General information
For the last two weeks of June, we create a beautiful space in the woods for you to feel welcomed and be. Come enjoy the beauty of the woods, the song of the birds, the peace of the hearth, and take a moment to (re)connect with yourself and with other women.
The Red Hearth is open everyday from 10am until dark. You can come at any point, whether there is a workshop or not. Why not enjoy a break from the hectic day to day life, meet up with your friend in the woods, or take your book and rest between hawthorn and birch? There are activities offered during the day and evening time.
All facilitated events are by suggested donation £7-20, but please book in advance using dandelion.
The roundhouse is located at 7 Summer Close, Stroud, GL5 1PF. Please park on Summer Street and walk up Summer Close as there is very limited parking on Summer Close.
Camping: Over the solstice weekend, Friday 19th to Sunday 21st, you can also come camp up on the land. For more information: Camping at the Red Hearth.
Activities may be subject to change. Do visit our Facebook and Instagram pages for the latest updates.
Emerging Elders at the Red Hearth
Throughout Red Hearth 2026, there will be older women on site as “Pop-Up Emerging Elders”. They will be wearing either red or pink sashes, as in this pic. They are Emerging because, in our culture, we don’t really know what Elders are and what they offer. We are experimenting and learning. Younger women are welcome to talk to these Emerging Elders or ask them anything. These older women have chosen to be at Red Hearth and available for younger women to talk to. They will wait until someone approaches them and will not impose themselves. Do talk to them and make the most of their years of LIFE and join our ongoing experiment about what eldering means in our community. If you would like an ‘Emerging Elders Council’, where 2-5 Elders listen to you confidentially as you talk about a current issues/ decision / challenge in your life, then do please sign up to one of our slots of dandelion.
PROGRAMME 2026
Saturday 13th June
4pm Opening Ceremony
Join our Red Hearth team as we open our dedicated space in a simple but beautiful ceremony, where we invite you to bring your full heart and weave together a sacred intention for the next two weeks.
No booking required, just drop in
5.30pm Community Dinner
Join us as we cook a shared supper over the open fire, a lovely way to open the event and connect to each other.
Suggested donation for meals £5
6.30pm – 8.30pm – Remembering Chloe, with story and memories
This will be sweet honouring of Red Hearth woman Chloe, who sadly passed recently. With the Red Hearth Team and Hannah Murray.
All welcome, no booking required.
Sunday 14th June
10am – 12pm Storymakers for Mothers & Children with Hannah Murray
Hannah will arrive at Red Hearth with a suitcase filled with curiosities, and start the day with a dynamic storytelling performance, followed by a workshop filled with magical lands and interesting characters.
Children are encouraged to create their own stories as a group and as individuals, guided by Hannah’s understanding of what it takes to create a spell-binding story.
This is a perfect workshop to suit all learning styles and abilities, and is particularly good for engaging reluctant writers.
Children aged 6 – 11
Max 10 children with a parent present throughout the workshop please
12:30pm to 2pm- Newcomers tour of the woodland
If you’re new to the Red Hearth and the woodland, please do come and say hello – we will show you around the lovely woodland, and roundhouse, we’re a very friendly bunch!
No booking required, just drop in.
2pm – 4.30pm – Tactile Cycles with Jess Shanti
A hands on creative workshop to create a ‘moon pot’ menstrual cycle counter from air dry clay. While hands are busy crafting, we will drop into gentle conversation about cycle awareness, different phases of our inner seasons and touch upon some necessary her story for empowerment and reflection.
Age 10 +. Max participants 12 people
Minimum donation: £10 due to material costs
Monday 15th June
10am – 12pm: Weaving Wellbeing with Beth Lindfield CANCELLED
Come as you are. In this willow workshop, all your parts are welcome. With gentle awareness of how you are and how it feels to craft in community on the day, you’ll weave together to (re)connect with yourselves, the land and each other. Each person will weave a leaf-shaped willow platter, which can be used ceremonially as an alter for trinkets, as a hot plate or as a decorative item and more. All materials and tools provided
Maximum 8 participants. Minimum donation: £15 due to material costs.
12pm – 10pm: Open Space
The roundhouse is open for anyone to enjoy. Come craft, read, enjoy a cup of tea with a friend, journal or simply rest. No need to book, just come! A kindling sister (volunteer) will be here if you need anything.
Tuesday 16th June
10am – 7pm: Open Space
The roundhouse is open for anyone to enjoy. Come craft, read, enjoy a cup of tea with a friend, journal or simply rest. No need to book, just come! A kindling sister (volunteer) will be here if you need anything.
7pm – 9pm Liberation – How not to give a f**k after Menopause with Kate Smith
By community request, this workshop aims to creatively explore how to embrace the changes that menopause brings. The decline in oestrogen and progesterone can bring challenging physical and emotional for women; however it can also be an empowering transition. We can learn to set clearer boundaries, stop pleasing others, prioritising our own needs, and grow in self confidence and wisdom.
Kate is an Integrative Arts Psychotherapist specialising in working with trauma. Her approach is soulful, intuitive and grounded in the power of presence and creativity to support healing and growth
Wednesday 17th June
11am – 12pm: Sing & Be Sung To – with Sophie Sterckx
Mother and baby singing circle.
Sophie will lead a gentle and uplifting singing session with soothing lullabies and heartwarming songs & rounds. There will also be moments to relax and listen and be sung to. A warm and welcoming singing space for mothers and babies and pregnant women, older siblings welcome.
Sophie is a singer and composer and loves to share her joy of singing and vocal harmony with others. She runs regular singing groups in Stroud, including weekly MamaSings sessions in connection with Stroud Maternity Unit, and vibrant community choirs locally. For more info, please visit: www.sophiesterckx.co.uk
1pm – 2.30pm Nature’s Harper – A Year of Song and Ritual with Lizi Rayner
Join Nature’s Harper for a journey of co-created nature songs. From the darkness of the Winter Solstice to the expansion of the Summer Solstice, we will meet many plants and elements along the way.
Come lend your ears to the songs of our beautiful and magical natural world.
Bring whatever you need to be comfortable.
10-15 women max
7pm – 9pm: Songs For Peace with Renee Berkhout
Singing is an act of defiant joy and solidarity when times are tough. Come use the superpower of collective singing to resource you!You’ll learn simple peace songs in gorgeous harmony to soothe your soul. All songs will be taught by earand voices of all shapes and sizes are welcome (including beginners).
Renee is passionate about creating a relaxed, warm and inclusive space and bringing people from all walks of life together to sing in harmony. She is an experienced member of the Natural Voice Network and runs the https://soundcloud.com/orchard-choirOrchard Community Choir in Bristol.
Thursday 18th June:
10am – 12pm Baby Massage with Rachel Grasby
Baby massage: Come and massage your baby to learn a massage that relaxes baby, deepens bonding and attachment, helps with digestion whilst encouraging babies body strength and flexibility.
Note: This massage is for babies that have had their 6-8 week check up with their doctor and for ages 8 – 10 weeks once baby can lift and turn their head up until pre crawling.
Allow 48 hours after any immunisation vaccines before giving a massage.
Bring a towel, blanket something to lay baby comfortably on and anything you need to sit or kneel on.
7pm – 9pm Meet Our Local Goddess Cuda with Kate Dineen
Introduction to our local Cotswolds Goddess Cuda and understanding her in the pantheon of ancient Goddess culture.
With deep guided connection and votive making
10 participants, £15 includes materials
Friday 19th June
Rainbow Hearth – a full day dedicated to LGBTQ+ friendly workshops and activities.
All Weekend: Jaine Rose with floating tarot!
Jaine Rose will be offering spontaneous tarot readings or teaching throughout the weekend for any woman that feels called to know more
11am – 12pm Letting Go of Effort with Lottie Lawson
LGBTQ+ friendly
An hour of gentle guided body-based practices, including a body scan, to notice what’s here for us in our body and mind, without trying to fix or change it. We are practising welcoming all parts of us exactly as we are.
You’re welcome to sit or lie down throughout, and to fidget or move as much as you like. Nothing to perform!
Lottie Lawson is a local member of the LGBTQIA+ community who is trained as a body-oriented coach with The Somatic School.
2-4.30pm Song of the Source Yoga Nidra and Music as Medicine with Sivani Mata Francis
LGBTQ+ friendly
You are invited to an afternoon of rest and song to nourish our beings. Come be welcome to lie your body down on the Earth and arrive in that place of remembrance, through the nourishing practice of yoga nidra. Then rise rested into an exploration of music as medicine (co-created kirtan and prayersong) interwoven with the magic of story. We will sing simple songs rooted in and inspired by the tradition of bhakti yoga, the path of love. These songs are an invitation to practice deepening into our hearts as way to navigate our daily lives. This heart centred awareness is entwined with an honouring of the Earth, the source from which we all came. www.sivanimata.co.uk
5pm Community Dinner
LGBTQ+ friendly and all those camping. All Welcome.
Join us as we cook a shared supper over the open fire, always a lively event!
Suggested donation for meals £5
7-9.30pm Storytelling Celebration with Mica
LGBTQ+ friendly
You are invited into a storytelling experience with co-created music, original songs, collective improvised sound, play, beauty,and shared moments that can only happen once.
Lets come together to enliven our hearts, soften our edges, fill each other with inspiration and celebrate this gift of life we have been given.
Saturday 20th June:
10am -12pm Algerian Cultural breakfast with Illham
Come and celebrate the Algerian culture with Illham. This workshop will include cooking around a fire, learning how to prepare a traditional Algerian breakfast, hearing about the culture and sharing food and music, all in the beautiful woodland setting.
Attending this workshop supports refugees and values their skills.
Minimum donation: £20 to include food
2pm – 4:30pm – Overwhelm – Managing Big Feelings for young women with Kate Smith
Sometimes we can feel drowned by intensity of emotion. Learning to regulate your nervous system and regain perspective in your sense of self can help with navigating overwhelm. This workshop will cover basis techniques for self regulation and explore creative ways to manage emotion.
Kate is an Integrative Arts Psychotherapist specialising in working with trauma. Her approach is soulful, intuitive and grounded in the power of presence and creativity to support healing and growth.
For young women (Ages 16-30)
5pm-7pm Iranian Cooking workshop with Tara
Come and celebrate the Iranian culture with Tara. This workshop will include cooking around a fire, learning some traditional Iranian dishes, hearing about the culture and sharing food and music, all in the beautiful woodland setting.
Attending this workshop supports refugees and values their skills.
Minimum donation: £20 to include food
7:30pm Solstice Drumming and celebrating around the fire! A co-creation
Bring your drums, your voices, your stories, as we mark the Solstice Eve around the fire. An open space for us all to put magic in to the energetic cauldron that women create when we gather!
No need to book, just drop in, bring your drum, voices, fire spirits, and a donation!
Sunday 21st June
2-4.30pm Makers Market & Clothes Swap
Treat yourself to something beautiful and support our local craftswomen at our Makers Market and take the opportunity to refresh your wardrobe in a sustainable way at our Clothes Swap. Bring clean, good quality clothing to swap and money to spend! No need to book for these events.
If you’re a maker and would like to sell please email redhearthkin@gmail.com
2pm – 4pm Creative Bead Workshop with Chantelle Wheatley
Create your own cycle-tracking bracelet or waistbeads. Using four colours (mentrual, follicular, ovulation and luteal) you’ll make a piece that reflects the four weeks of your cycle. A moveable charm to mark each day and track where you are in your menstrual cycle.
A welcomeing and supportive space for anyone who menstruates to create, share, and talk openly about their cycle.
Monday 22nd June
10am-2pm Open space
The roundhouse is open for anyone to enjoy. Come craft, read, enjoy a cup of tea with a friend, journal or simply rest. No need to register, just come! A kindling sister (volunteer) will be here if you need anything.
2pm – 4.30pm Midlife Goo – JLM Morton
‘When a caterpillar is ready for the next stage of its life, it finds a quiet and safe place and spins itself into a cocoon or chrysalis. Then, the caterpillar releases digestive enzymes and dissolves itself. It disintegrates into a goo.’ Lucy Jones Matrescence (2023). Midlife is ‘goo,’ a time of profound and irreversible change. In this workshop, we’ll explore this state through writing exercises and the making of ritual objects. We will take a deep dive into the beautiful creative mess of our imaginal midlife and emerge transformed, with the drafts of new poems and writings to take away.
Tuesday 23rd June
10am- 12pm Harp Lessons with Morwenna
If you’ve ever wanted to try your hands at harping then this little session is a great place to start. Morwenna teaches without music sheets or theory, by showing students step by step how to memorise and build a tune by ear and heart. The harp pre-dates music notation and so does her method of teaching. You don’t need any prior music knowledge to join, and even the self proclaimed “tone deaf” will sound beautiful at the end of the session.
Harps will be provided
Max 7 women
Wednesday 24th June
10am – 7pm: Open space
The roundhouse is open for anyone to enjoy. Come craft, read, enjoy a cup of tea with a friend, journal or simply rest. No need to book, just come! A kindling sister (volunteer) will be here if you need anything.
7pm – 9pm: Freeing Ourselves from Good Girl Syndrome with Lottie & Nicola
Part 1: A body-oriented workshop to bring awareness to where we focus our attention, noticing what happens in our body when our attention is oriented to different external people/sources, and what happens when we orient ourselves towards a more somatic experience of internal and other supportive sources.
Part 2: Exploring how we step forward from the places explored in part 1, to liberate ourselves and others from external (and internalised) narratives about what it means to be ‘good’ as a woman or person assigned female at birth.
Thursday 25th June
10am – 12pm Living From Our Wholeness with Irina Shigidina
This session is a soft, spacious, yet courageous space to explore how we connect, live, and make choices from the wholeness of our being — mind, body, and soul.
Together, we will gently explore how our relationships and connections with others begin to shift when we are rooted more deeply in our own wholeness. We will also reflect on the significance of being present in the body, especially during times of change, uncertainty, or challenge, and the wisdom the body can offer us when we learn to truly listen.
The experience will include meditation, gentle movement, reflection, connection with others, and optional sharing within the circle.
If you wish, you are welcome to bring an intention, question, or reflection to hold for yourself as we move through the experience together. It can remain entirely your own if you choose not to share it.
7pm – 9pm Earth Women Songs, Chants & Voice Cauldron with Mali
Songs and chants honouring the wilds within and without. Most songs will be call-and-response and ALL voices are welcome! We will sing in community and circle for connection and expression – not to sound any particular way or learn technique. We will also create a ‘voice cauldron’, a chance to sing and sound intuitively, creating an immersive vocal sound-bath accompanied by the shruti box.
Friday 26th June:
11am – 1pm – Land Work
Join the woodland women who steward Sladebank Woods, where the Red Hearth is hosted. The work varies on the day and women are encouraged to work at their own pace. This is an opportunity to give back to the land that holds us during the gathering, and to connect with other women through physical work.
Drop in, no need to book
1pm – 3pm Intentional High-Vibrational Jewellery Making Workshop with Irina Shigidina
Join me for a heart-centred Jewellery Making Workshop where we will weave the energy and wisdom of crystals into a meaningful piece of jewellery created by your own hands. Together, we will enter a gentle, sacred space through meditation, allowing ourselves to slow down, connect with our hearts, and tune into the wisdom within. From this place of presence, you will be invited to intuitively choose the crystals that are calling to you and create a piece infused with your own intention and energy. You will have the choice of creating either a bracelet or a pair of earrings, using brass, copper, or silver-coloured copper wire. As we create, you are invited to embrace the beauty of the process, the joy of self-expression, and the quiet wisdom that emerges when we allow ourselves to listen deeply. We will complete our time together with a short intention and gratitude meditation, honouring both the journey and the unique creation you will take home with you.
All materials will be lovingly provided.
7pm – 9pm Dryadic Acoustic Gig
Come and join us for a very special, unplugged accoustic gig, returning because we love them at the Red Hearth!
Since forming in 2017, Dryadic have built a reputation as one of the UK’s most compelling contemporary folk-roots bands, known for their rousing live shows, unapologetically feminist songwriting, and rich, string-led arrangements. Founded by Zora McDonald and Joanna Dziecelska, and now fronted by McDonald alongside Aly Rainey on fiddle and Liz Tucker on double bass, the band have toured extensively across the UK and Europe, appearing on stages including Glastonbury Avalon, Chai Wallahs, Brighton Pride, Hackney Empire, and Drayton Arms Theatre. Recent highlights include their song “Rainbow Family”.
Saturday 27th June:
10am – 12pm Grief Circle with Veronica and Nika
A gentle space to come together and be with what is here. In a culture that often asks us to keep our grief to ourselves or move past it quickly, this circle offers a place to slow down and remember something older: that we don’t have to carry grief alone.
We gather in circle to listen, to feel and to be witnessed. There is nowhere to get to, nothing to fix and no obligation to share. You are welcome exactly as you are.
Grief can take many forms – a loss, death, life change, longing, parts of us that haven’t known love or even something empty or harder to name. Whatever is present for you, there is a place for it here.
Through guided holding, presence and shared humanity, we begin to remember that grief connects us. And we’re not alone.
12- 2pm Afghan Lunch with Reena
Come and celebrate the Afghan culture with Reena. This workshop will include cooking around a fire, learning some traditional Afghan dishes, hearing about the culture and sharing food and music, all in the beautiful woodland setting.
Attending this workshop supports refugees and values their skills.
Minimum donation: £20 to include food.
2pm- 4pm Singing by the fire with Pearl and Vavara
As the festival draws to a close, join us for a joyful afternoon of singing, connection, and collective expression. Together we’ll raise our voices in celebration, learning empowering songs and rounds, exploring gentle group improvisation, and sharing the uplifting experience of singing in community. All voices are welcome, come as you are and be part of this special gathering. Accompanied children are welcome.
4pm Red Hearth Closing Ceremony with the Red Hearth team
Join us as we gather joyfully for the final time to weave together our memories of the last two weeks, celebrate each other, and thank the land until we meet again next year!
Red Hearth 