In June 2022 we received £10,000 from the Awards for All, Big Lottery Fund.
Rooted in Nature works to increase communities’ awareness of, access, and connectivity to local green spaces, waterways and areas of natural beauty, by providing active and engaging learning experiences and recreational activities.
We improve the health and wellbeing of local communities by providing a diversity of activities that increase physical activity, improve self-confidence and self-esteem.
| We used the funding to expand our provision for water and woodland based activities to support the growth of connection. Connection through nature, through community and connection to self. Our project has made a difference to provide a space at a small or no financial cost when the cost living has been rising dramatically to access spaces to be with other people in safe outdoor spaces. We have worked with multiple ages but the bulk of the project has worked with adults of 30 plus. This project ran for a year and has established itself to continue beyond the funding. Along with finding further funding to support these activities continuing. We shared about the project through word of mouth, social media and emailing lists we have access to. Our main success is our woodland women group “Wood Sisters” where women came together for a few hours without children to play and explore for themselves. We met in circle, we shared current thoughts and feelings and challenges and positive experiences to support each other. We explored nature connection activities, crafting, playing, games, singing, music and more. Everyone brings a chopped vegetable to add to the campfire stew to bring us together to eat and chat. From feedback from participants we alternated meetings between a Saturday and a Sunday to help support those who wanted to attend. We piloted elders tribe- a space for over 55s to explore elderhood and the transition in a supportive and explorative way. We ran 3 sessions as we worked out how to support the group mainly around access issues for those struggling with mobility as it is a distance to the woods. We are still working on over-coming some of the barriers to access and have support from the fire to harden some of the track. We also used the funding to subsidise training costs for staff and volunteers including first aid training, Level 1 Forest School Training, Forest Bathing Practitioner training and Forest Therapy Guide training. We have also made the funding to help start the build of our composting toilet. We had to make alterations again to support the accessibility of all our clients needs. |
Find out more about the grant on the Big Lottery page.
