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Last weekend I attended the Peace News Summer Camp which was held in beautiful setting of Westmill Farm, near Watchfield in rural Oxfordshire.

The setting of the camp was idyllic, everywhere it was surrounded by verdant countryside and woodland, overlooked by the inspiring sight of the gigantic turbines of the Westmill Wind Farm on the horizon.

Westmill farm is a working farm, producing organic vegetables and is also home to ‘root and branch‘, a project which provides Therapeutic gardening and rural crafts for people in Oxfordshire who experience mental health difficulties

The camp was very welcoming,the ethos of the camp was one of voluntary co-operation and non hierarchical structures with everybody participating in the servicing of camp facilities and the basic essentials, like child care, latrine duty, servicing the compost and straw bale toilets, I chose to participate with food preparation and washing up in Veggies cafe

I was surprised to learn that this was the first Summer Camp organised by Peace News (for non violent revolution) even though the journal has been produced since 1936.

I only became aware of the peace News Summer Camp quite late in the day, about a week before the camp took place when I received notice of the camp in an email from CAMPACC, the Campaign against Criminalising Communities.

There was a wide range of workshops, the workshops were varied and all seemed interesting, ranging from the practical workshops such as felt making, tree climbing, nonviolent direct action training or local anti arms trading campaigning to the informative workshops like African perspectives on the arms trade.

The workshops were open and well facilitated, everyone was encouraged to participate. I took part in the following workshops: Islamophobia and the War on Terror Workshop; Counter-recruitment; War News – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran

I also took part in the Samba workshop, though this was more by accident than intention, I had decided to go for a stroll down to the small river which meandered at the bottom of the campsite and and I as was sitting down on the grassy bank contemplating all of the nature around me, I became aware of a musical rhythm in the distance, this turned out to be the samba workshop at the other side of the field.

I walked down the field to hear more and was invited to join in. I chose to play the agogo bells, I must add that I am a complete novice percussionist, but I immediately got into the rhythm and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The food was really good, it was provided by Veggies catering who are based in Nottingham, so it was all a wonderful vegan food with organic fruit and vegetables from Westmill Farm.

There were plenty of opportunities over the weekend to socialise during which I met many like minded people, I had some interesting conversations and overall for me the peace News Summer camp was both inspirational and restorative, I hope that it happens again next year

View more photographs of the Peace News Summer Camp 2009 here

Read Peace News here

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 7:26 am and is filed under What is going on?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.