Name: Karen Lowthrop
Business: Hill Holt Wood
Role: Co-founder
Where: Edge of Lincolnshire

Karen moved from a penthouse apartment in Dublin in 1993 to set up the Hill Holt Wood project for excludedyoung people. She brought her family to live in a caravan in the wood, with no water or electricity facilities.

They, with an enthusiastic team of staff, are still running the thriving environmental and social enterprise and have since built an 'off-grid' family home. Karen's background is in communications and she also retrained as a basic skills teacher in 1994.

The project sits on the edge of Lincolnshire and comprises 34 acres of mixed deciduous forest. The team works to ensure ecological management and includes a wide diversity of projects, such as furniture manufacture, making buildings of straw and wattle and daub, creating renewable energy and manufacturing charcoal.

The idea is to mix activities that cancreate profit, provide a community resource, and help young people who are excluded from school or not in education, employment or training to contribute to the labour, while gaining training and asense of achievement. 

Holly Young, aged 25, tells us what it’s like to work with excluded young people at Hill Holt Wood

“I’ve been here more than two years now. I did a drama and communities degree and came here to do my final placement – that was supposed to be for three months, but I ended up staying a lot longer because I enjoyed it so much.

My task was to put on some kind of performance with the learners – 40 young males, aged 14-25. We based it around survival skills, the premise was that the world was ending and the people of Hill Holt Wood used their skills to help people survive. Everyone was extremely proud of the result, it was great to see them so happy with their work.

I’m a ranger here, there are 20 of us and we’re all paid staff, there are also volunteers. Us rangers have off-site contracts in local areas to cut grass etc., and the money we make goes towards funding the project. There’s a greatatmosphere here, it’s very much employer and learner centred. Everything’s very open; we’re free to see the books at any time.”

www.hillholtwood.com

click here to read Karen's blog