FEBRUARY 20-22 at TREALY FARM, MONMOUTH
Feeling disillusioned with sham politics and social uncertainty in a fractured and polarised world? You’re not alone — and now is the time to do something different.
At this Winter Gathering, we will explore reclaiming our sovereignty, how to be proactive in our communities and resourceful in creating new ways of living and co-existing — grounded in shared values and practical action. How we can fully listen to each other.
Together, we are Trailblazing: from spark to constellation, shaping a movement that starts with us finding the common ground and lights the way for others.
It's time to map out how we want to live our lives.
What is the Winter Gathering?
The Campfire Winter Gathering is our annual moment to come together — to pause, reflect, and reignite our shared purpose. To bring our skills and our gifts to offer to the community. Over one weekend, we will open space for embodied movement, discussion, connection, music, storytelling, and creativity, while also laying the foundations for systemic change.
Our intention is to co-create and evolve our Trailblazers Manifesto — a living document of shared values and practical next steps. Through workshops, pilot projects, and fireside conversations, we’ll explore how to activate local Beacons, experiment with cooperative initiatives, and imagine new ways of organising ourselves beyond outdated systems.
This is more than a retreat — it’s a trailblazing step towards a future rooted in belonging, resilience, and shared imagination. Each gathering is a laboratory for imagination and action. Participants are not spectators — we are all pioneering and shaping what’s next.
What are Beacons?
Beacons are our local organising groups, each rooted in the Trailblazer / Campfire ethos and values, yet free to shape their own local agendas, activities, and intentions.
Symbolic Beacons might be lit at solstices, equinoxes, and other natural milestones, synchronising our communities with universal rhythms. Each lighting is an act of intention — a spark for connection, liberation, and harmony.
Instead of serving royal pageantry or national spectacle, Beacons are reclaimed as symbols of the common good: guiding lights that illuminate a path through division, bring people together face-to-face, and radiate a shared vibration of love and possibility.
Whether gathered around a fire or a single candle, Beacons shine as signals of hope, transcending borders, beliefs, and prejudices. Together, they form a constellation — a network of communities trailblazing a brighter, more interconnected future.
SAMPLE TIMETABLE (subject to change)
Friday — Arrival & Opening Spark
- Late Afternoon / Arrival (from 4pm)
- Check-in, settle in, informal socialising, tea/coffee.
- Evening / Opening Circle & Fire Ritual (5:30–6:30pm)
- Welcome from team.
- Lighting the fire: intention-setting for the weekend.
- Short introductions, sharing hopes for the gathering.
- Closing with a campfire song or chant to set tone.
- Night (8:30–10pm)
- Informal story-sharing or gathering around the fire (weather permitting).
Saturday — Ignite, Experiment, Create
- Early morning Yoga / Gigong / nature walk (dependent on who attends who can offer)
- Morning / Beacon Workshops (10–12pm)
- Split into themes: Belonging & Culture, Commons & Cooperation, Democracy & Voice, Nature & Resilience.
- Guided prompts: “What works, what’s broken, what can we try?”
- Start identifying ideas for pilots and projects.
- Lunch & Informal Networking (12–1.30pm)
- Afternoon / Pilot Prototypes (1.30–4pm)
- Citizens’ Assembly prototype: small group deliberates on a pressing question (e.g., “How can Beacons shape a sense of focus and belonging locally?”).
- Commons/Cooperative trial: participants experiment with pooled resources or skill-sharing ideas.
- Storytelling & art projects capture learnings and experiences.
- Evening / Fireside Harvest & Cultural Sharing (5–7pm)
- Share outputs from pilot projects: ideas, insights, stories, songs.
- Music and communal reflection.
- Optional ambient DJ set, singing or acoustic jam to close evening.
- Night / Informal Social (8.30–10pm)
- Small groups reflect on what resonates most and what could become part of the manifesto.
- Evening social / music / singing / DJ
Sunday — Manifesto & Path Forward
- Early morning Yoga / Gigong / nature walk
- Morning / Manifesto Synthesis (9.30–12pm)
- Small editorial team synthesises weekend outputs into draft Campfire Manifesto.
- Participants add artistic, musical, or poetic expressions.
- Late Morning / Beacon Strategy & Pilots (12–1pm)
- Discuss next steps for Beacons: listening circles, commons, citizen assemblies.
- Plan potential “Beacon Candidates” for local elections or community advocacy.
- Lunch & Informal Networking (1–2.30pm)
- Afternoon / Closing Circle & Fire Ritual (2.30–4:00pm)
- Read aloud the draft manifesto, commit to shared values and actions.
- Closing ritual: extinguish the fire together, symbolic of carrying the light out.
TREALY FARM
Trealy Farm is a 138 acre organic mixed farm on a hillside looking out towards the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons. It’s a beautiful, wild and secluded space. Amongst the fields of sheep and the small herd of horses, are woodlands and wilderness and magical places: Trealy wood, Women’s Oak, the coppice, meadow, secret garden, and ancient yew, hillside walks and a stone circle.
Immerse in the beauty of Trealy Farm. You can write alone or with others in the dedicated group meeting space of the Pavilion. Be inspired by stunning views of the Black Mountains. Wake up with a dip in the natural swimming pool, let the ideas ferment while you sit with horses, wander through the woods, and unwind in the saunas. The Pavilion is a super, modern space with views over the mountains and valley below.
The fresh water pool and infra red sauna are available for the use of attendees.
Accommodation
There is a choice of log houses, pods, barn room, farmhouse bedrooms, Sheppy the shepherds hut, caravans or camper van space. First come, first served, best bed options go first! See options
POTENTIAL DISCUSSION TOPICS
The Trailblazers Manifesto 2026
A vision for finding our agency, born in the glow of the fire
1. From Division to Belonging
We reject the false binaries that pit neighbour against neighbour, left against right, nationalism against globalism.
We are more than voters, consumers, or tribes.
We are human beings, rooted in community, bound by care, connected by story.
Face to face conversations, even difficult ones, are necessary and favourable to ongoing polarisation.
2. From Parties to People
We no longer outsource our power to distant elites.
Politics as we’ve known it is broken — captured by money, ego, and endless division.
We choose a new path: self-organising, self-governing, rooted in everyday life.
Our authority comes from circles, not hierarchies; from dialogue, not dogma.
3. From Growth to Flourishing
We will not measure success by profit alone.
Our economy must serve life: homes people can afford, food grown with care, energy drawn from the sun and wind.
Work should bring dignity, not depletion.
We embrace cooperation, not extraction.
4. From Control to Stewardship
The earth is not a resource to be exploited, but a living commons to be cherished.
When droughts, floods and wars might displace families, we recognise shared humanity, not enemies at the gate.
True sovereignty means resilience — tending the land, honouring culture, protecting future generations.
5. From Silence to Dialogue
We reclaim the ancient practice of listening.
In citizens’ circles and people’s juries, every voice matters, every story counts.
Through dialogue we grow nuance, dissolve fear, and build the courage to act together.
6. From Cynicism to Imagination
The old order tells us change is impossible.
We know better. Around the fire, we have always dreamed new worlds into being.
This is our politics: hopeful, playful, human, alive.
It begins not in Westminster, but in every village hall, street corner, and campfire.
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Five Practical First Steps for Campfire (with Beacons at the heart)
1. Beacon Network
- Encourage and support local Campfire Beacons across the UK (and globally) as places of connection, belonging, dialogue, and imagination.
- Each Beacon is autonomous yet connected — like lights on a landscape, each illuminating its community while signalling to others.
- Train facilitators during gatherings so every participant can go home and kindle their own Beacon.
2. Commons & Cooperative Pilot
- Start a Campfire Commons Fund (crowdfunded, pooled, transparent).
- Trial resource-sharing projects through Beacons: food-growing, energy co-ops, arts residencies, skill exchanges.
- Beacons become incubators for trailblazing“post-political” economics: cooperative, regenerative, human-centred.
3. Citizens’ Assembly Prototypes
- Run Campfire Assemblies within Beacons and gatherings to deliberate on divisive questions (e.g. immigration, housing, democracy).
- Show that ordinary people, given space, can produce more nuance and wisdom than adversarial politics.
- Document the process to inspire replication.
4. Storytelling & Cultural Shift
- Capture and share stories, songs, films, and art born from the Beacons.
- Position Campfire first as a cultural movement — reshaping imagination and narrative — before it becomes a political force.
5. Post-Political Platform Development
- From Beacon dialogues and pilots, draft a living manifesto — poetic, evolving, co-created.
- Translate shared values into guiding principles on housing, land, energy, democracy, belonging.
- Beacons feed into this collectively, so it’s rooted in lived experience, not imposed from above.
On Standing in Elections
- The Risk: Entering the electoral arena too early can drag Campfire back into the very system it critiques — adversarial, binary, corrupted by money. It could alienate those drawn to a post-party vision.
- The Opportunity: Running a candidate (as with Emma Lucy Wall) can be a powerful way to test the appetite for this “new path” and to give visibility. If framed not as “party politics” but as a citizens’ candidacy — a person standing for community values, not ideology — it could act as a bridge.
Beacons
- Beacons remain community-first, but may support independent candidates who embody the manifesto.
- These could stand as Campfire Independents (or “Beacon Candidates”) — carrying the light of their community into the electoral system.
- Begin locally (councils, mayors), experiment, and learn. No rush to form a “party.”
✨ Why Beacons work:
- Fires inspire connection, visibility, warmth.
- A Beacon is local but not isolated — part of a constellation.
- It makes the movement tangible, spreadable, and recognisable without falling into the old party model.
This way, Campfire stays primarily a cultural and community movement, but allows those moved to carry its spirit into the ballot box — without being swallowed by party machinery.
For discussion:
👉 For now, focus on pilots and cultural power (listening circles, commons, assemblies, storytelling).
👉 Meanwhile, keep the electoral option open — supporting individuals like Emma Lucy Wall to stand as independents who embody the manifesto, while resisting pressure to become a “party” in the traditional sense.
👉 Research and developing new concepts, frameworks. Never give up dreaming, imagining a different future, a different way of doing politics, born of hope, connection and fining the common ground.
