Woodcraft (youth movement)
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Woodcraft is a recreational/educational program devised by Ernest Thompson Seton in 1902, for young people based on camping, outdoor skills and woodcrafts. Thompson Seton's Woodcraft ideas were incorporated into the early Scout movement, but also in many other organisations in many countries.
In the UK, Quaker Ernest Westlake founded the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry in 1916. The OWC is the main, family-oriented group that holds activities and camps throughout the year in several Lodges.John Hargrave broke away from the OWC to found the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift. Another of the active, surviving UK organisations is the Woodcraft Folk, a socialist group originally affiliated with the Co-Operative movement that broke away from Kibbo Kift in the 1920s. They hold weekly meetings similar to Scouts. Another breakaway from the OWC, Forest Schools, revived after WWII to form Forest School Camps taking urban children into country areas in the UK.
Many groups were founded elsewhere in Europe in the inter-war years. Typical was the Czech Woodcraft League, founded in the 1920s by Milos Seifert; it grew in its early years but was suppressed for half a century, first by the Nazis and then by the Communists. It survived by guile and misdirection, emerging with the fall of Communism, a small but dedicated organisation with members of all ages.
BlueSky!!!World Woodcraft was formed at an international gathering in 1996 and meets every three years, these camps alternating between the UK and Czech Republic, the two major founding members.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Woodcraft Folk at the Open Directory Project
- Woodcraft League Histories
- History of the Woodcraft Folk in the UK.
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