Meet Anna Graves | Director/Founder/ Lifelong Learner/Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anna Graves and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anna, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Field Academy was started because we recognize that having lived experiences in community, seeing how different people live, engaging across difference, talking to people who have jobs you have never heard of, eating food you have never tried etc. is the way for people to understand themselves better and imagine possibilities for their own lives. We also want students to feel ownership and see pathways to have influence in the area that they live, so we built programming that allows students to Build community, fuel connection, inspire enduring curiosity.
We believe that experiential education is a right not a privilege. Youth right now re being faced with huge challenges, such as social isolation, big civic issues and environmental impact, and our goal is to build pathways for them to apply their brilliance to these issues and to have the tools to make things happen in their communities.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I spent the last decade working in Outdoor Education and alternative education settings. I spent years of my life working in the wilderness, leading youth and adults all over the U.S. and abroad. These experiences are amazing, and there is nothing like the experience of building cohesion as you live, travel, and explore in a group of strangers over 2 weeks-4 months. It’s hard, to have hard conversations, learn about each other, be self-less while also selfish, and hone new skills, but I stayed in it for so long because I couldn’t find another platform like outdoor expeditionary education that build that kind of connection.

But through all those years I realized that transference was really challenging, so as I started looking into Community Based Learning models, I was like “oh heck yes, we can build similar connections while we do it in our own neighborhood, surrounding cities, etc”. I also am really excited about giving power back to students, and in Outdoor Ed there is this phenomenon where you get in a 15 passenger van and get dropped off in the Wilderness and most of the time, because kids of have fallen asleep in the van or because its an early start, we all get out of the van, and we are like “where are we? how far away from home are we?” so my hope is that wherever we go, students know how to get there, how to bring their families there, the phone numbers of community partners to ask questions in the future etc.

I also chose this route because most of the programs I worked for in the last 10 years cost tons of money, so just the price tag excluded people. And we can’t do that, we really need all youth to be able to have experiences. There is a ton of data saying experiential education and summer camps build healthier youth, more engaged, keeps youth safer because they have alternative things to do, etc. And somehow the majority of youth are excluded from this program because of $$. So we are Pay-What-You-Can because we want everyone to see themselves in our programming and we want our youth to meet people across class differences.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The drive in, in commerce city! Amazing place to spend a weekend night The batting cages in commerce city, they are also so awesome even though they close when there is lightning!

Mango House in Aurora, amazing refugee owned small food shops. You can also stop by Lady Justice across the street for the women owned brewery

I also would go to an event at Creative Strategies for Change if they have an open mic going on.
And then I would also go to Ramen Star, which hand makes their ramen noodles in LoHi

I would also go to the Sun Valley Market if it was summer and stop by Raices for a beer

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I want to give a shout out to all the High School students who we work with because they are amazing! The questions they ask, the dedication to their passions, their embodied curiosity, and the high level of stoke they have for building community everywhere they go!

Website: www.fieldacademy.org

Instagram: fieldacademy

Image Credits
Southwest Colorado Expedition 2019, Frontrange Colorado Trip 2023