FreeSpirit Community Family Camp
Heartfelt Creative Community in Nature
Save the Dates
Wednesday 5th August until Monday 10th August 2026
Redwood Rare Breeds Farm - near Frome
What Makes This Experience Unique?
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From the Child's Perspective
I might feel nervous at first, but people of all ages talk to me, include me, and help me feel like I belong. Before I know it, I've found friends my age and also friends who are older and younger than me. We play together in the lake, build fires, learn nature skills, and explore. I feel more confident, grown up, and capable. Camp feels like family.
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From the Parent's Perspective
You'll witness your child grow in independence and confidence as they explore, make choices, and build friendships across ages. You'll experience the support of being held within community, where raising children is truly shared. Through simple moments, meals together, stories by the fire, children playing freely, you'll rediscover what it means to be human in connection with others.
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From the Community's Perspective
Whether you're joining with children or not, you become part of a living village. You'll share meals, tend the fire, support families, and witness the magic of children thriving in nature. This is a chance to experience the richness of inter-generational community—where everyone has gifts to share and support to receive.
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From the Team's Perspective
We create the container—the workshops, the rhythms, the safety—but the magic emerges from the community itself. Our greatest joy is watching connections form, seeing children blossom with confidence, and witnessing adults rediscover play, creativity, and the healing power of being truly seen and held by others.
What's Included
Five days of immersive community living and creative expression
Drumming, Dance & Music
Workshops in African drumming, dance, singing, and making music together. Evening performances and spontaneous jam sessions around the fire.
Wood Fire Sauna
Traditional wood-fired sauna to relax muscles, ease tension, and support deep relaxation and better sleep after days of movement.
Co-Creative Community
Small, intimate camp where everyone gets to know each other. We work together, celebrate together, and care for the space together.
Creative Arts & Workshops
Exciting range of workshops in creative arts, healing practices, and skill-sharing. Space for your own creativity to emerge and flourish.
Delicious Shared Meals
Nourishing vegetarian and vegan meals prepared with love. Cooking and eating together as an essential part of community life.
Evening Gatherings
Fireside stories, cabarets, celebrations, and spontaneous magic. Warm fires and starry skies bringing us together.
Wild Swimming Lake
Safe, natural lake for swimming, playing, and connecting with water. A refreshing retreat on warm summer days.
Beautiful Natural Setting
Lush fields, woodlands, and stunning views in the rolling Mendip Hills. A perfect space to reconnect with nature and yourself.
Camping Facilities
Essential camping amenities to keep you warm, dry, and comfortable throughout your stay.
The Experience
More than a festival—a transformation
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It's hard to put into words the richness, quality of experience, or sense of togetherness that comes forth at FreeSpirit camp. The community experience is such an important part of what makes us feel alive and fulfilled as human beings. When we feel connected and seen, loved and appreciated, involved and included, supported and nurtured, we experience a deeper connection to ourselves and a remembering of who we are.
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Many of us experience our lives as stressful, disconnected from nature, isolating, and competitive. We have a deep yearning for contact, support, community, harmony with nature, and the simple pleasure of friendship. When all this is found in the camp environment, a profound transformation can occur. We don't just relax—we experience a new (or perhaps an older) way of being.
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We have a great deal of experience running these camps. They are a perfect balance of organization and free-flowing spontaneity. We bring people together in a very real and accessible way. You will feel welcomed and encouraged to be part of the community from the moment you arrive, to both bring yourself forth and relax into the support and hold of a co-creative community vibe.
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Perhaps with only the thin material of a tent or van between one person and the next, and between ourselves and the earth, we realize the values of simplicity and togetherness. The closeness between people develops very quickly. It's not easy to hide or be superficially pleasant in this environment, so many people say they feel more real, more themselves, and more able to take risks, with so many new friendships easily emerging.
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FreeSpirit camp gives all kinds of ideas about how things could be different in how we choose to live our lives. How we can take care of ourselves, be more community-oriented, and come back to our connection with the earth and how we care for the environment we live in.
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The camps, at their best, offer a space for all of us to feel safe to push our edges and boundaries, to become more than who we thought we were, to discover aspects of ourselves we didn't know about. They also offer a great learning space for children and adults alike.
Camp Memories
Why do people return?
It Becomes Home
There's something magical about arriving at camp and feeling like you're coming home. The same field, the same trees, the same fire circle—but also the same faces, now dear friends. Year after year, you watch children grow taller, see friendships deepen, and witness your own transformation continuing to unfold. This isn't just a holiday you book once; it's a homecoming you carry in your heart all ye
The Friendships Are Real
The connections formed at FreeSpirit aren't the superficial friendships of everyday life. When you camp side by side, cook together, dance together, and sit around the fire sharing stories, something deeper emerges. People return because they miss these friends—the ones who truly see them, who remember last year's conversations, who celebrate their growth. Children count down the days until they can play with their camp friends again.
You Discover More Each Time
First-time campers often say they wish they'd known what to expect so they could have relaxed sooner. Returners arrive already at ease, ready to dive deeper. Each year you return, you peel back another layer—trying a new workshop, taking on a different role in the community, pushing your edges a little further, or simply allowing yourself to rest more fully into the support that's offered.
It Reminds You Who You Are
In the rush of ordinary life, it's easy to forget the person you become at camp—more playful, more open, more connected, more yourself. Returners speak of FreeSpirit as a touchstone, a place that reminds them of what matters most. The values lived here—community, creativity, kindness, presence—become a compass for the rest of the year. Coming back annually is like recalibrating to your truest self.
You Watch Your Children Blossom
Parents return year after year to witness the remarkable transformation in their children. The shy seven-year-old who clung close becomes the confident nine-year-old leading other children to the lake. The child who needed encouragement to try new things becomes the one offering that same encouragement to others. At FreeSpirit, children grow in independence, confidence, and kindness—and parents get to witness this beautiful unfolding over the years.
The Community Holds You
Life brings challenges—bereavement, illness, change, uncertainty. Returners speak of how the FreeSpirit community has held them through difficult times. There's something profound about being welcomed back each year, no matter what you've been through, and feeling the embrace of people who genuinely care. This isn't just a camp; it's a village that watches over its members
It Fills Your Cup for the Year
Those five days in August become the wellspring that nourishes the other 360 days. The memories, the songs, the laughter, the sense of belonging—these aren't just pleasant recollections. They're fuel. In the middle of a stressful week in February, you might close your eyes and remember dancing under the stars, or the warmth of the fire circle, or the sound of children's laughter by the lake. And it reminds you: this is what life can be. This is what community feels like. And you can carry it with you.
Because It's Your Tradition Now
After a few years, FreeSpirit stops being "that camp we went to" and becomes simply "our summer tradition." It's what you plan your August around. It's what your children ask about in spring: "How many more sleeps until camp?" It's the ritual that marks the passing of time, the annual gathering that grounds your family's year. Some people have been coming since 2012—that's thirteen years of memories, thirteen years of friendships, thirteen years of growth. It's not just an event anymore; it's part of who you are.
In Their Words…
