“Our vision for the future is to provide brilliant residentials, both indoor and outdoor, all the year round and further increase our permanent team of people with exceptional knowledge and experience who will make a positive contribution to society.”
Our senior team present a wealth of knowledge and experience in working with children and young people from all walks of life, from the UK and from overseas. We help prepare for exams, celebrate after SATS are over, engage students in the National Citizenship Service and help guide children through transition. The team are also skilled in working with schools to provide progression in quality out of the classroom learning experiences. Members of the team include our Managing Director Denea Wright who is also Chair of the British Activity Providers Association, Nikki Rutter our Swanage Head of Teaching who is a committee member of the IOL Fieldwork Special Interest group, Ian Bell who spent 3 years with Allnatt before gaining experience in the larger outdoor sector including running his own tented camp business before returning to Allnatt as Business Development Manager. We are particularly proud of the number of staff we have who have started as seasonal staff and progressed into senior positions within the company.
“Ten years ago our vision led us to create and develop a diverse and complementary group of products at weekends and during the school holidays.”
We are proud to host superb wedding receptions, much sought after Freedom Family holidays for families living with autism, Stop and Stay Weekends for a host of groups and extended families as well as support a number of charitable organisations. At the heart of all we do is our integrity. This is reflected in our dealings with our staff, our customers, our suppliers, and the communities in which we operate. We aim to be honest and transparent towards all who have a right to understand our ethos.
Joseph Allnatt Centres Ltd, 35 Ulwell Road, Swanage, BH19 1LG
Our Company has operated since 1924, always retaining family values, and being child centred. We have positively affected the lives of thousands of children from all over the world including royalty and the children of celebrities.
When children are born they are curious and inquisitive and need to make sense of the world they have been born into. Their first searches are essentially sensory and experiential and they learn at an incredible speed. It is our responsibility as educators to create an atmosphere where we can continue to nurture their natural desire to learn. At its most basic education aims to give children the skills and knowledge they need to become mature employable adults. This includes literacy and numeracy as well as the ability to complete tasks and work effectively with others. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that education is essential to good citizenship and education is important to life because it enables people to contribute to their community and country. We also believe education should help children to find their way in their emotional world and help them to become confident in themselves and their own identity, and find vocational fulfilment too. This can include technology which also helps them to make sense of the world they inhabit and will have future responsibility for. However, it is well documented that children are becoming increasingly separated from nature and not only is this worrying for their personal health but also for the future of the planet. We are passionate about working with our partner schools to provide a life changing opportunity to complement classroom education.
Many people associate play with Early Years Learning where it is strongly encouraged and developed. However we have strongly advocated Play for all ages and it plays an integral part in our staff training! It is often quoted that “we don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing”. Play is often considered as frivolous and purely for recreation but if you watch someone playing, they can be intently focused especially if the play is structured and has an objective goal as in a game. However games are now being primarily associated with indoor handheld screens and it is our wish to engage children in physical outdoor games which will enhance their health, and environmental games which will help them understand and gain empathy for the natural world. Sometimes, especially on the beach, we just play games! As well as structured play we also believe in Creative Play ; the inventive play which young children will do quite naturally but often stop when their creations are judged against an external benchmark. Creative play gives the opportunity to try something simply to see if it works and if it doesn’t, to try a different way.
“A post came up as a Sports Organiser at a commercial Activity Centre in Swanage which I always expected to be temporary. I have never wanted to leave. I became Managing Director in 1996 and now hold a variety of influential positions in the outdoor learning sector. I am Chair of the British Activity Providers Association, a Member of the British Outdoor Council and I sit on the Learning Away Consortium who have a fantastic new campaign pushing the benefits of learning away from the school environment and how Brilliant a Residential can be. I am still enthused by the concept of the ‘good old fashioned’ school trip and how much children can (and do) learn away from school. I guess that’s why I come into work everyday; to help drive that vision forward.”
Business Development Manager
“I finished my Bachelor of education in 1999. When I was teaching I found I got the most out of my class when we left the classroom behind, so I took the decision to move into the ‘Great Outdoors’ and focus my skills on being an outdoor educator. I started my time at Allnatt as a Seasonal tutor in 2001 and have worked my way up to Manager of the Swanage Centre. During that time much has changed and I am proud of the improvements I have made to facilities and introducing a seaside focus to our outdoor learning and company branding. I still really enjoy teaching in an outdoor classroom, in particular training new tutors and seeing their careers develop with us”.
