In the June 2025 edition of our newsletter, Steve Mackenzie, Head of Centre for the Mark Scott Award Team, Outward Bound Trust, speaks about how his work connects to the wider work of the Awards Network.
Over the last year, I chaired the Adventure and Leadership sub-group, working with colleagues to design and develop the new interactive pathway resources. The interactive pathways reflect four main themes, which broadly represent the wide and varied learning opportunities on offer. A key motivation for this is to make it easier for schools, youth and community organisations, parents and young people to easily understand the range of recognition and accreditation to be gained from taking part in youth awards.
For the Outward Bound Trust, which has been delivering leadership training for over 80 years, it is fair to say that Leadership and Adventure go hand-in-hand. A good leader understands how teams work, and in an adventurous scenario, we speed up the process of forming teams and helping members understand how to lead them. A team is not simply a group of people brought together by a common purpose (although that is a component of course), but they are made up of multiple inter-relationships, which in an adventurous scenario we can build from the shared experiences, hardship, challenge, and problem-solving inherent in adventure. These create opportunities for development and realisation of participants' own, and others' skills and attributes which are key elements of good leadership.
It’s this appreciation and relationship building that comes about from sharing adventures that in turn generates good leaders with an understanding and ability to lead well, with confidence. That, for us is the key to the success of Outward Bound courses for young people. Sharing in challenging adventures is a core element of any Outward Bound experience, whether it be for primary age pupils, secondary school students, members of youth organisations or even those in training as apprentices – they are relevant to all young people, in all scenarios.
The Awards Network's first newsletter of the 2025-26 year brings together an amazing collection of examples of leadership and adventure in outdoor learning, enterprise and the arts. There is also an opportunity to catch up on the fast-moving developments happening in the Curriculum Improvement Cycle, with Education Scotland, along with other information and resources to support your engagement in youth awards.
