Liz
I originally come from York in North Yorkshire, where my father worked as a sheet metal worker for the railway before setting up his own blacksmithing business. He worked from the garage at our home and so I grew up listening to the sound of his hammer beating red hot metal into beautiful flowing forms mostly for use as gates but also candelabras and other useful objects.
Following the birth of myself and my two brothers, my mother developed a keen interest in Anthroposophy and the work of Rudolf Steiner and helped to establish the York Steiner School which is still going strong some forty years later. My brothers and I were among the first group of pupils at the school which was run from a disused hospital building in those days with open fires in the classrooms and a strong emphasis on storytelling and artistic education. There was a great pioneering spirit in the school at that time and I was extremely lucky to have been taught by some very inspiring individuals.
I later attended the Edinburgh Steiner school for the last few years of my education which was a very established and ‘traditional ‘ Steiner school even back then, but where ,again, I came into contact with radical individuals who had visions of a more experiential type of education based around the land and the strengthening of the will through craft and nature based activities.
After leaving school and travelling for a year, I studied architecture at Liverpool John Moores University, where I met my husband to be, and graduated with a first-class baby, our eldest son, Jordan.
We went on to have two more children and all three of our children attended various Steiner schools in England before we finally arrived in Moray four years ago where our youngest son now attends the Drumduan School (formally the Moray Steiner school). I was attracted to the Moray school because of its emphasis on a more practical and non-exam-based form of education and because of the beauty and wildness of the natural landscape here.
Over the years, while I was mostly at home caring for the children, I did continue to study and follow my various interests all of them nature or craft and building related:
I undertook a training with Barbara Jones and the school of natural building where I learned on live building projects all the processes involved in building strawbale structures .Barbara is an inspiring force who has been leading the way for strawbale building in the UK, and for women in the construction industry ,for the last forty years.
I worked with glass as a craft material for a number of years and taught adolescents with severe learning disabilities, Autism and Asperger’s syndrome , at the Glasshouse collage in Stourbridge in the west midlands when my children were young .The Ruskin mill Trust ,of which the glasshouse collage is a part, are really paving the way for the therapeutic potential of craft and nature based learning and working with them really got me fired up to want to find a way to bring the benefits of this kind of education to as many people as possible and not only to those with special needs.
I always had a keen interests in plants and alternative medicine and studied the Bach Flower Essences with Julian Bernard of healing herbs, and the Bush Flower and White Light Essences with Ian white .These essences have a special place in my heart and are much more effective even with physical disorders than is commonly realised.
I also studied homeopathy for a year before deciding that wasn’t my calling, and then went on to complete two years of training in Ayurvedic medicine at the Ayurvedic Institute in East Croydon with Dr Deepika Rodrigo , the first person to really bring in-depth education in Ayurveda to the UK.
Since coming to work at Naturally Useful with Karen and the team, I have learned new skills in felting and using plant dyes.
We are expanding our dye garden here and my real passion at present is making paints and inks from plant sources.
I am hoping to bring all my skills and interests into a synthesis together with the talents and experience of the others in the Naturally Useful team for the creation of our new Gap Year Immersion in Craft and Survival skills.
I hope we can continue to develop this type of education and make it available and accessible to as many people as possible.
In the meantime, I’m making lovely cosy rugs for sale!