Always on
This project successfully funded on 8th December 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
raised so far
Crowdfunder is secure
Your payment details are protected
This project successfully funded on 8th December 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
£50,000 still needed to help save this wonderful place for today's children!
Help Us Save Ringsfield Hall:
A John Dewey inspired ‘Living School’ for All Generations.
Across the UK, children, young people, and adults are struggling with rising stress, isolation, and mental health challenges. At the same time, communities are losing places where people can gather, learn, restore, and experience meaningful connection.
We have a hopeful, practical, and transformative model to offer — and we have the perfect place to bring it to life.
We are working to save Ringsfield Hall, a unique 14-acre site of woodland, meadows, dell, and a beautiful Victorian house with workshops and outbuildings. With your support, it can become the home of the Dewey inspired Kinda ‘Living School’: a multigenerational learning community rooted in wellbeing, nature, creativity, and shared purpose.
Why this matters now:
Mental health challenges in the UK continue to rise across all ages.
Recent figures show:
-1 in 5 young people aged 8–25 now has a probable mental health difficulty.
-Over 507,000 young people were referred to mental health services in 2023 — the highest ever recorded.
-Urgent referrals for under-18s rose by 10% in 2024.
-Around 18% of all adults reported moderate to severe depressive symptoms in 2025.
These numbers highlight a clear need: children, families, and adults need places of belonging, purpose, nature connection, and community support.
Ringsfield Hall can become exactly this — a living, breathing environment where community, wellbeing and learning are woven together.
Why Ringsfield Hall is the perfect home:
Ringsfield Hall has been supporting children since 1971, decades of outdoor learning, community gathering, and nature-based education. Its landscape invites exploration, imagination, care, and collaboration.
It offers:
-14 acres of land.
-Both ancient and young woodland - for forest school and woodland management.
-A peaceful dell for art, wellbeing , storytelling, group gatherings, play, and reflection
-Wildflower meadows for ecology, grazing and outdoor play!
-A stable and paddocks for animals to be cared for.
-A Victorian house ideal for communal meals, workshops, creativity, a library and multigenerational learning
-Outbuildings and workshops for running community events, training, craft, making, building, art, repair, woodwork, and community projects
This is not just land.
It is a ready-made ecosystem for learning through living.
To keep this asset within the community, we need to raise the funds now.
With your support we can save the site from the risk of being lost to private sale or development.
Saving Ringsfield Hall protects the land, the buildings— and creates a new possibility for how we live and learn together.
What Is a Dewey Inspired Kinda ‘Living School’?
Dewey's philosophy of education centers on "learning by doing" and experiential learning, advocating for a hands-on, inquiry-based approach where students actively solve problems rather than passively receiving information.
Inspired by this philosophy, our ‘Living School' model sees education not just as preparation for life, but as life itself.
Learning happens through:
-meaningful hands-on activity
-democratic participation
-nature connection
-community responsibility
-inquiry, curiosity, and problem-solving
-integrated subjects, grounded in real experience
At Kinda Education, we take this further by creating a multigenerational community, where every person — child to elder — has something to learn and something to offer.
This approach nurtures wellbeing, resilience, creativity, and confidence through lived experience.
What learning at Ringsfield Hall will look like:
1. Learning through doing
Children and adults learn side by side through cooking, gardening, building, crafting, exploring the woods, caring for animals, and creating community projects.
2. Nature as teacher
The woodland, meadow, and dell become classrooms rich in ecology, play, inquiry, science, craft, and calm.
3. A Multigenerational community
Elders share stories, wisdom, and skills. Children bring curiosity and imagination. Adults model collaboration and problem-solving. Everyone belongs.
4. Democratic participation
Children and adults take part in village-style meetings, decision-making, and shared responsibility — building agency, confidence, and communication.
5. Wellbeing at the centre
Ringsfield Hall offers rhythm, connection, belonging, meaningful activity, and nature — all protective factors for mental health.
This is a space where people feel grounded, valued, and supported.
The Outcomes we anticipate
From children to elders, participants will gain:
-Practical skills — growing, cooking, crafting, building, repairing
-Emotional wellbeing — through connection, rhythm, purpose, nature
-Critical and creative thinking — through inquiry and hands-on exploration
-Confidence and agency — through real responsibility and democratic learning
-Empathy and social awareness — through multigenerational relationships
-A sense of belonging — in a community that welcomes every age
This is education that grows whole people.
Why We Need Your Support: To Save Ringsfield Hall and Bring This Vision to Life
Ringsfield Hall is the ideal home for the Dewey inspired Kinda ‘Living School’ — but it is at risk of being lost and sold to developers.
To secure it for the community, the land, and future generations, we need your help to raise the remaining amount needed..
Your support will:
-Save Ringsfield Hall from being sold and privately developed
-Protect its 14 acres of woodland, meadow, and wildlife
-Restore and adapt the Victorian house and outbuildings into a multigenerational learning hub
-Create workshops, studios, kitchens, art and wellbeing spaces
-Support elders, craftspeople, and educators to share their skills
-Build a living model of community-led education and wellbeing
When you support this campaign, you are not just funding a learning space —
you are helping secure a landscape, a historic community building, a community, and a new model of education and wellbeing.
Join Us!
If you believe learning can be alive, creative, connected, nature-rooted, hands-on, and shared across generations, we invite you to be part of this movement.
Together we can:
-save this extraordinary place
-create a multi-generational space, a ‘living school’ unlike any other in the UK
-support the wellbeing of children, families, and adults
-build a model of community learning that can help shape the future
Help us save Ringsfield Hall.
Help us create a Dewey inspired Kinda ‘Living School’ for all generations.
Help us grow a future rooted in connection, belonging, and hope.
Please note: Should we not be successful in reaching our target on crowdfund, the money raised will be ringfenced for securing other premises for the project.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made