Scottish Gathering 2012: Pitlochry

Pitlochry is a beautiful little town nestled in the Scottish hills. If you happen to visit on a mid January weekend, wind your way up through the high street, take a left at the grand Scottish hotel and continue up the hill. Don't be put off by the gradient- you’ll be rewarded by the sight of 50 Scottish woodies, gathered together for their Scottish Gathering, in the majestic Pitlochry Youth hostel.

It would not be naive to assume that an annual gathering weekend could be a dry affair - all meetings and mutterings and constitutions and amendments. But what you would be forgetting is the Scottish woodies love to party. Throw in some guests from Newcastle into the mix and we were guaranteed to have a brilliant weekend!

This years Gathering was a special one, because we welcomed some new groups from Glasgow, began organising our first joint summer camp with Newcastle, and made some big changes to the workings of Scottish Woodcraft Folk.

The Friday night was a quiet affair, everyone getting to know one another and sharing news about the past year. Our new Glasgow venturer group treated themselves to a chippie and late arrivals settled in. Rebecca, from the TREE Programme, set up an exciting new quilting project, Hands In!, and young people set to work on their patches, some of which were more coherent than others, but all looked great!

A modern tradition of our Gathering is to begin official affairs with a walking meeting, something that we would recommend to other groups. We set some aims and questions from different stages of the walk, get our boots on and set off. Every now and then we stop and have a circle, and discuss what we have been chatting about. Its like open space, but on the move. The great thing about it is that our young people and little ones can join in as they please, have their own discussions about woodcraft and let off steam as they like. There was also time for a pooh sticks championships and a game of ‘can I cross the big red river’. Once we were all suitably refreshed (read: cold) and had more of grasp of what was going on with different groups, we headed home to have our official meeting.

Scottish Woodcraft Folk has gone through lots of changes in recent years, and we have struggled to keep together a large executive committee. This year, in a wonderfully positive meeting, we made a constructive change to our system by replacing the executive with a management committee. This is a more flexible group who do not have elected roles within the committee, but will share our jobs cooperatively. We also elected a new General Council Rep. This was all good and done, so we moved onto more important matters- lunch!

After lunch a series of great workshops were offered, which included exploring Woodcraft Folk’s new mentoring scheme, participatory methods, leading for the future, working with young people on the Autistic spectrum and T-shirt printing for young people. We left these workshops with lots of new knowledge, a new appreciation of what UK Woodcraft Folk has been up to and lots of “I Love Woodcraft Folk” memorabilia.

Saturday night at Scottish Gathering is always fantastic. We have a ‘celebration meal’ and perform in our clans. This year’s clans were based on The Beatles, so we each performed an interpretation... Audience participation was encouraged, and sometime mandatory- never have the lyrics of Penny Lane’s “In the pouring rain” been expressed so literally, and we all ended up quite soggy.

One of my personal favourite things about Woodcraft Folk is our singing tradition, and it was great to get everyone together for a good old fashioned sing song that went on late into the night. It was a fantastic chance to teach some newer volunteers and young people some of the classics, from the Banana Song, to the Mighty Song of peace. We shared some of our favourites with Newcastle, who in turn taught us some new songs to add to our repertoire.

Sunday morning was a sleepy affair, as we packed up to leave. We still had time to squeeze in a meeting about our summer camp, and a circle. It was sad to see everyone go, but we are all already looking forward to next year!

Thanks to everyone who came along and made it such a special weekend, especially to the new members who had never been to an event before.  Special thanks to Fleur who organises the weekend every year, and keeps us coming back for more!

by Josie Vallely