirit. These are gentle, mindful walks where we commune with nature and our true nature using Natural Mindfulness and Forest Bathing practices. All welcome and no prior knowledge/experience of mindfulness is necessary.
https://www.ianbanyard.com/home/
Poppy Altmann - Family Constellations. Poppy has been involved in Family Constellations since 2015. She completed her training as a Family Constellations Facilitator in January 2017. Family Constellations is a group practice where we look at unconscious loyalties and traits that are carried through families as a result of trauma.
Her particular areas of interest are around the processing of emotions through embodiment practices, and also attunement, both as a facilitator and a participant. She leads Family Constellations group workshops and retreats in London, Ireland and elsewhere, offering individual constellations sessions in Richmond, Surrey, in Twickenham and online.
In her spare time you’ll find her kayaking or walking by the Thames near her house, practising yoga, horseriding or dancing 5Rhythms. She was a practising homeopath for over 15 years prior to finding Constellations work.
Bear Phillips - Men Meeting Men Over 30% of single men say there’s no one they can talk to when they feel lonely, anxious, or depressed. And over 40% of single men say they feel lonely often or almost all the time.
This is tragic! This is what patriarchy has brought us; loneliness and isolation.
Bear suggests that he had to free himself from society’s expectations as to who he was supposed to be (the well-behaved son, the good husband, the adoring father) to live his life on my terms, with no regrets.
He grew-up with deep reservations around the nature of masculinity, and what it means to be a man. He had to take it all apart to understand the nature of misogyny and patriarchy in order to find his peace with it.
He believes it is a process all men have to engage with and will be talking with us at Campout about it and about his new book 'Feminism Will Make a Man Out of You!', his memoir, and part self-help guide to sex, love and relationships in today’s world.
It is the story of one man’s journey to personal liberation – breaking free of a life lived for others – to find his purpose and to claim his life for himself, finding love, joy and bliss in the process. It’s the story of a shy, socially awkward introvert, who reconciled himself with his gender and the traumatic experiences of his childhood, to become a “professional lover” working with sexuality and pleasure to support others on their own paths of healing from sexual and relational trauma.
Written with endless compassion for the struggles men face in finding connection, whether in dating or long-term commitments, 'Feminism Will Make a Man Out of You!' challenges men to recognise just how much they have been hurt by Patriarchy. This is in no way to excuse the subsequent harm caused women across the globe, but as a call for all of us to reclaim our full, whole and authentic selves, redefining what masculinity means in the process.
Briony Greenhill - Vocal Improv As an artist I’m a singer, pianist, arranger, producer, composer, performing and recording artist, and musical director. Bryony is a specialist in improvisation. her lyrics, which come as improvisations, focus on themes of human depth, paradigm shift, the intimacy and bigger picture of our times: folk/soul/jazz, acoustic, multi-instrumental, join-in music with singers improvising lush and wild harmonies.
As a teacher she helps people bring out their full voices, develop their chops (musicianship), express themselves, connect and heal, and become great Collaborative Vocal Improvisers.
Briony Greenhill is “one of the world’s leading proponents of collaborative vocal improvisation (CVI)” - The Guardian.
CVI is the art of co-creating vocal music in the moment. Here is a short film about Briony’s teaching, which has evolved from the lineage of Rhiannon, Bobby McFerrin, Joey Blake and others. Briony is a founding member of The Well Global Vocal Improvisation Network and the UK Vocal Improvisation Festival.
Briony has released 4 entirely improvised albums. Her debut studio album took improvisations and reproduced them adding instrumentation in the studio. Crossing the Ocean featured in The Guardian, Mojo, Radio 3, Woman’s Hour and more.
Briony teaches vocal musicianship from beginner to advanced levels, while also honouring the spiritual, ritual and therapeutic application of CVI. She is a qualified SomaSource Leader; a “psycho-spiritual educator, artist, activist and healer who has an integrated understanding of how to creatively work in developmentally attuned ways with diverse people throughout life’s cycles.”
You can read more about Briony’s teaching values, Vocal Musicianship Trainings, and a history of vocal improvisation in the American tradition here.
https://www.brionygreenhill.com/
Dan Astin-Gregory - Trailblazing New Politics. Dan is an activist, content creator and entrepreneur whose commentary on the pandemic reached over 15 million views. He has since launched Free Humanity, a grassroots movement to promote freedom around the world and to explore solutions to the critical issues that have arisen during this time.
At last year’s Campout Dan led an exploration around how to build a new counterculture movement to challenge the status quo and begin to explore and create alternative social, economic, and political structures. However, to build a widespread collective resistance against hegemonic powers, movements must develop strong leadership, create effective channels for communication, and balance idealism with practicality.
His 'Trailblazing New Politics' talk will explore the practicalities and challenges of moving beyond the current two party political ping-pong that we’ve been stuck in for decades and how we can shape much-needed new alternatives.
Paula Charnley - Focus & Inner Listening. Paula is a Person-Centred Psychotherapist and Focusing Teacher. She has created a !unique and embodied way of working which incorporate many years as a Shiatsu Therapist and Yogi. Having spent much of her adult life in The Netherlands she now has her practice in the Staffordshire Moorlands and online.
Paula will introduce you to ‘Focusing’. It’s a technique which you can apply to emotional feelings past or present, situations like conflict or uncertainty as well as physical symptoms. There is no need to re-live the trauma or recount the story, she will guide you through the simple steps. This non-invasive process can really help us to ‘ move through it’, to make sense of or feel more at ease about any situation.
Jo Berry - Peace Building Jo is an international peace activist and founder of ‘Building Bridges for Peace’, a charity dedicated to conflict resolution and promoting peace around the world. 40 years ago, an IRA bomb, planted in the Grand Hotel in Brighton killed Jo’s father. She knew she had a choice: to harbour feelings of hatred and anger, or to seek understanding and bring peace and understanding back into her life. She chose peace.
Following his release from prison, Jo sought out a meeting with Patrick Magee, the Brighton bomber. And from that initial three hours spent together, Jo and Patrick have formed a remarkable friendship, based on compassion and respect. For the past twenty or so years they have travelling the world spearing a message of peace and understanding in such areas as Palestine and Israel, Rwanda, Lebanon and through the UK. Jo also facilitates workshops in many parts of the world, working with victims of genocide, war and terrorism as well as working alongside others whose own legacy of conflict has been transformed into one of peace, acceptance and compassion.
https://buildingbridgesforpeace.org/about-building-bridges-for-peace/jo-berry-founder/
Karen Downes - Femme Q Over the span of her 35-year career, Karen has founded and launched successful start-ups, supported social change initiatives to transform entrenched cultural norms, developed and led transformational leadership programmes around the world. She is a healer above all else.
At the beginning of her career, she trained in five alternative healthcare disciplines, building a multi-million-dollar Aromatherapy company from kitchen tabletop to global business success story, her mission was to ‘return natural healing modalities to the healers; women’. Whilst building her business and empowering women across Australasia, she committed to eradicating inequalities at a global scale, joining the Hunger Project, as an investor and activist. For years she travelled to India and Bangladesh to end the subjugation and marginalisation of women which had been identified as fundamental to ending the chronic persistence of hunger. It was here she learned that without the inclusion of women as equal partners, a village will remain impoverished, that the feminine is critical to building a flourishing community. She is a trained facilitator of Joanna Macy’s work – ‘The Work that Reconnects’ – how to move from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life Sustaining future.
Upon moving to London in 2003, she began to advise business leaders, designed and led transformational leadership programmes around the world. In 2015 in response to the overwhelming statistics on the progress of women and gender justice, Karen co-founded the global movement, FemmeQ: Feminine Intelligence. The first of 5 subsequent International Summits was launched in Berlin in 2016.
FemmeQ is a global movement, that aims to answer the question ‘What’s missing in our human and social systems that would enable a flourishing future?’ FemmeQ offers a unique approach, to catalyse transformation at any level of society for the purpose of building more just and equitable societies and organisations.
Alongside her consulting roles she designed, launched, and facilitated the successful online programme ‘The 12 Virtues of Soulful Leadership’, which is now in its third year. She now lives in the UK after spending 2 years in the experiment of leading a nomadic life. She is the proud mother of her beautiful daughter, Rebecca.
https://femmeq.org/community/karen-lee-downes/
Althea Finch - Pain Free Healing. Healing is immediate. So how come we can suffer for YEARS?
We are taught to get rid of symptoms, make it go away and everything will be better. To take medications or have operations, endless tests and told to ‘learn to live with it’. Some things might help but ultimately this doesn’t work.
People tell Althea all the time they’ve been on medication for years that barely touch the pain and leave them ‘out of it’. They become, despondent, depressed and even suicidal.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
She has helped people around the world to get their lives back and be pain free for good.
There is a way to heal effectively and it’s all within your own body that you have access to any time.
Althea is going to show you how it’s possible to heal completely from anything from simple aches and strains to long term chronic pain and conditions, without medication or operations. The secret to healing whenever you need it with The PainFree Method™. Proven to work since 2000.
Zelda Hall - Gold In The Shadows - Meeting your Demons and Finding your Gifts. To be truly free we must be capable of self-reflection. Otherwise we are running on old programming often related to childhood experiences, which though they were functional then, are no longer life enhancing. The demons of yesteryear continue to haunt our lives and keep us stuck in reactivity rather than response to life.
Signals of the natural human tendency to evolve appear where they are less amenable to conscious manipulation. Such as in dreams and in body symptoms.
You can't ignore a banging headache or a recurring nightmare.
Approaching these phenomena with curiosity and compassion allows us to discover what we are called to heal.
Owning your individual healing is important as it contributes to the evolution of the collective in the turbulent times and allows you to bring your gifts to a world which requires your presence.
Zelda Hall is a psychologist and therapist with more than forty years experience in private practice. She has several published articles and book chapters and her work is featured in the documentary 'Chasing the Present'.
Jackie Juno - Stand-Up Poetry. Jackie has always followed a spiritual path, having had many psychic and mediumistic experiences from early childhood. She trained with Eagle’s Wing College of Contemporary Shamanism in the UK 1987-88 and has worked with several elders in different traditions since; in particular White Bear (Hopi, USA), Pat McCabe (Dine, USA) and Xilonem Galindo (Nahuatl, Mexico); and elders from my ancestral lands of Great Britain.
Her creative life is vital to me and my background is in art, music and performance. She runs workshops in Devon and beyond, including Oracle/Tarot, Creative Writing, and A Course in Goddesses. She guides people on shamanic journeys in groups and on a one-to-one basis. She loves bringing groups together to explore creativity, archetypal wisdom and personal experiences.
A safe and confidential space is created so that each person is held in a supportive environment.
She has performed her poetry at festivals, cabarets, nightclubs, fayres, schools, churches, weddings, funerals, birthday parties and on the street! She has won several Poetry Slams, including the official Glastonbury Festival Poetry Slam 2017, Green Gathering 2016, and Plymouth Lit Fest Oct 2017. I was a finalist in the National Poetry Slam at the Albert Hall, 2018.
She also writes scripts, one-woman multi-media shows, short stories and song lyrics.
Jessica Mallock - Fire Ceremony & Shamanic Journey. Jessica Mallock is an Artist, Shamanic Practitioner, TRE (tension & trauma release exercise) Provider, Mentor, Creative Guide and Grandmother.
Her life’s work has been to explore her inner and outer landscape and now as an elder she is a guide for others on the path. She brings lightheartedness, depth, safety, peace, wonderment and laughter to her work.
Her favourite place is to be found in nature, in the physical and the metaphorical which is a kind of wonderment poetry for her.
Opening shamanic fire ceremony “We will gather together to make a fire as a community. Calling in sacred space, the ceremony is a movement meditation and a simple and beautiful way to let go of anything that is getting in the way of you stepping into your life. As we stand in circle we also make an offering to pacha mamma, mother earth who’s bely we live on, the fire then becomes The Children’s Fire. This is where we dream a new world into being one not informed by the past but informed by who we are becoming. So we leave something more life enriching and beautiful for the future generations.”
Bob Hillary - Breaking Free of the Matrix / Creating a New Earth. Bob is a folk roots Singer-songwriter who makes music that is Earthy, soulful & powerful in its simplicity. His music carries a strong message in these times. He sings about change, consciousness, empowerment and not just how to remain positive in these times of transition, but how to step into and create the New Earth that many of us know is possible.
Bob will lead a session about the transition that we each need to make in order to create a world freed from the shackles of patriarchy, capitalist exploitation and technocratic enslavement.
Leora Lightwoman - Look Lovingly Tantra. Leora has been facilitating Tantra workshops for 25 years and is author of 'Tantra - The Path to Blissful Sex'. Receptivity allows us to feel another being. To choose to open to another, we need first to be able to say 'no' and protect our vulnerable parts. Learn effective and co- creative ways to look after yourself, in order to be free to choose to receive another. Gently release limitations to joy, love, sensuality and your own beautiful sexuality. Open your horizons to a deeper calibre of experience.#
Through eye contact, communication, breath, movement, awareness and play, reconnect with your innocent self.
For couples and individuals.
https://diamondlighttantra.com
Bruce Bickerton - DJ and Musician. He's been composing and producing music since the mid-nineties and was an integral part of the famed Big Chill festival, signed to their label and performing at pretty much every event throughout the halcyon period of 2000 - 2010.
Bruce's output is pretty prolific and there's a large canon of work all over the internet.
When he's not making music, he compiles and produces a radio show for MixCloud and syndicated stations in the UK called 'Eclectronica'.
alucidnation has recently released an album of new material called ‘Mellifluous'
Serious Jones - DJ
Describes himself as "All day Dj : playing assorted genres .. "jAzz - soul -funk - disco - house -rock and reggae" with an experienced grip .. using records and record decks .."
Jahnavi Ma - Meditation and Chanting Jahnavi Ma was initiated into an ancient Monastic order in January 2024. She has thirteen years’ experience delivering lectures and workshops in various places throughout the world (under her former name of Laura Troupe), inspiring individuals on the spiritual path of Self-Realisation and giving practical guidance in meditation and application of spirituality into daily life. She is the Chairperson for the UK branch of the International Vedanta Society, which is registered as a charity with the Charities Commission.
She was raised in England and Australia, and believes her upbringing and Indian Spiritual Heritage have shaped her in a balanced way and enables her to connect with individuals from diverse backgrounds. Her deep understanding of both Western and Eastern societies empowers her to address the individual and universal needs of our time.
Elle Chaska - Ceremony, Song & Herbalism
The songs Elle offers are mostly inspired by ceremony, plants & nature and the journeys she has taken with them. She is a shamanic herbalist and medicine woman based in the south west of the UK. She is an advocate for land-based connection practices.
https://ellechaska.bandcamp.com
Pete Lawrence - Writers Circle
Pete Lawrence is the founder of Campout and its affiliated social network Campfire Convention. Previous to that he founded the Cooking Vinyl label and the pioneering Big Chill festival. He has been described as a conceptualist, firestarter, community social network obsessive, music nut, writer and naturist and is enjoying digital nomad status when he’s not to be found at home on Paros island, Greece or in the Welsh hills.
Pete has been an activist since student days, campaigning for peace, social justice and systemic social change. He believes passionately in the potential for personal change through connection and self-organising potential of communities as the spark which can ignite wholesale social change. His work for Campfire places him at the forefront of a non-aligned emergent movement for societal transition which aims to trailblazer new ways of connecting, collaborating and doing ‘politics’ in its broadest sense.
We will be coming together in a setting where we can give flow to our creative juices in community; to write and express ourselves around areas of interest, whether a blog, a book idea, a project presentation, web content, poetry, letters, short-stories, reviews, scripts for podcast ideas or content for public talks. We will be limbering up with an opening session in which we sharpen our critical faculties.
The power of journaling can often be witnessed in the writing of morning pages. Regular journaling can be effective in unlocking creativity and building self-awareness. Doing this together will also help us through any creative blocks and other challenges, enabling new levels of awareness and new stories to evolve.
We welcome inexperienced writers and aim to provide a supportive space where we can all develop new skills and ways to express ourselves.
Bring pen and paper, laptop or tablet.
JuliLa - sings and plays. Charismatic cross-over cellist JuliLa landed in ‘ElgarLand’ in 1999 after a World Tour playing Jimi Hendrix with Nigel Kennedy. Perhaps the pinnacle of a colourful career carved as a cross-over cellist in London’s 80’s/ 90’s Acoustic scene. Settling in the Malvern Hills, whilst raising two gorgeous off-spring, JuliLa has hosted magical happenings, created a ‘spike’ of cellists in her Cello’ ScooL and conceived SongSPACE Sessions, a Family Singers Class intended to cultivate mini-future musicians on Planet Earth, whilst, all the while, concentrating on her own compositions. JuliLa’s gift is to invite presence while sharing a unique cathartic collection of instant sing-a- long songs to tickle, uplift and inspire. Grab a copy of JuliLa ~ in Fields, her debut album made in lockdown, while you can!
www.julila.co.uk
Pleasurefest Yurt by Rachel and Nikki will offer a womb-like space in their 20ft yurt with fairy lights/candles, soft interiors with fabrics and cushions and will be a mix of the Love Temple, workshops and play space for grown ups. A feast of sensual pleasures and liberation.
Featured sessions are likely to include ice-breaker exercises, an intimacy workshop, sex magic, orgasmic yoga, yoni worship, sex archetypes, an impact play workshop, be seen, solo play, orgasmic meditation and Temple Nights on Friday and Saturday.
Rachel and Nikki specialise in creating and holding as safe a space as possible and continuing to do their own work in the realms of sexuality, intimacy, EDI and the Shadow. Nikki is a Sexologist and Orgasmic Yoga practitioner and Rachel is a Transitions Doula and Mindfulness and Shadow Work™ coach.
Andrew Reeves - Soundbaths / Breathwork
Andrew will be offering one hour full sound emerging slots throughout each day for a maximum or ten people each time that will include ten minutes of breathwork and ten minutes of a guided meditation. He will use a number of different instruments to clear blockages and help raise your vibration.
www.Theguruguide.co.uk
More Body & Soul practitioners to be announced
