Marina is a qualified teacher (PGCE) and since 1989 has studied Environmental Education (MA), Environmental Management (BSc) and Social Research (MSc). She is a leading Forest School endorsed Trainer and Practitioner (UK and International) and an advocate for the integration of environmental, education and health and well-being services. Her aim is to share her knowledge and experience with teachers and other practitioners wishing to take their practice into the outdoors.
She has pioneered nature programmes within the health sector, and has received funding from Natural England, Mind and The National Lottery, amongst other grant makers for her outdoor work with teenagers, families and young people with mental health issues, disabilities, dementia and early psychosis. Marina co-founded a working group to bring Forest Kindergarten Level 3 to England.
Marina is co-author of Learning with Nature and The Essential Guide to Forest School and Nature Pedagogy, which contains everything you need to know from theory to practice.
Marina co-chairs a Community Benefit Society which manages a community woodland, used to provide access to nature for marginalised groups. She believes that everyone should have the right to access nature.

Jon Cree has been training educators from many different backgrounds in outdoor and nature-based learning for 35 years – from whole-school training programmes through to youth services and environmental NGOs – and has a long history of working with groups in Forest School.

He currently runs a variety of training courses throughout the UK in Forest School-related topics and deeper nature connection; from risky play in the outdoors in the early years through to working with people suffering trauma. Jon has also been an earth education trainer with the Institute for Earth Education for 30 years.

While working at the Bishops Wood Centre, as a member of the Forest School team for Worcestershire County Council, he co-ordinated the Centre’s Forest School and environmental education training programmes. He worked with groups from early years through to adolescents, and became increasingly interested in the extent to which Forest School can promote emotional literacy and working with neurodivergent learners.

Jon contributed to and co-edited Storytelling for a Greener World and co-authored The Essential Guide to Forest School and Nature Pedagogy (2021).

He was also the founding chair of the Forest School Association (FSA) UK and remains a director of the FSA.