Write to Freedom (our original name) was founded in 2008 by Caspar Walsh. It started out as a response to what was seen as an urgent need for young men to experience contemporary rites of passage into adulthood. A creative programme was developed, working with old and new myths, encouraging a dialogue with the natural world and building a new kind of community or ‘village’. These villages are places in nature and in the wider community where staff and students are valued and respected, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done.

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Write to Freedom initially designed and developed a course for young male prisoners at HMP Ashfield, with Caspar going into the prison to facilitate writing workshops and courses. Over time, Caspar sought to remove the prison environment from this equation; to take these young men to a space where they could connect with themselves and others in a deeper way, feel free and create a vision for their future lives. Dartmoor held the answer.

For 5 years, young men were released on temporary license from HMP Ashfield to participate in Write to Freedom residential weekends on Dartmoor.  These weekends became part of Ashfield’s core activities and were highly sought after by the prisoners and highly regarded by prison staff at all levels.  Ashfield’s YOI wing closed in 2012 and reopened as a sex offender unit and our work with this prison ended. 

Between 2012 and 2016, Write to Freedom expanded our passion for rites of passage and deep nature connection further afield, to a wide range of socially excluded groups. We continued to work with young offenders as well as branching out into the adult prison population, particularly reconnecting soon to be released fathers with their children. It was during this time that Caspar’s personal recovery from addiction bridged into our existing work, to sow the seeds of what we have today. 

In 2014 we ran a pilot Recovery retreat on Dartmoor. This laid the framework and foundations for the New Tribes Recovery retreat programme which began in 2016; from which we still have active members to this day. Off the back of this success, we established the monthly mentoring days. In recognition of the need and willingness from people and organisations to engage in what we offered, in 2017 we made the decision to focus and specialise our efforts to addiction recovery only. We went through a rapid increase in delivery where we refined our residentials further and began the process of passing the baton of leadership on to the community as they grew and rose to the challenge and opportunity Write to Freedom offered.

Since then we have been refining all elements of our organisation as it continues to grow with each new cohort of participants. We have spent this time developing all of the surrounding programmes and opportunities so that our residentials, although they can be a stand-alone experience, also now represent the start of a much longer journey with Write to Freedom.  In 2020 we were awarded £215,000 from the Reaching Communities Lottery Fund to deliver 3 years of programmes and events.

In 2021 we changed our name to Rite to Freedom to better reflect the focus of the work that we do.

This leads us up to the present day.

Our work goes from strength to strength. At its heart we help humans cross the thresholds into challenging, exciting and deeply supported new stages in their life. We share the road and the load and support each other in transforming old stories into new opportunities for healing and growth.

The journey continues for us all.