The festival of gifts!
A space to play, learn, explore, share, care and celebrate!
A space for reciprocity and co-creation! Join Us!

Full list of events

Giftval

Giftval

Why Giftval?

  • To celebrate and share the rich offerings of our extended Free We Grow community

  • Nourish nature connection and community relationships

  • To play with and practice gift culture

  • To create a space for freedom to learn and joyfulness, together

When and where is it happening?

What is Free We Grow

Free We Grow is a small learning community for home educated children in South London. We meet three days a week at Dacres Wood Nature Reserve where the children are able to play and learn freely and in relationship with each other and the world around them. To find out more about Free We Grow, you can visit our website here. Free We Grow is part of the Freedom to Learn Network

 FAQs

  • This is an open space festival, which means that anyone can offer an event. You can submit an event by using this link. 

    We invite you to consider what is feeling alive for you at the moment – this could be offering a game, a workshop, a conversation, a song, a dance, a walk, a hop or a skip! 

    It can be something you’re great at already, or something you’re experimenting with and would like a space to share with others. 

    The deadline for submitting events is April the 23rd.

  • We are looking for some supporting roles to help operationally and in a care role during the month of May. If you’d like to volunteer to support the Giftival please email us at gather@freewegrow.co.uk 

  • No. All events are offered in the spirit of gift.   When booking a ticket, there is an option to donate.  All funds raised through the Giftival will go towards Free We Grow’s Community Fund,  to make the project more accessible and help us maintain our commitment never to turn anyone away for financial reasons.

  • Themes that are close to our heart are childhood and our relationship with the more than human world; our care for Dacres Wood Nature reserve and the local area, free learning, play, music, storytelling, dance, art, science and discovery, crafts and making, food: eating it, preparing it and growing it! Community, belonging and diversity! Traditional wisdom and ritual!  We celebrate intergenerational spaces, decolonial spaces, queer spaces, learning and playing together! We love passion and care in all their diverse manifestations and want to make space to share that!

    We welcome different ways of knowing, exploratory events, the amateurs (a word derived from the latin, to love) and the sages.

  • We have a team of parents and holding team members from Free We Grow putting this festival together, alongside the children and broader friends.  There’s a smaller team who is on hand if you need support, operationally, or as a guest with a question, looking for referrals, or seeking processing space.  To contact the care team please email gather@freewegrow.co.uk

  • Gift culture is about gratitude and reciprocity. It’s about trust and valuing relationships.  This festival explores what that looks like in our lives. You can hear more about our explorations into gift culture in this blog post here

“Sarita kare na paan, vriksh na fal chaakhe kadi. Khet na khave dhaan, parhit neepjay sekhra”

The river never drinks its own water. The tree never tastes its own fruit. The field never consumes its own harvest.

They selflessly strive for the well-being of all those around them.

Mewari proverb

“Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource”.

Robin Wall Kimmerer  

Special thanks to Free We Grow families for helping to put together this Giftival, as well as friends at The Village at Corbett Community Library, the Freedom to Learn Network, Waste Not Want Not Battersea, the Visionaries and the support and collaboration of the Friends of Dacres Wood and Lewisham Council