Last summer I did something very foolhardy and yet courageous – I let loose thirty rampaging schoolchildren into my cherished garden for a nature ramble… Let me explain. Since moving from my one bedroom flat in urban Bristol to an ex-council house in the rural Chew Valley, my partner and I had been obsessing over […]
Two days ago I met an old friend. A stag beetle. A mighty unpredictable stag it was, clambering drunkenly up the brick wall of a primary school in High Wycombe. At this point I’d like to say I’d found it myself. But I didn’t. As I was packing up my car I had noticed some […]
Alice Ferguson originally set up ‘Playing Out’ with a neighbour, based on the idea of organising short, after-school, partial road closures for free play, stewarded by residents. They have worked with Bristol City Council to pilot the ‘Temporary Play Street’ scheme, enabling residents to do this up to once a week and have demand for […]
The Save Childhood Movement has been launched in response to the increasing level of multidisciplinary concern about the current erosion of childhood and the declining health and wellbeing of children in the UK. Children in the modern world are currently subject to unprecedented cultural and environmental tensions. From the downward pressures of the schooling system, to […]
The National Trust’s “Natural Childhood” Report by Stephen Moss is, if you will excuse the pun, a breath of fresh air. We should all read it, grab some kids and get outside! And then we need to think hard about how to get away from the pervasive thinking that experiences are only valuable if they’ve […]
Reconnecting children with nature is something I feel very passionate about. It will be a very sad day when the only thing our children are connected to in their spare time, is technology. Sadly, for a lot of kids, that’s already the case and it’s going to make for a very discontented society. I live […]
One of the biggest problems restricting access to sites outside urban areas is the huge cost of transport. The coach needed to take them there can cost hundreds of pounds. Even if the school does manage to set up the trip some families cannot afford to pay for their child to go, unfairly restricting the […]
There are countless things in today’s world, idle things which we often value far too highly; money, television, holidays, fashion etc. In my mind, these things aren’t that important, and they hinder us from appreciating something that really matters – something that we are ultimately a part of, and couldn’t exist without. Nature. If I […]
If I ruled the world (and that is my 5-year plan), I’d start an after-school program that would leave Gymboree, Kumon and a million Mandarin lessons in the dust. That’s because it would almost guarantee that the participants ended up more self-reliant, successful and happy than their peers. And thinner! The program would consist of […]
Let’s start with our own homes, neighborhoods, towns and cities. Visualize a world where backyard gardens and open urban spaces are alive with biodiversity, including native plants, insects and animals. Where public and private spaces are transformed into butterfly zones and an entire region, as seen by satellite images, looks to be a homegrown national […]
