Events
The Natural Learning Inititiative hosts multiple events every year. In 2011 the 4th annual Growing in Place Symposium was held in Raleigh, NC and the 9th annual Design Institute will be held in Chapel Hill at the NC Botantical Garden.
Growing In Place Symposium 2012
Design for Children, Families, and Nature in the City
Location: Marbles Kids Museum
201 East Hargett Street, Raleigh, NC 27601
2012 Theme: Parks, Pathways, and Meaningful Destinations
More and more people are living in cities. To encourage families to invest in urban domestic life, an infrastructure of attractive, traffic-protected routes is required to connect urban neighborhoods to meaningful destinations. Join us at this year's symposium focused on urban neighborhood design for children and families and the foundation it provides for health, well-being, and resource conservation in the 21st century.
9th Annual Natural Learning Design Institute
Design for Early Childhood: Health, Play and Learning
NC Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill, NC
The 9th Annual Design Institute featured presentations by experts in safety, policy, and early childhood education combined with outdoor hands-on activities. The program offered innovative ideas and concepts for participants to implement back home.
Click here for more details from the 9th Annual Natural Learning Design Institute
Growing in Place Symposium 2011
The aim of the Growing In Place Symposium is to stimulate discussion about how planners and designers can enhance the health and wellbeing of urban families in North Carolina, across the nation and world. As urban growth increases, new urban design policies are required to support the needs of citizens across the life span. The Growing In Place Symposium will explore these themes.
Research to Practice: Maximizing Child Outcomes in the Outdoors Symposium for Early HS and HS Programs
Growing In Place 2010
The restricted life of children is having an increasingly negative impact on their healthy development. Many children are not allowed to venture out alone or even with their friends as previous generations did. How can we plan and design a public realm where children find the physical and social stimulation necessary for healthy human development in consonance with the culture and ecology of the places where they live?
7th Annual NLI Design Institute
This year the goal of the Design for Children IN Nature Institute was to raise awareness about the role of the outdoors for healthy development and to offer innovative ideas and concepts for participants to implement back home. The two day and a half event included presentations, discussions, and interactive hands-on outdoor activities.
North Carolina Outdoor Classroom Symposium, Workshop, and Field Day
The “No Child Left Inside” legislation currently before Congress once again raises the issues of the role of US school grounds and school siting to the forefront. Are school grounds solely places for children to let off steam during recess (if it still exists) or could they serve a broader function as interdisciplinary educational resources to extend the classroom outdoors? If the latter, how should school grounds be designed to serve this expanded purpose? How can the environmental value of school grounds be reinstated?
Playwork IN Nature Training 2009
In countries such as Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom, playwork is well established as a profession… working directly with children in an open-ended, creative way in community settings such as parks, schools, museums, urban farms, etc. Playwork is not established in the United States as a profession. The Natural Learning Initiative is working towards this end.
