About Wild Folk
Wild Folk is run by me, Hannah. I started Wild Folk in December 2018 when I put on a storytelling and dinner event for families on Winter Solstice. Since then there has been a mix of foraging walks, cooking on the fire, outdoor feasts and storytelling.
I get great joy, a sense of belonging and home when I’m out in nature, particularly in the woods and by rivers. A peace and a lightness. It brings me joy, then, to help create space for others to get into nature for a while to find that again, too.
It’s also a joy to witness people sharing their passions and skills with others – such as the foragers, chefs and storytellers I’ve worked with – and so I really enjoy facilitating that.
Now in 2024, Wild Folk has been on a bit of a pause while I’ve been on maternity leave, and going forward there will be more private events than public ones. If you’re interested in either of those, please see the page on private events (including team days or friends/family, charities) or sign up to the newsletter to find out about new public events.
And about the name Wild Folk: I feel this captures the various sides of what I aim to bring – community, people coming together, traditions, folk music, poetry and art, a wildness, getting outdoors and many more lovely things!
About your host
A short version: I love nature, creating, adventuring and gathering with others! I graduated in English with Creative Writing (focusing on poetry) from the University of Birmingham in 2010 and have done a real mix of jobs since. This has normally been a mix of youth work and support worker jobs alongside project-management/events/marketing/admin jobs. These have included working for Barnardo’s, local authorities in the social work department, and managing operations, events and marketing at The Matthew of Bristol. I also worked at the Apple Store for a while! It’s fair to say I love variety and working with people of all kinds. In 2019 I did a course in Nature Facilitation and I’m at a point now where I’m weaving a lot of these threads together.
At Wild Folk, I do the organising, marketing and hosting of the events. I also see myself as a curator – I come up with ideas for an event and then work to bring it to life.
The longer story
I’ve always loved getting out into nature. Growing up, our family holidays were often in Devon or Wales in the UK. We would explore National Trust places and, for example, go on a long walk to private beaches with a picnic. And as a teenager, a run in our nearby woods was my tonic – I felt energised, I would get inspiration for my art projects, and I would feel wonder for the beauty of nature (something I’m really rediscovering now more than 10 years later!)
I started getting into foraging in 2016 I think, but after attending a couple of introductory walks I didn’t take the learning any further. I have found I really have to engage with something personally in my own time as well for it to sink in. The curiosity grew though. I was also inspired by going out into the woods for meals cooked on a fire with our friend Stef (check out his Youtube channel here – he slept in the woods for about 5 years!) An evening in the woods felt longer to me, calmer, peaceful. And the food cooked on a fire always tastes better in my opinion! I also did the Great Glen canoe trail in Scotland in 2016 with my now husband. I love the bigger adventure like this, but also the simpler everyday ways of connecting to the natural world. A big motivation for running these events with Wild Folk was in thinking that not everyone has a ‘Stef’ or a similar friend in their life; that can make it hard to get started.
Embarking on this journey of learning about foraging and cooking outdoors adds another layer to those outings and adventures. It becomes something to share with friends and an entry point into connecting more deeply with the natural world.
It’s not totally clear how or why Wild Folk began! I actually started a different business first – Enamelware Events, hiring out enamelware crockery mostly for weddings. After a while, I felt that I wasn’t interested enough in weddings (once my wedding planning was over!) or crockery hire to spend all my time marketing this business. But, through doing it, I was really drawn to outdoor feast woodland setups and had saved many images on Pinterest. This quite naturally led me to dream about creating memorable events that were all out in nature, and learning more about celebrating the seasons throughout the year.