A new documentary about children and nature, Mother Nature’s Child: Growing Outdoors in the Media Age, will be shown at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 31, at the Monadnock Waldorf School, 98 South Lincoln Street, Keene, New Hampshire. The screening is free and open to the public.
The film by Camilla Rockwell and Wendy Conquest looks at the fading connection between children and the natural world, and what we lose as that connection disappears. It follows how children live and play in nature, from toddler through teen years. “The film marks a moment in time when a living generation can still recall childhoods of free play outdoors; this will not be true for most children growing up today,” according to the film’s website.
David Sobel, core faculty member in the Antioch University New England (AUNE) Department of Education, is one of several experts who appear in the fifty-five-minute documentary. Sobel is the author of six books, including Children’s Special Places: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens, and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood, published by Sierra Club Books, is due out in April.
“An important part of Antioch University New England’s mission has always been to preserve childhood and part of that notion has been preserving the relationship between children and nature, which has been eroded over the last twenty or thirty years,” Sobel said.
The film also features programs such as New Hampshire’s Kroka Expeditions, whose founding director, Misha Golfman, (MS ’97) is a graduate of AUNE.
Tom Wessels, core faculty member in AUNE’s Department of Environmental Studies, will introduce the film. It will be followed by a panel discussion that includes Sobel, Golfman and Susie Spikol Faber, outreach coordinator and naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education, Hancock, New Hampshire.
Mother Nature’s Child was shown at the Green Mountain Film Festival, March 18-27, in Montpelier, Vermont., and the 2011 Environmental Film Festival, March 15-27, in Washington, DC.
The film’s Keene screening is sponsored by AUNE, Monadnock Waldorf School, Kroka Expeditions and the New Hampshire Children in Nature Coalition.
There is limited parking at the school but it is a short walk from downtown. Find directions to the school here.
For more information, contact Anna Cynar at 248-420-5837. Find out more about Mother Nature’s Child.
