Our Impact

An invitation into a joint endeavour

The impact and evaluation of our work is a primary focus for The Visionaries and is always considered a joint endeavour. We know that change is best supported when it is co-owned by those that partner and participate with us, and those that have a stake in how this participation unfolds. 

Working together to understand what happens when partners and participants embark on working with us results in genuine co-authorship of the process and the published results. Working in this way strengthens the agency, ownership and openness participants feel, tackling and reversing concerns regarding power and colonisation amongst other issues often associated with research.

The Visionaries see this collaboration with partners and participants as an integral building block in everything we do, leading to richer and stronger outcomes for all involved.

Transforming relationships

An evaluation of our Growing Healthy Schools project indicates that even the smallest interventions can promote a significant uplift in healthy relationships between staff and within school settings. It is these transformed ways of relating, to ourselves, to each other and with the wilder world that we place at the heart of our intentions and our approach in regards to research and appreciating the experiences reported by participants.

When searching to understand more about how our programmes impact on school staff and pupils we seek to involve all participants as fully as possible in the activation and conduct of our search for meaning.

We see this as our responsibility: to enable, amplify and privilege the voices of those participating alongside us.

What we know about our current impact

On return from involvement in our recent Growing Healthy Schools ‘catalyst camp’ school staff reported the following impacts and transformative effects on relationships:

  • “An experience that I will never forget, one that has been thought provoking and challenging, so it will challenge us all to be better, to do better.” (Head of Department)
  • “I’ve grown, I’ve become vulnerable, I’ve loved, I’ve cried. I’ve learnt that there is self-care in nature.” (Intervention Officer)
  • “I think I have, not just learnt a lot about myself, but a lot about others as well. I have become a lot more considerate about other peoples feelings… “ (Teacher)
  • “I built bonds with people whom I thought I could never get along with. I saw different sides of people, the vulnerabilities of people, and I’m sure that people saw my vulnerabilities as well.” (Teacher)

As a result of this testimony of growth and personal transformation, the entire school community that hosts these staff members has committed to embark on a process of culture change, exploring and aiming for healthier relationships that are fairer, and wilder.

Read the full report

Testimonials

  • “I was truly moved by this experience. It was interactive, personal and I could feel the power of talking circles. It filled in the gaps in my knowledge and made me feel much more confident with facilitating in a variety of settings.”

    Social Entrepreneur
    Hosting Talking Circles Training Participant

  • “The Village at the Edge of the World camping experience had a profound impact on me. As someone who struggles with loneliness living alone in London, I could connect deeply with others. We shared food, talents, stories, and the warmth of the campfire. The things we learned about the medicine wheel and the daily activities helped me put the troubles weighing me down at home into perspective while being guided to a place of wisdom. I returned to London feeling so much better about my life.”

    Nadège
    Participant of The Village 2021

  • Firstly, thank you. The response from the staff that went away with you has been fantastic. They are so full of enthusiasm and excitement about what they experienced and how they can bring this to bear in the school. We had a chat on the first day back and then they all spoke to the whole staff group (all 100 of them) about how they had been personally impacted by the camp and how they wanted this to affect the way we work with students in the school. It was exactly what I was wanting, it opened their eyes and minds in ways I’d really hoped it would. Well done Max, you should be very proud of what you and your team achieved.

    John Taylor
    Principal, Southbank University Academy

  • “To bridge the gap that can exist between adults and young people in an environment that was so open and supportive was truly amazing and I think I started crying within the first five minutes which is testament to the power of the space created.”

    Amelia, 17-years-old
    Participant

  • “I have really loved this space and I am going to miss it. I have learned that it is okay not to be okay. And that there are always people there to help you. I am now committed to helping other people.”

    Male, 16-years-old
    Grief Advocates Programme participant

Our Research Partners

Rewilding Our Research

We currently partner with ‘Rewilding Education’, to evaluate how our programmes impact on teachers, pupils and school communities. 

‘Rewilding’, a concept usually applied to the process of restoring ecosystems to a healthier balance, has increasingly been used in other contexts – rewilding places, and rewilding people. Rewilding Education CIC, is the first organisation to officially link ‘rewilding’ with education, educators, and educational systems. 

Created and led by two experienced educators with over 20 years experience working in educational settings their strong track records as researchers and academics enables Rewilding Education to ignite radical educational change, making education healthier, fairer and wilder, for the benefit of people and planet.

Combining the principles and procedures of (decolonized) ethnographic fieldwork with the strongest commitment to social pedagogy (the processes of: caring, walking alongside and bringing learning to life) Rewilding Education CIC is a leader in the field and of research approaches for this emergent area of educational practice. 

See www.rewildingeducation.org for more details and for a fuller account of their approach to evaluation and impact reporting.

The evidence and legacy we lean on


The Visionaries are guided through our partnership with Dr David Blumenkrantz and his lifetime of experience with youth and community development through rites of passage.

Rites of passage have evolved over millennia as our species’ natural way to navigate life-altering challenges, transitions and ordeals that we all inevitably encounter – birth, becoming ‘adult’, death…. even pandemics. Rites of passage help to nurture healthy relationships that support both the individual and the collective to embrace transformations as opportunities for growth, for dreaming, for renewal. We draw on this ancient wisdom and look to nature as an example for how to live and learn in balance and harmony. 

Dr. Blumenkrantz’s way of working with rites of passage has a validating evidence base of over 25 years of direct experience (see Blumenkrantz, 1992, 1996; Blumenkrantz & Wasserman, 1998).

Universal across all cultures, rites of passage occurs across 3 distinct phases, commonly called – Preparation, Transition, Incorporation. We use these three phases as a framework through which to co-design with schools, adapted to fit a micro and macro level depending on their capacity and ambitions. With each iteration of this process our visions become more of a reality.