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This Item Was Submitted to Loughborough's Institutional This item was submitted to Loughborough’s Institutional Repository (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/) by the author and is made available under the following Creative Commons Licence conditions. For the full text of this licence, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ Mills, S. (2014) “A Powerful Educational Instrument": The Woodcraft Folk, indoor/outdoor nature and pedagogical practice 1925-1975, in Sarah Mills and Peter Kraftl (eds) Informal Education, Childhood and Youth: Geographies, Histories, Practices Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 65-78 5 ‘A Powerful Educational Instrument’: The Woodcraft Folk and Indoor/Outdoor ‘Nature’ 1925-75 Sarah Mills Introduction ‘The Woodcraft Folk…seeks to enlist the enthusiasm and energy of youth for the great task of our generation…it believes that any attempt to establish a new, world- wide economic order is dependent upon the training of youth in the science of our age and the deliberate cultivation of a world outlook in children and young people. To achieve this end the Folk seek to forge a powerful educational instrument which shall inculcate those habits of mind and habits of body necessary to bring man to devotion to world peace and a new world order.’1 This quote from the declaration of the Woodcraft Folk in 1930 – five years after its inception by Leslie Paul – encapsulated its rationale as a new youth organisation, as well as cementing education at the heart of its motivations and methods. This chapter explores the pedagogical practices of the Woodcraft Folk in the United Kingdom across the first 50 years of the organisation (1925-75) as while still popular today, it is in these formative years that it sought to forge a ‘powerful educational instrument’ and developed its training programme. In doing so, this chapter illustrates how the Folk drew upon a number of spaces and practices of (informal) education to inculcate those ‘habits of body and mind’ expressed above. Specifically, this chapter considers how ‘nature’ and elements of folk culture and arts and craft – such as song and dance – were used as part of this project. While academics and popular imaginaries of youth organisations tend to focus on experiences of nature on camp, here I focus on the deeper, symbolic and performative place of nature in the Folk’s indoor activities and wider ambitions. There have been a number of historical studies about the explicit politics of the Woodcraft Folk and in particular its links to the co-operative movement and Labour Party (Prynn, 1983; Davis, 2000). Here, rather than discuss its utopian visions for world peace and institutional engagements with left-wing politics, I want to highlight the embodied ways in which young people in the Folk were seen to need certain skills, attributes and training in order to travel on the ‘road to citizenship via woodcraft’.2 There is a wider conceptual point to make here in how British youth movements positioned children and young people as both citizens-in-the- making and ‘young citizens’ simultaneously, reflecting how young people continue to exist as children and young people in the here-and-now and as adults ‘not-yet-become’ (Evans, 2010). Elsewhere I have explored the explicit citizenship projects of British youth movements, notably the Scout Movement (Mills, 2013). In many ways, the Folk was established as the antithesis to scouting and its perceived middle-class and militaristic activities (Warren, 1986). These alternative roots lie in the short-lived and controversial Kibbo Kift Kindred established by ex-Scouter John Hargrave. The genealogical emergence of the Woodcraft Folk is not the focus of this chapter – but rather – how a training programme emerged within the Folk and the ways in which ‘nature’ was mobilised to envision and deliver informal education in ‘the woodcraft way’. In doing so, this chapter contributes to emerging work on the geographies of alternative and informal education (Kraftl, 2013; this volume) as part of a wider disciplinary interest in the geographies of education and learning Mills, S. (2014) “A Powerful Educational Instrument": The Woodcraft Folk, indoor/outdoor nature and pedagogical practice 1925-1975, in Sarah Mills and Peter Kraftl (eds) Informal Education, Childhood and Youth: Geographies, Histories, Practices Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 65-78 (Holloway and Jöns, 2012). It also makes a specific addition to literature on British youth movements within historical studies (Springhall, 1977) by highlighting how these learning spaces operate in far more contingent and ‘messy’ ways (see, for example, Kraftl, 2013). Finally, in discussing the everyday and imaginative ways in which the Folk envisioned young people would be trained using ‘nature’, this chapter moves away from the primacy of the camp as the arena through which youth movements work (Cupers, 2008; see also Kyle, Chapter 2, and Bannister, Chapter 3, this volume). Drawing on original archival material from the Youth Movement Archive, held at the London School of Economics, United Kingdom, the remainder of this chapter is structured in four sections. First, it gives a brief outline of the Woodcraft Folk’s aims and wider philosophies as articulated by its founder Leslie Paul – himself aged just nineteen when he established the organisation. Second, it introduces the ‘evolutionary’ justification for arts and crafts in the Folk and discusses the badge programme. The next section gives two illustrative examples of the performative element to the Woodcraft Folk’s activities: song and dance. Finally, the chapter concludes by reflecting on the wider geographies of informal education in the Woodcraft Folk and argues for closer attention to the ‘alternative’ pedagogical practices of learning spaces in civil society. The Woodcraft Folk and informal education ‘Woodcraft’ has its origins in the writings and activities of Ernest Thompson Seton (1860- 1946) and his attempts to preserve the crafts, traditions and nature-lore of Indian tribes (see for example, Seton, 1906). He later became Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of America (1910- 15) and developed the term woodcraft to advocate open-air life and engagements with nature (rather than crafting or carving wood). In Britain, Seton’s woodcraft had many admirers, not least Robert Baden-Powell who trialled an experimental scout camp in 1907 which eventually led to the massive growth of scouting worldwide (Proctor, 2002). After World War One however, Scout Commissioner for Camping and Woodcraft John Hargrave left the movement and founded the Kibbo Kift Kindred based on woodcraft principles. Due to a largely autocratic leadership by Hargrave, several co-operative youth including nineteen year-old Leslie Paul broke away from the Kindred and formed the Woodcraft Folk based on peace, equality and justice in 1924. The Woodcraft Folk were secular and co-educational, with Leslie Paul describing them as a ‘democratic organisation of mainly young people who believe in (1) education for social change (2) the principles of the co-operative movement and (3) the abolition of war, racial hatred and prejudice’.3 The national organisation was structured into local groups run by adult volunteers and internally structured into age-based sections including elfins (7-10), and pioneers (10-16); these ages varied over time however and several different versions of names and age-sections were used. In weekly meetings, adult volunteers delivered an educational programme (explored later in this chapter), with Paul (later ‘Little Otter’) describing woodcraft as the ‘art and adventure of fending for oneself outdoors’. 4 To understand the Woodcraft Folk however, I argue that indoor spaces (and practices that crossed indoor/outdoor boundaries) were vitally important (see also Kyle, Chapter 2, this volume). The Folk is still active today with around 25,000 members (divided into woodchips [under 6], elfins [6-9], pioneers [10-12] venturers [13-15] and district fellows [16-20]), describing itself as a ‘movement for children and young people…where children will grow in confidence, learn about the world and start to understand how to value our planet and each other’ (Woodcraft Folk, 2013). Mills, S. (2014) “A Powerful Educational Instrument": The Woodcraft Folk, indoor/outdoor nature and pedagogical practice 1925-1975, in Sarah Mills and Peter Kraftl (eds) Informal Education, Childhood and Youth: Geographies, Histories, Practices Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 65-78 In their formative years – the focus of this chapter – the Folk expressed that they believed that children ‘learnt by doing’ and therefore instructed adult volunteers in groups across the United Kingdom to lead and encourage young people to ‘have a go’ at various skills and activities under the guise of woodcraft. In a pamphlet on the History of the Woodcraft Folk from the 1930s, the organisation stated that ‘The Boy Scouts used a lukewarm version of his [Seton’s] woodcraft. Now some version or other is the basis of the best new educational experiments. The strength of woodcraft lies in the psychology of its appeal to the youngster. All children…wait for opportunities to do things rather than reading of them or listening to lectures’.5 The Folk therefore positioned themselves at the forefront of alternative and experimental educational techniques in the early twentieth century – as well as a real substitute to Baden-Powell’s organisation. In theory, this child-led and active learning philosophy was premised on principles of informal education such as spontaneity, conversation, and that this ‘learning’ could take place in any setting (Richardson and Wolfe, 2001; Jeffs and Smith, 2005). However, one could argue that the Folk also drew on mechanisms used in schools (textbooks, repetition techniques) as well as other features of the Scout Movement (badges, ceremonies) that it was trying to distance itself from. The place of woodcraft in the Woodcraft Folk and Native American imagery was central in its early iconography and emergent practices. Woodcraft Folk clothing was not ‘uniform’ (as in the Scout Movement or Boys’ Brigade) but rather ‘costume’.
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