Ardroy has been delivering the John Muir Award since its inception nearly 30 years ago.

The John Muir Award (JMA) is the engagement initiative of the John Muir Trust. The Award encourages people of all backgrounds to connect with, enjoy and care for wild places. Participants learn about the special attributes of wild places and the Award helps them Discover, Explore, Conserve and Share their experience of wild places.

After a pause and redesign in 2024/25, there is now one level of the Award available, called the Wild Places Guardian level, which requires 25 hours of participation. In due course the Wild Places Protector and Wild Places Champion award will also be rolled out.

Find out more here on the John Muir Trust website

We believe the JMA is an excellent way to integrate learning before, during and after a residential. We will work with you prior to your stay to ensure joined up learning. Before the residential participants learn about the life of John Muir, his legacy and why his values matter more than ever.

During the residential participants will complete nearly all of the Discover and Explore Challenge through adventurous activities in the wild places we have on our doorstep. Some Conserve challenge will also be completed, potentially in Cormonachan Community Woodland, or perhaps a beach clean. John Muir called it "doing something to make the mountains glad".

There is an excellent mind map here to show how to integrate JMA themed learning into the Curriculum for Excellence, see also this case study of how with some schools we deliver a two year programme across P6 & 7 residentials

On return to school, more conserve challenge hours can be completed (there is a requirement that it is 25% of the total time) before a sharing event which summaries all of the learning in the form of an assembly, a wall display, or even a video like this one from Donibristle PS.