courses
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.
CERES X NATURE'S APPRENTICE
We’re partnering with Nature’s Apprentice to offer an immersive program that will create the kind of earth-based leadership and resilience we will need in the coming decades.
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.
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 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 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.
How It'll work
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 with a nature immersion retreat 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 retreat, and studied in more detail during the weekly workshops, webinars and through the online learning platform.
In 2025, we are offering shorter options for the training program. This is a 3-month program starting in February 2025. The year-long program will resume in 2026.
- 1 x week-long nature-immersion retreat (within 2 hours of Melbourne)
- 8 x in-person workshops (Fridays in Melbourne)
- 3 x online evening webinars (Wednesday eves. Recorded)
- 1 x personal mentoring
- 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 2025 course guide
See a detailed breakdown of course content and the schedule for the 2025 session.
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.
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.
Alumni Success Stories
Hear from our NBLT alumni as to how they’ve gone on to put their new leadership skills to use.
We’re currently working on collecting these stories, if you are a past alumni – we’d love to hear from you.
Frequently asked questions
We understand that all kinds of things come up that thwart the best of plans. If you do need to withdraw from the program, please give us as much notice as possible to give us the best chance of finding someone else, and so we (and you) don’t end up out of pocket.
A) If you cancel more than 60 days before program start, your deposit is not refundable, but you have the option to transfer it to a future program for a fee of $50. If you have already paid the full amount, it will be refunded, minus the deposit.
B) If you cancel between 7 and 60 days before program start, and:
We can fill your place, we will similarly refund the program fee minus the deposit, and give you the option to transfer your deposit to a future program for $50.
We can’t fill your place, we will not refund the program fee or the deposit, and you won’t have the option to transfer to a future course, except in exceptional circumstances. If you have not already paid in full you will be required to pay. This includes people who have opted for payment plans; payment in full is still required.
C) If you cancel fewer than 7 days before program start, we will not endeavour to fill your place and will not be able to refund any of the amount. If you have opted for a payment plan you are still required to pay the full amount.
MORE nature connection WORKSHOPS & COURSES at CERES
Photography by Max Roux.