Venue Profile :- Dearne Valley

Dearne Valley, is formerly the Earth Centre (one of the millennium commission projects).  It was transformed into a state-of-the-art activity centre in 2012 by Kingswood Inspiring Learning. It has one of Europe’s largest solar panels and an on-site water treatment plant.  With fantastic indoor and outdoor activity facilities surrounded by the beautiful countryside of South Yorkshire, a purpose built watersports lake and access to the adjacent River Don for watersports, Dearne Valley is the perfect location to form a team and be inspired to create change.

About Kingswood Inspiring Learning:

Kingswood Inspiring Learning has worked with over 3,500 schools and colleges across the country delivering programmes in residential outdoor activity and education centres.  Each year we welcome 15,000 young people to take on new challenges and build skills for work and life for the residential phase of the NCS programme as well as supporting apprentices already in the workplace.  All programmes are tailored to individual schools’ and colleges’ needs and range from end of year celebrations to specialist personal development programmes and curriculum linked Environmental Field Studies courses.  Our staff are highly trained to deliver educationally rich activities in to suit every age and to meet different learning outcomes. Our high quality programmes were voted Best Educational Product at BETAs Youth Travel Awards and Best Residential Experience at School Travel Awards.

Kingswood deliver in partnership with Future Foundations a GSL Lifeskills & Adventure Residential (3 day, 2 night all-inclusive weekend).  This is currently only available for Bradford (UK) schools who are eligible for funding as part of the ‘essential life skills fund’.  

About the residential

The residential is a blend of outdoor activities run by Kingswood Inspiring Learning alongside classroom based coaching sessions run by Future Foundations.  Activities ranging from abseiling (high challenge) to raft building (problem solving) give practical experience of challenging situations, evaluating risk, leadership, communication and teamwork.  Coaching sessions will focus on preparing the students for their project work and applying the outdoor learning to the development implementation of their community projects.  Designed to be undertaken shortly after an onsite GSL LaunchPad, the residential will help project team(s) to bond, develop essential life skills and learn from students at other Bradford schools.