June 2025
Harmony Singing Day Retreat
10am-4pm, Sunday 22nd June & Sunday 10th August
About the event:
Join a blissful harmony singing day at Braziers’s park this summer, and meet with others to share your voice in lively harmony singing.
We will meet in the Drawing Room and sing beautiful songs in full harmony, all taught by ear. Over the course of the day we will let the joy of singing songs together wake up our creative selves, working all the way up to expressing it in songs of our own making. The creative process can be elusive or even alien to us. What’s it like to hand over control to the spontaneous part of you that sees endless possibilities and loves to explore them? We will ease ourselves in with a morning of singing, vocal improvisation and creative reflection, then after a guided meditation we will spend the afternoon creating music together, or on our own. The goal is not the musical outcome, but to spend as much time as possible in the beautiful creative mindset and see where it goes. Bring writing that inspires you (a poem, story, your own writing…) to help spark your expression with a phrase or a single word.
So come where you will be looked after all day, with a beautiful room as our base, grounds to explore, and drinks, snacks and lunch all provided. There will be time to enjoy the grounds and work in small groups as well as letting rip in full harmonic chorus. We’ll experiment and work together to come up with new songs, even if you have no experience, to really enjoy the flowing creative process. You will leave feeling refreshed, uplifted and a little more creatively freed!
About the facilitator:
Rachel Holmes is a singer and choir leader based in Oxfordshire. She connects emotion, body and voice into powerful group singing. In 2019 she trained as a natural voice leader with Kate Valentine and currently runs natural voice song circles in Chilton and Cholsey. She completed Line Hilton’s singing teacher training in 2020 and completed her Foundation in Art Therapy at IATE in 2021. Rachel loves bringing these threads together into a holistic and uplifting experience of singing.
Click here for more information and booking
July 2025
Elementary Festival – A World of Sound – The World’s Friendliest Festival
Thursday 3rd – Monday 7th July
About the event:
2025 is going to be bigger and better than ever before!
What a gorgeous bunch of an elementary festival family you really are! To match your scrumptiousness, we have put together some of the funkiest acts with a seriously cultural fusion.
More Aboriginal traditional performance and workshops all the way from down under. More vibrant African drumming sessions, more South American ceremonies, more intricate Indian rhythms – in fact so much more of everything you love about this spectacular weekend.
Ram-packed full of sound journeys, cacao ceremony, juggling, jams, yoga, dance, poetry, trance dance meditation, food and workshops galore (of course loads of didgeridoo workshops) – all topped off with banging, crowd WOWSERing nights of musical delights.
Click here for more information and booking
Kids Go Wild!
10am-noon, Sunday 13th July
Forest School session with Charlotte Allchin
About the event:
A monthly fun-filled Forest School session led by qualified Forest School leader Charlotte Allchin in 55 acres of meadows and woodland. Suitable for all ages and whatever the weather – dress accordingly, it might get mucky! Varied activities outdoors in nature. One adult only may attend with each child or family group. Limited places. NB: All dates for 2025 now bookable.
Grabbing Hope: A Community Organising Workshop
5pm Friday 18th July – 4pm Sunday 20th July 2025
About the event:
In an era marked by uncertainty and disconnection, Grabbing Hope offers a constructive and empowering response. This two day workshop, led by Humanity Project, invites participants to explore Popular Assemblies as a powerful model for participatory, people-led democracy.
Designed for individuals who feel disillusioned by conventional politics or powerless in the face of ongoing social and political challenges, this event provides both a practical foundation and a hopeful vision for collective action at the local level.
Participants will:
* Gain practical skills in listening, facilitation, and deliberation
* Learn how to organise and host inclusive, community-led assemblies
* Explore how popular assemblies can spark meaningful change in streets and neighbourhoods
* Develop a deeper understanding of deliberative democracy and its creative, collaborative potential
Whether you are new to community organising or looking to strengthen your engagement, Grabbing Hope will equip you with the tools and insight to help shape a more democratic, responsive, and hopeful future – starting where you live.
About the facilitators:
The team at Humanity Project have +30 years’ experience leading transformational change through deep listening and facilitation, mobilising social change movements and tackling injustice and oppression.
Leading this workshop will be Alima Adams, Elena Moses and Karl Lam who form Humanity Project’s Assembly Culture Team; Lachlan Ayles who is Head of Policy and Learning at the charity Community Organisers; Clare Farrell who co-founded Extinction Rebellion and works extensively in the democracy, creativity and climate spaces; and Madeline Hamilton-Mudge, an artist and creator from the Absurd Intelligence collective.
https://www.humanityproject.uk
The Reunion 2025
Monday 28th July – Friday 1st August
About the event:
Stefan & Ranka invite you to the annual reunion of former Braziers volunteers and residents (also known as the house team in the past). This invitation is open to anyone who has volunteered or been a resident at Braziers in the past. It will give you a good opportunity to visit Braziers again and to renew friendships with others. Some sessions will be arranged in due course but the principal aim of this event is to enjoy friendly chatting, excursions and just being together in the beautiful place you once stayed. Of course you can bring your family or friends too.
Please note that the fee (£32 a day per person) is on a half-time working basis. Every participant will be expected to work alongside others at Braziers every morning (or afternoon if preparing dinner). If you have any enquiry or want to find out about children’s prices please contact Braziers Park (admin@braziers.org.uk) and Stefan Preiss (stefan.preiss@gmx.net).
August 2025
Braziers International Film Festival
4pm Friday 29th – 4pm Sunday 31st August
About the event:
Braziers International Film Festival (BIFF) is an annual three-day independent film festival held at Braziers Park. The festival features several programmes of international films, including special focus programmes, installations, performances, and discussions.
Screened inside Braziers’ historic 17th century barn, the programmes include documentary, animation, fiction and contemporary artists’ film & video. Curated by artist Nick Jordan, the films are selected from an open call by a team of artist-filmmakers, who run the festival as a not-for-profit collective, with proceeds going to Braziers Park.
Screenings are followed by group discussion and Q&A with attending film-makers, who are invited to Braziers.
Some of the artist-filmmakers who have screened at the festival in recent years include Rehab Nazzal, Maryam Tafakory, Jennet Thomas, Mike Hoolboom, Niina Lehtonen Braun, David Leister, Oreet Ashrey, Paul Tarragó, Claudia Claremi, and Carla Simón. Special-focus programmes and performances have included Jumana Manna, Julia Parks, Amy Cutler, Bea Haut, Karel Doing, Mary Stark & David Chatton Barker (Folklore Tapes), Vague Research Studios, and BEEF (Bristol Experimental Expanded Film).
The full screening programme will be published closer to the date.
Click here for more information on the festival
September 2025
Kids Go Wild!
10am-noon, Sunday 14th September
Forest School session with Charlotte Allchin
About the event:
A monthly fun-filled Forest School session led by qualified Forest School leader Charlotte Allchin in 55 acres of meadows and woodland. Suitable for all ages and whatever the weather – dress accordingly, it might get mucky! Varied activities outdoors in nature. One adult only may attend with each child or family group. Limited places. NB: All dates for 2025 now bookable.
Harvest-Time Herbals: Entering Autumn with Medicinal Stores for The Dark Time
9:30am Saturday 27th – 5pm Sunday 28th September 2025
About the event:
We will spend a weekend drawing in from the land, preparing harvests of the summer season into healing medicines for the cold times. Learn about specific herbal techniques including tincture making, syrups, elixirs, vinegars and electuaries, specific for the respiratory, circulatory and immune systems as the energy shifts.
Meet the plants of the autumn that support our health at this time, and gather knowledge about how to bring them into your daily life for greater winter wellbeing.
About the facilitator:
Rasheeqa Ahmad (Hedge Herbs) is a medical herbalist in her community in Walthamstow in north London. She has been practicing since 2012, offering treatment with herbal medicine and teaching about its many aspects, alongside a wider mix of work whose aim is reconnecting us as communities with the potential of this knowledge and craft as a way to support healthier living systems and relationships. She is inspired by her early involvement with the Radical Herbalism Gathering in exploring how to make plant medicine accessible and restore balance to its practice in the contexts of systemic inequalities and oppressions that are part of our shared histories.
Rasheeqa is part of Community Apothecary Waltham Forest in her locality, a social enterprise that brings community members together around a patchwork of medicinal herb gardens where they can learn about growing and making medicines together, exchanging knowledge and peer support and seeding the model in other neighbourhoods so that we create landscapes of healing everywhere.
Living Fibres II: Gleaning & Coiling
10am-5pm, Sunday 28th September
About this event:
During this workshop, participants will have an opportunity to explore different plant fibres from the Braziers Park landscape, working with them to create coiled bowls and baskets. Participants will get to know a wide range of different crop residues, as well as to glean their own materials from our beautiful Walled Garden. Over the course of the day, we will use coiled basketry techniques to work these materials into different vessels. Participants will be encouraged to pick, snap, split, scrape, and prod plants, getting to know them and their weaving affordances. The emphasis will not be on having a perfected piece to take home. Instead, the focus will be on taking home skills and inspiration, creating space for experimentation, risks, and new understandings. This is the second of two Living Fibres workshops. It can be attended as a stand-alone workshop or as the second of the two-part series.
About the facilitator:
Fred Branson’s work combines experience in community arts, visual anthropology & agroecology. He is particularly interested in producing work that engages with both the materials and politics of different landscapes. His most recent work responds to the plants he encounters as part of his work on a small-scale vegetable farm in North Oxfordshire. This has led to experiments with cordage, coiled basketry, and most recently – thanks to funding from Arts Council England – the construction of camera obscura.
October 2025
Journey Home: An Autumn Women’s Retreat For Hong Kong Leavers
4pm Friday 10th – 4pm Sunday 12th October 2025
Come rest, reconnect, and let go like the autumn leaves at Braziers Park, a beautiful historic community set in the peaceful Oxfordshire countryside. Whether you seek healing, connection with other HK leavers, or simply a break to listen to your own heart — you are warmly welcome.
The retreat will include:
* Gentle, accessible yoga for health
* Yoga Nidra & Sound Healing for deep relaxation
* Nature-connection practices among the falling leaves
* Community sharing circles to be heard and held
* A safe, warm, and inclusive space to honour your journey, your grief, your hopes — and to support you in rooting into your new life.
About the facilitators:
Linda To is a former NGO leader and social work teacher in Hong Kong devoted to women’s rights work, and a learner of mindful / non-violent communication practices. She enjoys Baduanji Qigong.
Myriam Bartu has worked with women’s empowerment NGOs in Hong Kong where she began teaching meditative practices in 2018. Now based in Zurich, she is passionate about sharing yoga nidra, sound healing, women’s yoga therapy and Nature Retreats to help women reconnect to themselves, to each other, and to Nature. Website: www.reconnectionspace.com
Josephine Ma has been teaching yoga in Hong Kong since 2017. Having moved to Leeds in 2022, she is keen to share her passion for yoga, helping participants enhance their mobility and strength while cultivating inner peace. Instagram: @machoyogaleeds
Joy Lam has worked with women and community groups in Hong Kong including in social work education. Now based in the UK, she hopes to create a supportive space where women can grow and care for their well-being together.
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The retreat will be held in English with optional group discussions in Cantonese.
Life Drawing: Discovering Your Artistic Voice
10am-3pm, Sunday 12th October
About the event:
Come join us for a relaxed session of artistic self-expression through life drawing. This is the art of capturing the human figure from a live model and is a cherished tradition that transcends time and culture. This will be a valuable and personal creative experience whether you are a life drawing regular or have never attended a class. In this session, we go beyond striving for perfect proportions or likeness and aim to uncover the essence of the human form, expressing it in our own unique style and perspective. Aptly, we will be in the glorious Drawing Room, working with a professional nude model holding various short and longer poses. We will be seated around the model, using graphite and charcoal for our artistic exploration. If you prefer to use an easel or your own medium for sketching on paper, you are welcome to bring those along. Besides the creative aspect, we will discover that the joy of life drawing also lies in the meditative quality of the process, leaving behind the complexities of everyday life and promoting true presence. All the materials you need are provided, and the session will include 3 hours of drawing various poses, art history context, conversation and a delicious lunch.
About the facilitator:
This session is run by artist and designer, Ranjit Jhita. A self-confessed art obsessive, Ranjit has a particular love for figurative works throughout art history. He has spent many years in life drawing rooms, both sketching and facilitating. The challenge and thrill of discovering something new and valuable in himself and others has only intensified over the years. It’s with this enthusiasm that Ranjit currently runs the life drawing sessions in Goring & Streatley. In his own work, Ranjit draws deep inspiration from historical masters, particularly from the Renaissance to the mid-twentieth century. Striving for raw, honest marks, his aim is to give life to drawings that embrace historic, artistic discipline, but have a reality that is starkly of the present.
www.instagram.com/learningtolook
www.instagram.com/goringstreatley_lifedrawing
Kids Go Wild!
10am-noon, Sunday 19th October
Forest School session with Charlotte Allchin
About the event:
A monthly fun-filled Forest School session led by qualified Forest School leader Charlotte Allchin in 55 acres of meadows and woodland. Suitable for all ages and whatever the weather – dress accordingly, it might get mucky! Varied activities outdoors in nature. One adult only may attend with each child or family group. Limited places. NB: All dates for 2025 now bookable.
Conscious Evolution
10am-4pm, Saturday 25th October
A creative one-day workshop with Heather Lynch
About this event:
The Conscious Evolution Collage is a collaborative and creative workshop designed to help you understand and address the complex sustainability challenges of the 21st century. Through this workshop, you will access breakthrough knowledge and innovative ways of thinking, based on New World Together transdisciplinary research findings that can empower and enlighten you. During the workshop, you will work as a team with different sets of cards containing key information about the global sustainability challenges, their hidden root causes, and their solutions. Your mission is to use your individual and collective intelligence to connect the dots and organize the cards to have a clear picture that allows you to:
* Develop your sensemaking: learn to use a systemic approach to grasp the interrelated sustainability challenges threatening our globalised civilization as well as their fundamental causes.
* Expand your consciousness: recognise unsustainable behavior patterns, their past origins, hidden root causes, and how they are perpetuated beneath our collective level of awareness.
* Enhance your creative powers: identify individual, collective, and societal solutions that enable conscious change toward a sustainable and desirable future for all.
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop is for anyone who wishes to better understand the global sustainability challenges of our time and how they can contribute to the solution. It is also for those who want to connect with like-minded individuals and positive changemakers.
“The Conscious Evolution Collage was really insightful and Heather held the space beautifully allowing me and other participants the time to discuss, question and reflect so that we could expand our own understanding. Despite initially feeling relatively well versed on the topic, it hugely helped me to organise my thoughts and make connections which have already aided in deepening my understanding and excitement for a brighter picture of the future. It’s left me wanting more and keen to become a facilitator so that I can share this with my community too!” Chloe, Sustainability Advisor
About the facilitator:
Heather is deeply committed to creating a more regenerative world where people live in harmony with themselves, others, and nature. Her mission is to empower those working toward positive change to find greater happiness, fulfillment, and peace—helping them feel more aligned and empowered in their work. She supports individuals who feel stuck, overwhelmed, or uncertain about their impact or the future, through 1:1 coaching to support people wanting to make a positive difference to live more joyful lives aligned with their values. Heather also works with organisations, delivering workshops and talks on emotional resilience, systems thinking, and inner transformation for outer change. Beyond coaching and facilitating, she hosts ‘On Becoming the Change’ a podcast exploring personal growth as a catalyst for systemic transformation. She organises Mindful Nature Connection walks in Surrey, Mindfulness for Changemakers evenings in London and facilitates Conscious Evolution Collage workshops. With a decade of experience in sustainability—including roles at PwC and Oddbox—Heather integrates systems thinking, mindfulness, and coaching into her approach. She is an ICF-certified Transformative Coach, NLP practitioner, and trained Climate Change Coach. She is actively engaged in local climate initiatives, she helps organise The Great Big Green Week, Climate Cafés, and People, Planet, Pint events and is passionate about building community, deepening awareness and spending time in nature.
November 2025
Kids Go Wild!
10am-noon, Sunday 16th November
Forest School session with Charlotte Allchin
About the event:
A monthly fun-filled Forest School session led by qualified Forest School leader Charlotte Allchin in 55 acres of meadows and woodland. Suitable for all ages and whatever the weather – dress accordingly, it might get mucky! Varied activities outdoors in nature. One adult only may attend with each child or family group. Limited places. NB: All dates for 2025 now bookable.
December 2025
Kids Go Wild!
10am-noon, Sunday 14th December
Forest School session with Charlotte Allchin
About the event:
A monthly fun-filled Forest School session led by qualified Forest School leader Charlotte Allchin in 55 acres of meadows and woodland. Suitable for all ages and whatever the weather – dress accordingly, it might get mucky! Varied activities outdoors in nature. One adult only may attend with each child or family group. Limited places. NB: All dates for 2025 now bookable.