Famous for Five Miles
A place-based learning journey for young men, exploring belonging, purpose, identity, community, creativity and relationship with the living world.
Spaceship Earth is 8000 miles wide, where do you belong?
What would it mean to become truly known by the place around you?
To know the trees, paths, people, weather, water, creatures and stories within miles of where you live - and to let them know you back.
Famous for Five Miles is a new Becoming Crew learning experience beginning in the Bath, Bristol and Avon bioregion. It invites young men into honest conversation, time on the land, creative practice and deeper relationship with community.
What is Famous for Five Miles?
Famous for Five Miles is a learning journey about reconnecting with the places around us.
Rather than chasing recognition everywhere, we are asking what it means to become rooted somewhere.
To build relationship with the land beneath our feet, the people around us, the more-than-human world, and tend to the questions we are carrying about who we are and what we are here to do.
The journey blends honest conversation, nature connection, creative inquiry, peer support, rites of passage, and experiences with people who have deep knowledge of their craft.
It is about remembering that a hopeful future is not only imagined globally. It is practiced locally, everyday - in the places we walk, tend, listen and belong to..
‘Become Famous for Five Miles’
Gary Snyder
Who is it for?
To begin, Famous for Five Miles is focused on young men aged 18–25 in and around Bath, Bristol and the Avon bioregion.
We are starting here because we are hearing a need for spaces where young men can speak honestly, build trust, explore identity and purpose, spend time in nature, and be supported by peers, elders and community.
At the same time, this work is not limited in spirit to one gender. The deeper invitation is for people of all identities: to reconnect with place, community, creativity and response-ability. As the project grows, we intend to develop future journeys that are open to wider groups.
You do not need to have any answers.
You do not need to have everything figured out.
You just need curiosity about where you are, who you are becoming, and what might be yours to do.
How it will work
Chapter One: Journey to the Circle
We are currently in a period of outreach, conversation and gathering.
This phase is about meeting young people, organisations, mentors, funders and community spaces across the bioregion. We are listening for what is needed, what support is missing, and who might want to be part of shaping the journey.
This may include informal gatherings, creative conversations, circles, walks, fireside sessions and meetings with organisations already supporting young men.
Chapter Two: Co-Design Crew
From this first phase, a smaller group will be invited into a longer learning journey to co-create with us.
This crew will spend time together on the land at Ghostwood Down and across the bioregion, exploring connection to place, community, creative practice and landscape regeneration.
The journey may include regular gatherings, nature-based practices, creative inquiry, rites of passage, time with elders and skilled practitioners, and experiments that help participants bring what they are learning back into their lives and communities.
What we will explore together
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What gives us a sense of direction, meaning or aliveness?
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How do we build relationship with the land, water, trees, paths, people and communities around us?
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What does it mean to become ourselves in a time of pressure, confusion, uncertainty and change?
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How do we practice trust, honesty, belonging and responsibility with others?
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How can art, story, music, movement and making help us express what is hard to say?
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How do we meet uncertainty without giving up on hope?
How to get involved
I’m an organisation, mentor or community space working with young men
Do you work with young men, young people and creativity, mental health, youth work, land work and community building in the Bath, Bristol and Avon Bioregion?
We would love to speak with you, learn from your experience, and explore possible collaboration.
I’m a young man
Are you aged 18–25 and based around Bath, Bristol or the Avon bioregion?
We are gathering interest from young men who might want to join a conversation, attend a gathering, or be part of the longer journey.
I’m a funder or supporter
We are looking for partners who want to support place-based youth work, intergenerational learning spaces, nature connection, landscape and place regeneration and growing hopeful futures.
Your support can help us host gatherings, offer bursaries, pay guides, support transport, and build a wider village around the work.
Rather than chasing recognition everywhere we are asking what it means to be rooted somewhere…
Our Crew
Mark Sears - Wilderness and Rites of Passage Lead
Mark weaves together practices and techniques that explore how we might regrow a healthy culture through deep nature connection. He works with myth & oral storytelling, Way of Council and time spent alone in wild places as practices to deepen our connection so we might use our unique gifts in service to all life.
As a guide Mark has apprenticed as a nature based mentor with WildWise/Schumacher College. He has trained in the Way of Council with Pip Bondy of Ancient Healing Ways and apprenticed to myth and story with the West Country School of Myth. He is mentored by Annie Bloom who for many years was lead guide with Animas Valley Institute.
Kamara Venner - Project Assistant, Media Archivist, Learning Weaver
Kamara works within visual storytelling, tending to image and video archives that hold memory, connection and conversation. Drawing from work in wildlife documentary and archival storytelling, she supports the weaving together of project learnings, shared reflections, and community gatherings. Interested in how stories and relationships can help us trace transformation as it unfolds and creative ways these learnings can be carried forward.
Mark De’Lisser - Youth Lead
Mark is a poet, youth mentor, yoga teacher and guide exploring the intersections of nature, creativity, connection and change. Through words, movement and deep listening, he creates spaces where people can find their way back to themselves, their innate creativity, each other and the more-than-human world. As part of his practice, he works - closely with young people, in groups and 1:1, supporting their sense of belonging and wellbeing, by empowering them to feel heard, seen and valued.
Fin Burgess - Youth Steward & Communications
Youth guide, communications, creative producer, and storytelling. With roots in theatre, film, social media and regenerative storytelling. Interested in how young people make sense of the times they are living through, and how creative practice can build confidence, belonging and connection to the people, trees, stories and living systems around them.
Seemah-Nahome Burgess - Operations Lead
Mum to 3 gorgeous souls, beekeeper, Operations lead and Co-Director of Spaceship.Earth, working across operations and finance with experience in helping to scale up charities and social impact projects for renowned social and environmental activists including Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, Jo Cox Foundation, Black2Nature, Code Club, and Project Everyone
Helping turn meaningful ideas into grounded action - creating the structures, relationships and support needed for purpose-led work to grow.
Dan Burgess - Program and Regenerative Practice Lead
Dan is a regenerative practitioner, creative strategist, learning guide, writer and DJ working at the intersections of ecology, culture, and transformation. With roots in the worlds of storytelling, activism, and systems innovation, he helps people reimagine their roles in a world undergoing profound change. As a guide training with Chris Salisbury/Wildwise, Betsy Perluss/School of Lost Borders. Guest faculty Co-Creating the Emerging Future, Schumacher College, Kincentric Leadership 23/24. Co-Director - We Are Avon.
Founder and host of the Spaceship Earth podcast, consultancy and action learning platform exploring how we might live with greater imagination and response-ability as crew members of a planet in crisis.
Substack
If you want to keep up to date with the Famous for Five Miles journey, join our Substack.