Ernest Thompson Seton began the Woodcraft Movement in 1902. Since then, Woodcraft has spread internationally and is going strong today. A small team is organizing an International Woodcraft Gathering to be held online via Zoom over the weekend of 8-9 June 2024. Call for Abstracts deadline has been extended to February 1, 2024.
The Gathering’s theme follows Seton’s own summary of his program:
Something to Do, Something to Think About, Something to Enjoy in the Woods, with a thought always toward character building and physical fitness.
The Gathering’s objectives are to:
- Create an international coalition of Woodcraft practitioners.
- Develop new friendships and connections across the world.
- Share Woodcraft best practices.
- Identify ways to update traditional Woodcraft practices to reduce/eliminate Amerindian cultural appropriation and replace these practices with cooperation, respect, and insights from within each organization’s own cultural roots.
We invite representatives from all groups that use Woodcraft principles to participate!
We are planning four sessions over the weekend: Culture, Tradition, Nature and Community.
Each session will be two hours of moderated online presentations that will showcase the most creative presentations within the session topic. The sessions will not be back-to-back but scheduled at different times of day to accommodate as many time zones as possible. Between sessions, participants will be encouraged to participate in informal online discussion rooms, view more presentations on the website, or take on the challenges provided at the end of each session.
We are calling for abstracts that describe presentations, panels, live discussions, and short video presentations for the four sessions as detailed above and following any aspect of the Theme. Sessions each have a different focus, and therefore have different presentation format requirements.
Please submit an abstract before February 1, 2024. Complete the attached form and email it to the appropriate address on the form. All presentations will be given in English, however, if you wish to have a translation in your native language, you may provide that for uploading to the Woodcraft Gathering website where all participants will have access to it.
We will get back to you by 10 February, 2024. The full materials will be required by 30 April, 2024. Below you will find more details about individual sessions and accepted formats.
Culture
This session is about how you or your group identifies as practicing Woodcraft principles. Consider answering questions such as: What is your Woodcraft culture? What symbols, icons, and special clothing, if any, do you use? What Woodcraft activities, such as camping or making handicrafts, do you engage in? When, how often, and how are your activities done? Is your group part of another program? How do you get and keep youth engaged?
For the Culture session we seek short videos showing how woodcraft works across the world. We are looking for a dynamic, short video (max 2 mins), that shows a birds-eye view of how you “Woodcraft”. Videos should be in standard video formats (*.mp4, *.mov, *.avi). From the submissions we will choose a set of diverse video clips to show in a span of about 15 minutes during the session. All clips will be published on the website where participants can check them out at their convenience.
Tradition
This session focuses on your group’s Woodcraft history. It honors the past from both group and individual perspectives. Questions you might think about answering include: What are the roots of your organization? How do you recognize, respect, and honor Woodcraft heritage? What traditions do you follow that keep Woodcraft alive? What experiences have you had that compel you to share Woodcraft with others?
For the Tradition session we seek storytellers for inspirational individual and panel presentations that may be enhanced with media. Q and A time will be allocated as needed.
For the Tradition session, the formats include live storytelling or presentations with or without technology (*.ppt, *.pptx, *.pdf) that may have audio (*.mp3, *.mp4) or short videos (*.mp4, *.mov, *.avi) embedded.
Nature
This session is about the foundation of woodcraft practice – the natural world. The place, the environment that shapes us, where beauty is found everywhere in every little detail. The Nature session focuses on how your group enjoys, respects, and cares for the natural world. There will be two discussion tracks occurring simultaneously: the “Wood” and the “Craft”. The “Wood” track incorporates topics around Nature itself: flora and fauna knowledge, nature/wildlife protection, environmental studies/education, or giving a virtual tour of the place your group camps or hikes. 4
The “Craft” track incorporates topics around human skills and abilities to enjoy and spend time in Nature: survival skills, handicrafts from nature resources (knitting knots), pioneering, camping, cooking, hiking, or activities.
Some ideas for the Wood track are:
How do you engage youth and children to enjoy and learn about their natural surroundings? What nature games do you play? How is caring for nature infused into your everyday life? Are popular nature-focused programs such as “Leave No Trace”, “Tread Softly”, or others integrated into your program?
For the Craft track ideas are:
Techniques for hiking, camping in the forest, cooking over an open fire, and/or making handicrafts using natural resources.
For the Nature tracks, we are looking for nature-focused games, displays of the flora and fauna in your area (perhaps a short video of a hike), instructions on how to make a handicraft or a recipe for a special food you cook in camp.
The formats that we are looking for include live presentations and tutorials (*.ppt, *.pptx, *.pdf), images (*.jpg, *.png), or short videos (*.mp4, *.mov, *.avi). If an instructional presentation, include written instruction (i.e., recipe, user guide) that is downloadable from the website. The length of your contribution will be no more than 15 minutes.
Community
The Community session focuses on building and maintaining Community. How does your group recruit members and select leaders? What aspects of your program support personal growth?
As the last session, we will also ask for your help to identify how we build and maintain this International Community. What topics are you interested in continuing to explore? How and how often will focus groups communicate with each other and with the larger group?
During registration you will be asked to sign a permission form to allow your presentations to be made available for viewing during and after the event for all participants to view and download.
Although the Planning Group have received an encouraging and substantial number of submissions, we are aware that there maybe other Woodcrafters who maybe willing & able to offer meaningful additions
We have, therefore, agreed to extend the deadline for submissions until Friday 15th March 2024, still using the previous submission routes:-
Julie Seton – North & South America, Pacific Islands, Australia
Marek Havrlik – Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia
We look forward to many more ideas!!
or www.woodcraftgathering.com website or by emailing the completed attached form to:
You may also download and email the completed form to:
marek.havrlik@seznam.cz if you live in Europe, Middle East, Africa, or Asia) or
jas@etsetoninstitute.org if you live in North America, South America, Pacific Islands, or Australia.
We are eager to hear from you!
Blue sky!
The Woodcraft Gathering Organizing Committee
Questions? Send an email to marek.havrlik@seznam.cz or jas@etsetoninstitute.org.