EP60: Connecting Children and Families to the Wild - with Chris Holland

About this episode

Chris Holland discusses the importance of connecting children and families to the natural world through music and education.

Chris Holland has spent over three decades helping people - young and old - find their way back to the natural world. In this warmly personal conversation, Robin and Chris reflect on the threads that have woven their lives together: a shared love of plants, the legacy of plant mentor Frank Cook, and the quiet revolution taking place in nature connection education. Chris is the author of I Love My World , widely regarded as the unofficial Forest School manual, and the founder of Natural Musicians. A practice that democratises music-making in wild places, inviting children and families to listen deeply and celebrate landscape through sound. His work sits at the intersection of nature pedagogy, John Young's Eight Shields framework, and a profound belief that connection to the other-than-human world is not a luxury, it is a necessity. They explore how children learn differently when handed a stick and a stone instead of a worksheet, why making music in a stone circle might change the listener more than the landscape, and what it means to truly stay — with a plant, with discomfort, with belonging. For educators, parents, and anyone who has ever felt the pull of a hedgerow, this…

People in this episode

Host: Robin Harford

Guest: Chris Holland

Topics covered

• nature connection
• education
• music in nature
• children and families
• plant mentorship
• wild places

Keywords

• nature pedagogy
• Forest School
• sound
• landscape
• wild
• education
• children
• music

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Natural Musicians

Books & works: I Love My World

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