Episode 11 (originally uploaded 15th Feb 22):

This Week’s Story

Bushcraft Bairns

This week Laura Norval from Bushcraft Bairns was good enough to give me a short interview telling me about this relatively new addition to the Crieff/ Comrie area.

Bushcraft Bairns was set up around May of 2022 and will be celebrating their one year anniversary fairly soon.

Set in the woodland near Comrie Croft, they make use of the natural resources that have always been there. At the time of constructing the Bushcraft Bairns space Laura and her team recycled natural resources, and hand-built the outdoor setting to support learning.

Laura had worked all her life in Early-Years and always felt a passion for outdoor learning and forest crafts. Intrinsically through time, it lead her to facilitate play in the forest!

The folks at Bushcraft Bairns believe that being a ‘Bairn’ is all about playing and learning outside with tools to support and develop imagination and self-expression. As Laura puts it “What better place to do that, than a woodland!”

Their ethos celebrates the magic of childhood, as well as understanding the importance of play.

They offer nature-based activities that support children’s development and fosters social, and emotional skills while forming connections to the world around them.

When I asked about Laura’s favourite elements of her work she noted that:

“I think my favourite part of my day is observing our Bairns’ natural curiosity as they explore the landscape, helping to cultivate a lifelong love of learning. Throughout our sessions we have play offerings and honouring our child-led focus, every day is as unique and individual as our bairns who come to play. Knowing that is my favourite!”

I also asked Laura about the services they offer that have offered any surprises in terms of popularity.

She was quick to bring up their ‘Wild Women’s Workshops’. These are held on the first Saturday of each month and offer attendees a chance to celebrate mindfulness through the power of breathwork and forest bathing.

Laura explained:

“The concept in the area has proven to be successful with returning clients each month. I am pleasantly surprised to see so many women take time for themselves. It’s so important.”

I also asked if there were any services that Bushcraft Bairns offer which might occasionally be overlooked by potential patrons.

Laura explained that their ‘Stay and Play’ sessions can occasionally be a little undersubscribed. There’s a strong chance that this is down to family weekend commitments but from the way these sessions are described it really sounds like families are missing out by not getting along.

I also like to ask businesses about the most interesting request/ question you’ve ever had Laura had two. Bushcraft Barins offer Birthday parties too and their next Bushcraft Birthday theme is an ice age/caveman/prehistoric party! They also celebrated a Harry Potter party last year which was fun to dress the forest like a movie. (I personally love the idea of the forest at Comrie Croft looking like the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts.)

Social Media Tips and Tricks: A bit of ‘Spring Cleaning’ for your Social media

With Spring around the corner, and many businesses/ organisations thinking about what they want to have done with their first quarter of 2023, I thought it might be good to think about tidying up our social profiles and websites.

Personally, I’ve been working on tidying up my company logo in preparation for a reprinting of my books but this has made me think ahead in terms of getting my social profiles in better order. If you’re interested in the image editing apps that I described in the podcast you can find links to them below.

Image editing/ Adding text

The following apps will help you to add text and other features to your social media images (or even videos) to update the look of your posts and personalise them to better tie them to your own branding.

The First is Be Funky. This is a cloud-based app with a brilliant selection of fonts and other features. It offers you a host of different ways to add text to an image, as well as the functionality to layer images on top of it (e.g. your logo): https://www.befunky.com/create/text-editor/

Next was Fotor. This is another web-based image editing app. This one is particularly good for resizing, cropping, and otherwise altering the layout of an image. It also comes with a huge range of colour-filtering, and image-changing features. I typically would use Fotor to edit an image, then add text and other features using Be Funky. https://www.fotor.com/photo-editor-app/editor/basic

I also use a pair of image editing apps on my phone and tablet that can create clear/transparent backgrounds for an image. This is particularly useful for making a cutout version of a logo which you can then layer over another image or even use as a watermark. These apps are Background Eraser and Photolayers by handyCloset Inc.

Please note that I use the last two apps on Android devices so I have no idea if there’s an Apple equivalent.

Getting your Story straight

I also touched on something that I’m a little lax in myself: making sure that your descriptions of yourself/ your business/ your organisation are up to date and look their best.

There’s an old adage that the shoemaker has the worst shoes and I know that I tend to favour time on a client’s social media/ website over my own but I don’t think this makes my advice any less true.

You only get a few lines to tell people about yourself so make sure that what you’re saying is still up to date and that you’re still happy with the way you come across.

Over the next week or so I’ll try and practice what I preach but it’s definitely a good time of the year to tell people about what’s new with you/ your business.

Thanks for Listening/ Reading

Hope you enjoyed this week’s podcast (and that you found this transcript useful too), and a final thank you again to Laura at Bushcraft Bairns for taking the time to tell us about her business.

For those reading this, if you’re local to the Perthshire area and you’d like an ALWAYS FREE mention of your business/ organisation/ event on the podcast please get in touch. There’s a contact form where you can reach me through this website, or you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and message me there.

All the best, John