Kirsty Thirlwall Email & Phone Number

Reigate, Surrey

Surrey, England, United Kingdom

Forest school opened my eyes to a slower, simpler, truer and more compassionate approach to life and parenting; so my mission is to bring forest school to adults and families, not just children. With a focus on community and well-being. Woodland Spirits is a community forest school where individuality is celebrated and curiosity is everything. We're passionate about immersing children in the natural world, facilitating nourishing, regulating authentic play experiences, whilst using nature to spark and follow the unique curiosities of our participants.I am responsible for planning, organising and running the business, programmes & sessions; including family sessions, camps, workshops & women's wellbeing sessions. Ensuring we follow the Forest School principles, cater for participants’ varying needs & run them safely. I also employ and manage other practitioners.

Surrey, England, United Kingdom

I discovered Forest School when my eldest daughter started attending Wild Learning's holiday camps; and when I saw her return from the woods with a new gang of friends, carrying a handmade bow and arrow, covered in mud with a big smile on her face, I became very envious! I began volunteering with Wild Learning and went on to work as a Forest School Assistant at their forest school inspired holiday camps.My responsibilities:- Assisting with packing up of equipment and set up of camp.- Greeting the children and ensuring they had all the correct clothing, refreshments and equipment.- Ensuring the children all felt welcome, safe, seen and heard; building relationships, responding to queries and requests and supporting them in their play.- Ensuring that I conducted myself in a way that was in line with the 7 principles of forest school; particularly those that concerned the child-led nature of forest school and supporting children to resolve problems for themselves.- Demonstrating simple woodland crafts and supporting children's exploration of them and other resources at site.- Conducting regular head counts and generally keeping an eye on the group to ensure their safety.- Supporting the Leader as she supervised fire lighting and the cooking of campfire snacks.

Brixton

At Livity I ran the Marcomms team for the agency's own service, somewhereto_. Funded by the Big Lottery Fund, somewhereto_ connects young people who've big ideas with the space to make them happen along with the mentoring support to help them grow.The Marcomms team planned and implemented an integrated strategy to boost awareness, credibility and engagement with the somewhereto_ brand and service amongst our young and very diverse audience. This included strategic partnerships, content and social strategy, influencer engagement, events and PR.Livity's point of difference is that they are a social enterprise that only works for clients and projects that help to support and empower young people. Everyone at Livity has mentoring responsibilities not just for their team but the local young people who regularly use the office to help run Livity's own youth magazine (Live Magazine) or to gain support for their own projects. This gave me a real insight into what it's really like to be a young person right now and also helped me develop my skills as a mentor and manager.

London

I worked at Bigballs Films and alongside YouTube to develop a YouTube channel for Virgin Media.This role involved:- Helping the client team understand the YouTube opportunity and the unique way of going about creating a brand presence within the platform.- Developing the brand's channel proposition by considering how to connect the unique YouTube community with the brand and its values.- Working alongside Bigballs Directors and Producers to develop a number of shows that deliver a subtle brand experience in a way that reflects the sort of content people love to watch on YouTube, and which make the most of the functionality available within the platform.- Identifying and collaborating with YouTube talent to create engaging shows that bring an existing, engaged audience with them.- Building an Audience Development plan to build an audience, encourage interaction with our shows and the channel and encourage viewers to move around our channel and its content.

London, United Kingdom

Clients: Red Bull, John Frieda, Innocent, Jergens NaturalsAt Holler I developed engaging and innovative digital and social strategies and the ideas that grew from them; designed to get people talking about the brands I looked after. In the two years that I worked on the John Frieda brand, I managed the annual brand planning process to devise and implement a number of engaging digital experiences. These sought to empower 'hair-involved' women to care for and style their hair to a professional standard using John Frieda expertise and products. In this time I helped establish and grow an engaged Facebook community of over 120k fans, its Twitter feed, a network of influencers and more recently its YouTube channel and the content that sits within it.

London, United Kingdom

Clients: Sony Ericsson, Barclaycard, VWI decided not to continue working at iris at the end of my probation period.

Clients: Samsung Mobile, Vodafone, NintendoMy role at integrated agency MWorks (part of the McCann group) was my first as a Planner. As the only Planner, I was responsible for the strategic output across all accounts.Who Killed Summer - Realising that there was a huge demand for engaging digital content among young people, yet very little available to them, I formed a relationship with a film production company so that together we could create content-led solutions for clients designed to engage youth in a different way.Together we developed the first online drama to behave like its young, connected audience and brought in Vodafone as its sponsor. Festival-based drama, Who Killed Summer? played out in real-time across the summer of ‘09 through 22 x 5 mins episodes available online or through mobile. Its narrative extended across various social media platforms and also into the ‘real world’, driving a real sense of discovery and excitement among the young audience. It went on to achieve over 12m views, a double MMA award win and a BAFTA nomination.

London, United Kingdom

Clients: MasterCard, Samsung Mobile, Fiat (digital)In this role I lead an Account team in planning and executing integrated sponsorship activations for MasterCard + Samsung Mobile, including Samsung Mobile's very first social activity.

London, United Kingdom

Clients: Coca-Cola, FantaI was brought in to bd-ntwk to manage the development and implementation of the digital elements of two high profile Coca-Cola campaigns including Coke Football’s ‘Win a Player’ promotion. 'Win a Player' won numerous awards including 4 MCCA Golds + went on to receive 4 million entries over 4 years.

Clients: Virgin Holidays, VSO, Job Centre PlusI was brought in as the only Account Handler at digital agency, Underwired to manage the client relationships and projects across all accounts.

Clients: Warner Village Cinemas (Vue), Wimpy RestaurantsMy role at sales promotion agency, Alcone was my first Marketing role and as such gave me a solid start, teaching me how to work as a team, how to manage client relationships and external suppliers, how to critique creative work and how to manage a project.