Nature-Based Leadership Training
Learn how you and your individual gifts can be of service to the community and the Earth at this time of great change.
We’re partnering with CERES to offer an immersive program that will create the kind of earth-based leadership and resilience we will need in the coming decades.
What will you find in the NATURE-BASED LEADERSHIP TRAINING?
REWILDING
Tap back into your own wild wisdom that so many of us have forgotten.
EARTH-LIVING SKILLS
Learn essential survival skills: Shelter, fire making, weaving and more.
DEEP NATURE CONNECTION
Find belonging in nature through your senses: reading landscapes, tracking, bird languages and more.
CULTIVATE COMMUNITY
Learn to create a culture of connection through deep listening, storytelling, dialogue and more.
FACILITATION SKILLS
Develop mentoring and group facilitation skills and experience.
FIND YOUR PURPOSE
Explore your ‘ecological niche’ and unique purpose.
STORYTELLING
Humans make meaning through story. Explore the narratives that shape our world.
IMMERSIVE RETREATS
Begin and end the program with nature immersions outside Melbourne.
You’ll be mentored by:
Claire Skye
Claire Skye (Dunn) is a writer, speaker, mother, barefoot explorer, rewilding facilitator and founder of Nature’s Apprentice. Claire is passionate about human rewilding and believes that a reclaiming of our ecological selves and belonging is key to regenerating wildness on the planet.
For the last 20 years, Claire has been facilitating individuals to dive deeply into the mysteries of nature and psyche through the pathways of deep nature connection, ancestral earth skills, deep ecology, ecopsychology, soulcentric nature-based practice, village building, dance, ceremony and contemporary wilderness rites-of-passage.
Claire is the author of memoirs My Year Without Matches, which tells the story of her year living wild, and Rewilding the Urban Soul which explores how we might embody wild consciousness within a modern city context. Claire lives beside the Birrarung in Warrandyte allured by the wild creatures at her doorstep: the sound of owlet nightjar, the shadow of platypus, the silent hunt of peregrine falcon, the croak of gang gangs, the gaping hollow of old manna gum. Other wild creatures include her three children, her sourdough starter, her beloved garden and soulmate Daniel.
Sieta Beckwith
Sieta Beckwith is the Narrative Director at CERES in Melbourne, where she helps weave together the stories, relationships and experiences that shape one of Australia’s leading centres for environmental education and regenerative community development. Her work spans education, communications, fundraising and organisational leadership, exploring how the stories we tell influence the way we live with one another and the living world.
For more than 15 years, Sieta has worked with purpose-led organisations to uncover and embody their deepest values. She is drawn to the question, “What are we longing for?” and to exploring how deeper relationship with nature, community and the sacred can help us respond to the social and ecological challenges of our time.
Through her work, she hopes to help people fall in love with the Earth again, and to contribute to a more life-centred story of humanity grounded in relationship, responsibility and hope.
Born on Noongar Country and now living and working on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country, Sieta finds joy in rock climbing, dancing, weaving baskets and having conversations with trees.
Daniel Skye
Daniel Skye is a carpenter and father of three living in Warrandyte. Dan’s introduction to earth based ceremony was at age 16, and since then ceremony, sweat lodge and Vision Quest has been a powerfully consistent thread and guiding principle in his life, both as participant and more recently as a trained Vision Quest guide. Since he was a child, Dan has nurtured a deep love and curiosity for the wild world. Conversations with the “wild other” are part of his everyday vernacular, and tracking a way of life.
Dan is founder of a Men’s Year-Long Quest program, and is passionate about connecting men to their hearts, their mythic selves, and each other.
Dan is currently apprenticing to the arts of storytelling, song, deep authentic relating, wandering, and the mythic in wild landscapes. You will often find him tending his garden, catching stories from friends, baking bread, running the trails of his mountain home, and spending sweet time with his children, and partner Claire.
“Going through the course has completely shifted my perspective on and experience of the world. I feel more present and more connected to the Earth than I can ever remember.”
How It'll work
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The course takes a hybrid approach to curriculum, including nature-based experiential activities in the outdoors, classroom discussions, online readings and commentary, and personalised projects.
Beginning and ending with nature immersion retreats outside Melbourne, the program will cover six core modules that seek to explore both the philosophy and practice of nature-based leadership.
While each module will turn our lens to a different facet of Nature Based Leadership, our experiential face-to-face time will have a consistent thread of core routines of nature connection and earth skills throughout the program
Each module will involve a set of recommended texts and readings, experiential processes and exploration of a broader context that embeds it into work for the world. The modules will be woven together into the retreats, and studied in more detail during the fortnightly workshops, webinars and through the online learning platform.
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This is an 11-month program starting in February 2027. Dates and full schedule are listed in the course guide. You can expect:
2 x week-long nature-immersion retreat (within 2 hours of Melbourne)
14 x in-person workshops (Fridays in Melbourne)
6 x online evening webinars (Wednesday eves. Recorded)
2 x personal mentoring sessions
Readings and resources for each module will be provided through an interactive online learning platform that you will be expected to engage with and reflect upon.
Check out the 2027 course guide
See a detailed breakdown of course content and full schedule for the 2027 session.
“I was seeking community that valued and worked together towards restorative, harmonious and reciprocal relationship with earth... one that honours future generations and the more-than-human world. The program helped me ground values and vision into practice and clarify the work I wish to do while I’m here on this planet. ”
THIS COURSE IS FOR YOU IF
You want to connect with the natural world more, but need the tools to help you achieve this.
You're ready to take an active role in making the world a better place in these times of great change.
You're looking for others who share your passion and can help inspire you in return.
The wilderness is whispering to you
“I learned that my wild indigenous self has been here within me all along. Waiting for acceptance, and an invitation to return.”
COURSE PRICING OPTIONS:
Tuition includes in-person workshops, online seminars, camping and catering on retreats, program supplies and mentoring. A limited number of partial scholarships are available on application.
Payment plans are available on request
CONCESSION + EARLY BIRD
Students, unwaged, bookings before 1st Dec 2026
$ 6,950
STANDARD
Standard placement
$ 7,950
PAY IT FORWARD
For corporate placements or those who can afford to pay it forward
$ 9,950
Ready to jump in?