Living NVC Camp – Weekend with option of NVC Foundation in community

Update 26/6/22 – the camp is now fully booked. However you can still submit a booking form and we will keep a waiting list in case we have any last minute cancellations.

Are you looking for deeper connections with others, a chance to be in community, to begin or to deepen your NVC learning in a real-life but still supported situation, to have time away from your everyday life to breathe, explore and grow? This camp can be a space for all this and more.

This is a weekend camp (Friday evening July 15th to Sunday evening July 17th) for those with limited time, with the option of joining a residential NVC Foundation training. This training, led by CNVC certified trainer Clare Palmer, will give you all the basic tools and principles of NVC.

If you are already experienced in NVC this introductory weekend will offer the chance for you to refresh and deepen your awareness of feelings and needs. If you’re new, you’ll benefit from a comprehensive Foundation training as well as the surrounding support and connection of the camp community. A full programme of other workshops and activities will also be provided for those who do not want to join the introduction programme.

This camp forms the first part of a three part camp so some participants will be staying on, and others will join on Sunday evening. To foster community integration and cohesion, we aim to avoid any coming and going at other points in the week: so we welcome you to join on Friday evening or Sunday evening, and to leave on Sunday evening or Friday.

Who’s organising?
Clare Palmer and Graham Timmins have many years’ experience of teamwork, playing leading roles at NVC camps, holding space, running workshops and planning community events. We think we have a good idea of ‘what works well’ in the context of NVC camps, and we share a vision of a lived community experience informed by a constant awareness of feelings and needs.
See Clare at https://nvc-uk.com/member/clare-palmer/
Read Graham at http://www.therightword.info

Where’s it at?
The Clophill Centre ( www.clophillcentre.co.uk) is centrally placed between Luton airport, Milton Keynes and Bedford. It’s a 14 acre private site with fields, gardens, orchard, woodland, and lots of room to breathe. Indoor facilities include a meeting room, a breakfast/ tea room, and a cosy yurt; semi-outdoor spaces include a roundhouse with a firepit. You need to bring your own tent or camper van, and bedding. If you don’t have a tent, we may have some to hire, please ask.

What’s special about this camp?
The whole week is carefully structured to promote connection, learning and growth for all of us. Underpinning that though, and perhaps not always visible on the surface, is our effort to hold an awareness of feelings and needs in our consciousness throughout our time together, as constantly and as deeply as we are able. We don’t want to just ‘do NVC’ in a workshop, we want to ‘live NVC’ in our daily interactions. That includes an intention to be fully present, to see and to think clearly, free from assumptions and pre-judgments and grounded in compassion. We believe that our needs are not separate from the needs of other people, of all other beings we share this life with, and of our precious Earth itself. We aim for an ability to more consistently choose needs-based actions which resonate with our higher or deeper selves.
We will stick to the traditional daily structure used for many years at other NVC camps, whose pillars we identify as: morning meetings for the whole camp after breakfast, empathy groups after lunch, and ‘celebrations and mournings’ after dinner. Each of these key moments of the day fulfils a vital function; we see participation as important both for community cohesion and for the kind of personal growth which only happens in interactions with others and which camp facilitates.
Because it’s important to us to know that the pillars are standing firm, we will invite some of the more experienced participants to lead the empathy groups and we will check in with them regularly as camp progresses, in case any additional support is needed. Similarly our expectation is that all campers will enjoy and draw benefit from the morning and evening meetings. If you don’t want to be at a community meeting for some reason, our request is to come anyway and to tell us about it! Otherwise your precious voice and unique perspective will be missing from our community.
Within the framework created by the three pillars, morning and afternoon workshop spaces will offer the chance to focus on particular aspects of needs-based connection, as well as other skills and practices members want to share. Popular topics in the past have included: an introduction to NVC, embodied NVC, empathy skills, working with anger, making requests, grief and loss, NVC parenting, transforming core beliefs, finding our boundaries, NVC and social change, etc.

Quality assurance
Lead trainer for the Foundation Training is Clare Palmer who will provide CNVC attendance certificates. Also supporting are Magiari Diaz Diaz and Graham Timmins. Other trainers, both CNVC certified and candidate and independent, will be involved in the camp and may be there at the weekend. So far these include Jo McHale, Ruth Cohen-Rose and Bridget Belgrave (tbc).
We are very interested in constructive feedback and will give opportunities for this after the camp.

What’s the deal?
All prices include camping, meals, hot drinks, snacks, workshops and gatherings.

Update 4/5/22: We’re very happy with bookings at this stage; we could take a few more participants, but only a few, as we think that a smaller size camp (about 35 people) makes it easier to create community in a short time and to provide the more consistent focus on connection, learning and growth that we’re looking for. At the same time we have realized how helpful it would be for our planning to know at least a month ahead exactly how many are coming. So, both to encourage possible late bookers to make up their minds sooner rather than later and to compensate for the extra adjustments they necessitate, we will increase prices as from June 5th, if we are not sold out by then.
So, for bookings made and paid before June 5th, the weekend camp is £200, while after that date the price will be £210. (As always, if it would bring you joy to give more, please do so, so that we can offer concessions!)