Nature-Based Leadership Training
Learn how you and your individual gifts can be of service to the community and the Earth at this time of great change.
“I’m dedicating the rest of my mortal existence to serving the ecology and creating a better nature based future which I look forward to living in. ”
Are you someone who longs to connect deeply with nature and community, and learn real skills of resilience and belonging to place?
Do you want to understand more about your unique gifts and how you can be of service to others and the world at this time of great change?
This immersive, nature-based leadership program is the first of its kind in Australia. Building from many years’ experience delivering community learning that is grounded in the natural world, CERES and Nature’s Apprentice have come together for the third time to offer another 10-month program that will create the kind of earth-based leadership and resilience we and our communities will need in the coming decades.
If you’ve felt called to connect more deeply with your passions, to nature, and be supported by a like-minded community then this course is for you. It offers transformational learning through engaging the whole person: the head, the heart and the hands.
We’re partnering with CERES to offer an immersive program that will create the kind of earth-based leadership and resilience we will need in the coming decades.
“NBLT has given me a foundation to have confidence in what I always knew was my calling. The connections through this learning have changed my life.”
“From my new home I see possibility in the ruins of my-self and our society. Not in trying to fix the ruins or piece them back together with gold, I feel a kind of hope that is entirely new to me. The best words i can find is long-hope/longing-hope. This long-hope is bound to my aching for the world to become so unbearably painful that we are left with no choice but to run into each others arms to weep and sing and dance and dream our new way of being, together. It has begun at home! And it is absolutely fucking glorious.
Thank you!”
What will you find in the NATURE-BASED LEADERSHIP TRAINING?
REWILDING
Tap back into your own wild wisdom that so many of us have forgotten.
EARTH-LIVING SKILLS
Learn essential survival skills: Shelter, fire making, weaving and more.
DEEP NATURE CONNECTION
Find belonging in nature through your senses: reading landscapes, tracking, bird languages and more.
CULTIVATE COMMUNITY
Learn to create a culture of connection through art, storytelling, peacemaking and more.
FACILITATION SKILLS
Develop mentoring and group facilitation skills and experience.
FIND YOUR PURPOSE
Explore your ‘ecological niche’ and unique purpose.
STORYTELLING
Humans make meaning through story. Explore the narratives that shape our world.
IMMERSIVE RETREATS
Begin the program with a nature immersion retreat outside Melbourne.
“I have come to remember and practice my innate belonging in the world. I pay attention to and am curious about the nature around me, and truly see and feel myself as a part of, not seperate to it - not just on a theoretical or heady level but as an embodied experience. in my mind I’ve appreciated that ‘we’re all connected’ and ‘more-than-humans are just as important as humans’ and all of the ideas and things that you think as a so-called progressive, eco-conscious human - but at the end of the day, these values and experiences hadn’t actually sunk into my body and permeated my actions. They were all cerebral concepts. My experience of the course has changed that, and in changing that, has essentially shifted how I experience life as a human. ”
“Claire and Sieta’s guidance strengthened my leadership skills, while their own facilitation styles shifted my views on what leadership can be, through an ecological, community-based, and non-hierarchical lens. ”
You’ll be mentored by:
Claire Skye
Claire Skye (Dunn) is a writer, speaker, mother, barefoot explorer, rewilding facilitator and founder of Nature’s Apprentice. Claire is passionate about human rewilding and believes that a reclaiming of our ecological selves and belonging is key to regenerating wildness on the planet.
For the last 15 years, Claire has been facilitating individuals to dive deeply into the mysteries of nature and psyche through the pathways of deep nature connection, ancestral earth skills, deep ecology, ecopsychology, soulcentric nature-based practice, village building, dance, ceremony and contemporary wilderness rites-of-passage.
Claire is the author of memoirs My Year Without Matches, which tells the story of her year living wild, and Rewilding the Urban Soul which explores how we might embody wild consciousness within a modern city context. Claire lives beside the Birrarung on the outskirts of Melbourne where she lovingly tends her family, her garden and her own wild heart.
Sieta Beckwith
Sieta Beckwith is the Narrative Director at CERES in Melbourne. Her role is to connect all the many stories of CERES across regenerative farming programs, environmental education, social enterprises and community participation, into an impactful, unified narrative. Together, these stories aim to change the systems that no longer serve our world, and help people fall in love with the earth again.
Sieta has worked for 15 years in strategic communications roles, assisting purpose-led organisations to discover, share and live their deeper values. Through her work, Sieta aims to respond to the question, “What are we longing for?” and contribute to building a new story of humanity that is regenerative and hopeful. She finds joy in bringing together small groups of humans from all ages and backgrounds to explore heart-centred practice, and to learn how to live well together through times of great change. Sieta was born on Noongar country but has made her home on Wurundjeri land and loves to rock climb, dance, weave baskets and have conversations with trees.
Daniel Skye
Daniel Skye is a carpenter and father of three living in Warrandyte. Dan’s introduction to earth based ceremony was at age 16, and since then ceremony, sweat lodge and Vision Quest has been a powerfully consistent thread and guiding principle in his life, both as participant and more recently as a trained Vision Quest guide. Since he was a child, Dan has nurtured a deep love and curiosity for the wild world. Conversations with the “wild other” are part of his everyday vernacular, and tracking a way of life.
Dan is currently apprenticing to the arts of storytelling, song, deep authentic relating, wandering, and the mythic in wild landscapes. You will often find him tending his garden, catching stories from friends, baking bread, running the trails of his mountain home, and spending sweet time with his children, and partner Claire.
“Going through the course has completely shifted my perspective on and experience of the world. I feel more present and more connected to the Earth than I can ever remember.”
How It'll work
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The course takes a hybrid approach to curriculum, including nature-based experiential activities in the outdoors, classroom discussions, online readings and commentary, and personalised projects.
Beginning and ending with nature immersion retreats outside Melbourne, the program will cover six core modules that seek to explore both the philosophy and practice of nature-based leadership.
While each module will turn our lens to a different facet of Nature Based Leadership, our experiential face-to-face time will have a consistent thread of core routines of nature connection and earth skills throughout the program
Each module will involve a set of recommended texts and readings, experiential processes and exploration of a broader context that embeds it into work for the world. The modules will be woven together into the retreats, and studied in more detail during the fortnightly workshops, webinars and through the online learning platform.
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This is a 10-month program starting in February 2026. Dates and full schedule TBC, however you can expect:
2 x week-long nature-immersion retreat (within 2 hours of Melbourne)
14 x in-person workshops (Fridays in Melbourne)
6 x online evening webinars (Wednesday eves. Recorded)
2 x personal mentoring sessions
Readings and resources for each module will be provided through an interactive online learning platform that you will be expected to engage with and reflect upon.
Download the 2026 course guide
See a detailed breakdown of course content and the schedule for the 2026 session.
“I was seeking community that valued and worked together towards restorative, harmonious and reciprocal relationship with earth... one that honours future generations and the more-than-human world. The program helped me ground values and vision into practice and clarify the work I wish to do while I’m here on this planet. ”
THIS COURSE IS FOR YOU IF
You want to connect with the natural world more, but need the tools to help you achieve this.
You're ready to take an active role in making the world a better place at these times of great change.
You're looking for others who share your passion and can help inspire you in return.
The wilderness is whispering to you
“I learned that my wild indigenous self has been here within me all along. Waiting for acceptance, and an invitation to return.”
COURSE PRICING OPTIONS:
Tuition includes in-person workshops, online seminars, camping and catering on retreats, program supplies and mentoring. A limited number of partial scholarships are available on application.
Payment plans are available on request
EARLY BIRD
Pay deposit by 30th November 2025
$ 6,950
STANDARD
Standard placement
$ 7,950
PAY IT FORWARD
For corporate placements or those who can afford to pay it forward
$ 9,950
“The course spoke to questions and yearnings that I’d been holding for a long time, some that I was aware of, and others not, but I felt like I was in the right place right from the start. I longed to connect with nature but had no idea what that looked like, or meant. I longed for a tangible vision of radical cultural change, but had no idea where to begin. Going through the course has completely shifted my perspective on and experience of the world. I feel more present and more connected to the Earth than I can ever remember. I feel like I’ve been handed a packet of precious seeds that have the potential to grow ‘the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible.”