Trash Free Trails Our Trails Gathering

About the event

What if nature inspired how we work together?

Trash Free Trails invite you to a different conference experience: the Our Trails Gathering.

Evolving the celebrated State of Our Trails Summit, which was called 'the conference of the year' in 2023 by delegates, the Our Trails Gathering brings together campaigners, conservationists and storytellers with brands and businesses from across conservation and the outdoors to explore more nature-led forms of collaboration.

Powered by systems thinking, the Gathering will see attendees participate in unique workshops that draw inspiration from ecological systems, to empower new ways of working which centre the future wellbeing of our trails and their communities

What is the Our Trails Gathering?

For as long as we've been an organisation, Trash Free Trails has repeatedly come up against one of the core challenges which face small ENGOs like us; our 'industry' is founded on models of competition, monoculturalism, and organisational siloing. Worse still is a harder truth - we're working to 'protect' nature, but she couldn't be further from our day to day work.

So over the last five years we've been quietly asking ourselves - how can we better work together as an entire sector to protect and enhance our trails?

With the help of our community ecosystem, we've been exploring this question through a programme of work called Emergence. This has taken us on a journey to discover that some of the best forms of collaboration can be found in nature.

So we're feeding two birds with one seed (as the saying should go), and inviting professionals from across our ecosystem to come together to explore how we can learn from nature to enhance our collaborations, all in the name of our trails.

This event is hosted by Trash Free Trails, but we like to think of it's co-created by everyone who's in the room and what they want to bring. We're experimenting with something a bit new, and we want you to be a part of it.

What Can I Expect from the Gathering?

We'll kickstart the Gathering early on Thursday afternoon evening with Welcome Drinks and a special panel, followed by a unique musical performance. On Friday we deep dive into the workshop sessions, with a vegetarian lunch and teas and coffees throughout.

You can expect roundtables as well as unique exercises that get you up on your feet, out of the building, and moving with the conversation. You can expect opportunity to write by hand, to doodle, to brainstorm. You can expect plenty of time to chat over coffee, and pause for a bit of quiet time.

Details and to book