P4HE September Weekender

Who: This is open to all aged 11to 18.  Where: The Thurso Centre, within the beautiful 32 acre grounds of Felden Lodge, Hemel Hempstead, HP3 0BL.  When: 29th September to 1st October  Overnighters, arrive from 5 p.m. Friday 29th September for a welcome and buffet dinner at 6 p.m., pick up 5 p.m. Sunday.  Those with Daytime tickets are asked to arrive by 9.15 a.m. for a 9.30 a.m. start, but you are welcome to join us for breakfast which is 8.30 a.m. each day. You can join us on Friday evening, or just for Saturday and Sunday. Please be picked up by 9 p.m. latest each evening – you can stay for dinner and the evening activities, or head off before dinner if you think someone else’s cooking will be better than ours.

​

You’ll probably find you want to stay for the meals as they’re sociable and the food is good.

How much:  £249 for full residential tickets (bedding is provided).  £225 for earlybird tickets paid in full by the 18th August.  £150 for day tickets (all activities and meals, but staying elsewhere with family)

In all cases, a £50 deposit secures your place, balance due by 15th September.

Booking:  When you click through to booking, you can choose to pay a non-refundable holding deposit of £50 which will be followed by an invoice for the balance. Or you can choose one of the other three options described above. For EARLY BIRD price of £225, the balance must be paid in full by 18th August. After 18th August the cost of the full residential will be £249.  Booking will close and balances must be paid by September 15th.  We will be operating a waiting list. 

Where you’ll be sleeping:  You’ll be sleeping in rooms that have between 2 and 6 beds with those of the same gender and roughly same age. Non-binary people let us know what you’re comfortable with. The venue provide pillows, duvets etc. and covers. If you know someone else who is coming and you’d particularly like to share a room with them, let us know and we’ll do our best to make the jigsaw work.

What we’re doing:  Each morning and afternoon, there will be a choice of main activities, four in total over the weekend. We’ll ask you to pick six out of this list of nine, ranking your choices, and then we’ll do a complicated jigsaw of people’s choices to please as many people as much as possible – for example, putting people of similar ages together. You make your choices on the same online form we use to gather contact, dietary info etc. In the evenings we’ll be doing other stuff either together or with choices you can make on the day.

Here are most of the course descriptions for the next Weekender.  Two more courses are still in preparation... one  Once they’re announced, you’ll be able to list your preferred choices. These are all half-day courses, morning or afternoon, so you’ll get to do four of them.

And then there were none…

Is the person next to you a friend or a foe? Will they turn against you in the next round – or is it you who is secretly a Werewolf, or Mafia member waiting for your opportunity to do them in? These “social deduction games” have made it to TV with the arrival of “The Traitors”, but there’s more to them than entertainment. Explore communication, body language and decision making as you cheerfully get murdered or transmogrified, and see if you can create your own game that brings a new challenge.

The Character Factory

We'll explore techniques improvisers use to snap instantly into new characters and put them together to see what happens. A tiny change in voice, face, body, mood, even just a name can be a hook on which to hang a whole personality, and you'll get to take hundreds of characters on and off. Please remember to collect the real you at the end of the day.

Philosophical First Aid

Facing a tricky moral dilemma? Suddenly struck with horror at the apparent meaninglessness of human existence in a vast and uncaring universe? Want to avoid telling an uncomfortable truth while not actually lying? You need Philosophical First Aid, a toolkit of ways to think and do, gleaned from sages through the ages from the Stoics to footballer Eric Cantona. This is the practical end of philosophy, where it meets everyday life and the decisions and difficulties we all experience.

Sell, Sell, Sell

Unless you get out into the countryside, it’s hard to avoid someone selling you something. In this course, you’ll look at the techniques companies use to sell their wares, from the language they use to the shelf the most expensive product sits on. Then you’ll create your own brand for an event with a target market, unique selling point, tagline and more.

D&D

If you’ve never tried Dungeons & Dragons before, this session is an ideal time to try it out; if you have, you’ve probably signed up already! Join others in a fantasy role-playing micro-adventure to enjoy face-to-face with an expert Dungeon Master (DM). Bring a character you've already created for our online classes or be someone new. If you've not D&Ded before, you'll have a chance to check in with our DM before the session to talk you through the basics so you are ready for the adventure!

Victorian Games

The Victorian era wasn’t all sweeping chimneys, empire-building and steam trains. There was time for leisure too, from the games played in working-class pubs to the battledore (looks competitive but is friendly) and croquet (looks friendly but is deliciously vicious) favoured by the upper classes.

The World Makes Money Go Around

Money is a very peculiar thing. Although it affects nearly everything we see in the human world, it is mostly invisible, moving in electronic swirls in vast amounts. If you could see it, in some places it would be piled in towering drifts and others would be deserts. In this course we’ll look at some of the basics of economics, exploring the factors that make money flow from customers to businesses, between countries, and the weird almost-magical process by which banks create money out of – money by lending it out over and over again.

Finding the Funny

What makes people laugh? We tend to think that being funny is an art, and that some people are “naturally funny”. But when it comes to sketch writing, there’s a sort of science to humour that anyone can learn. We’ll look at some classic comedy sketches, see the patterns that make them work, and create our own. You can rehearse and perform your sketches or just enjoy writing them.

Game Over - The Mystery of the Dead Programmer

It was his assistant who found him, lying lifeless on the carpet. His computer screen still on, but the office messy, with peculiar objects, some dirt and strange smells. Might these be evidence for the crime committed – or was she interfering with the crime scene? Whodunnit, how and with what? Use your scientific skills to do some detective work, narrow down the options and get to the criminal(s?) behind this bloody murder.

Technic LEGO Gunpowder Plot

The king, Lords and MPs have gathered for the state opening of Parliament. A group of posthumanist extremists, demanding that the government be handed over to artificial intelligence, have locked into the Palace of Westminster are planning to blow it to bits! Can you prevent this new Gunpowder Plot and diffuse the CaTechnics bombs in time? Use your engineering skills to take the red fuse piece out of these Technic LEGO based "bombs" and save King and Country! To get into the mindset of these fiendish engineers, you will build your own “bomb” from instructions acquired by Mi5, then use your engineering know-how to defuse all nine “bombs” before it’s too late. Be warned – they are so fiendish that even building one won’t teach you how to defuse it…