Jason Ingamells is the founder and company director of Woodland Ways Bushcraft & Survival, one of the UK’s leading bushcraft schools. Jason leads a team of instructors who are renowned for teaching wilderness bushcraft skills in a variety of terrains across the globe, including expeditions and courses in several African countries, North America and across Europe. Jason, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS), is an experienced and respected wilderness instructor, who we are very glad to have speaking at the Global Bushcraft Symposium.
He also leads the charity Woodland Ways Bushcraft Foundation, supporting a number of community projects within the Maasai community in Kenya, using Bushcraft as a means to re-introduce lost knowledge, to provide an income, and secure education.
As well as leading others, Jason also frequently heads off on his own personal wilderness trips to gain further knowledge from others, to test his own skills, and to bring insight and knowledge back into his teaching closer to home. In the next 12 months, on top of his usual instructing schedule (and penning a new book), he will be heading off to paddle some of the most remote rivers in Mongolia and attempting a crossing of the Nerfud Desert in Saudi Arabia, which will require him drawing on his considerable experience of wilderness travel.
Having been a regular speaker at bushcraft shows and events in the UK over the years, we know Jason will bring to the stage an inspirational and insightful approach to what it means to him to immerse himself, in relative comfort, in the wilderness.
Jason tells us he has found some new inspiration in his studies too, “after growing tired and disillusioned with where the practice and study of Bushcraft was heading in the UK”. He has embarked on a new academic direction to study a master’s degree in Outdoor Experiential Learning (Bushcraft) at the University of Cumbria under the guidance of Dr Lisa Fenton. Jason was excited that for the first time in the UK, Bushcraft was being studied, debated and explored at this academic level.
So, Jason will share with you his very personal journey of embracing both the practical lifelong learning aspects of his career, building a business out of the wilds, embracing failure in order to succeed, and the now adding academic studies to his lifelong learning, alongside where he feels it will shape the UK study of Bushcraft over the coming years.