2022 Review & Beyond

Above Image – Woodland Bluebell Walk (May 2022)

Company’s Activities & Impact |

Facing the Future, Face-to-Face

Our Human-Nature project has now been running for 7 years.  A core number of participants who have been with us from the start are still finding enjoyment and wellbeing benefits from coming along to our ‘natter-in-nature’ walks, week in and week out.  A number of early participants remain as Advocates, effectively the steering group, who continue to advise and help shape the direction of the project.

Overall though, the number of people walking regularly with us weekly has dropped, with some now struggling to attend weekly due to new work commitments, whilst others have developed health conditions which somewhat limit their ability to walk long distances (historically up to 6 miles).  We’ve had to adapt our walks to meet all levels of current ability/mobility, walking shorter distances in less demanding terrain.  We’re now placing more emphasis on the social chat at the end of a walk, often finishing the walk in a nearby cafe or pub or with some garden games, with less time spent walking.  Maintaining this social aspect is important, to allow social bonds and friendships made over the years to continue, and prevent the risk of participants becoming socially isolated as they become older and potentially less mobile, allowing them to remain an important part of this well established ‘Friends with Human-Nature’ group, who also maintain regular connections as a private group on Facebook. 

Due to the lower numbers attending the weekly walking group, and mindful of our environmental impact travelling to green space venues, we’ve decided to alter the schedule of walks for 2023, meeting monthly at 12 predetermined but varied locations, which make the most of the seasons but which ending the walk close to a cafe or pub.  This allows those with less mobility walk less distance, whilst still benefiting from the social aspects meeting over a tea/coffee or the option to enjoy a light lunch at the end of the walk.  We’ll continue to ‘walk from home’ locally in the interim weeks, avoiding car usage, potentially reducing our project’s travel carbon footprint by around 75% and fulfilling our own ‘Care for the Planet’ obligations.

Digital Direction Developments

Our solid progress with digital wellbeing developments continues.  Our on-line and digital tools and techniques emerged out of necessity during the pandemic, but continue to see us reach more people and wider — now UK-wide in fact.  This means that our wellbeing and positive mental health impact reaches more people than it ever could just offering face-to-face activities to local people in the North Staffordshire & East Cheshire areas.  

During 2022 we co-created 2 new digital wellbeing e-books ‘Fascinating Finds’ & ‘Words Escape Me’ showcasing the photography and creative writing talents of our wider circle of friends and followers, as well as local contributors.  This co-created approach has now successfully delivered 5 digital wellbeing e-books which we publish on our website as on-line free-to-read flip books or slideshow videos, promoting a way to connect to nature virtually and mindfully.  This also offers ‘virtual nature escapes’ for people with limited mobility, who struggle to get physically out into nature for medical reasons, or due to time/work pressures, or because they are still shielding due to vulnerabilities.  Being photo e-books, they’re also quick to read, and useful for a short mindful ‘escape’ break to nature for those feeling stressed at work – and might offer a relaxing respite over a short lunch or rest break during a busy day.

We’ve now had over 50 co-creators contributing their words and pictures, and the 5 e-books are now building into a comprehensive digital wellbeing library.  We believe co-creating and sharing wellbeing content in this way may well be unique to our Human-Nature project.  We have hopes to co-create and add further new e-book titles during 2023 (subject to new funding), and are about to share the content from our existing e-books in new ways from February 2023 as ‘walking galleries’ (art installations in the landscape which promote exercise) and ‘therapeutic nature slideshows’ in healthcare settings (linking to promoting self-care and social prescribing).  These may help us to reach a new audience locally.  Initial pilots will target the more deprived areas within diverse communities, but within easy reach of high quality city parks and canal-sides.  These communities have been chosen because they are often under-represented in green space projects (like ours), but tend to have less favourable wellbeing and mental health outcomes.  It makes sense to encourage them to use local green space assets on their own doorstep, helping them stay fit, well and resilient and out of the often over-burden GP/NHS system. This pilot will be evaluated and use on-line survey feedback from the public to consider extending it to other areas within Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme (subject to new funding).    

Follow-on Funding Frustrations

Securing new and follow-on funding has remained a problem during 2022 and seems set to continue throughout 2023 and beyond.  Statistics indicate that there was a rise in CIC’s and community projects closing during 2022, and it certainly feels harder to secure funding, or develop new trading income streams.  

Our original vision of becoming a mobile canals-based project operating from a narrowboat have now been dashed and shelved, following a number of failed attempts to secure follow-on funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, despite having £80k matched funding promised from other sources, and despite earlier successes from TNLCF for development funding (that we were grateful for).  We sense that funders are having to bolster the work of existing more well-established charities delivering essential services, as services traditionally delivered by local authorities come under increasing pressure and continue to be cut back.

We anticipate that due to the ‘cost of living’ and ‘cost of energy’ crises, plus rising inflation and mortgage costs, funders will prioritise around larger projects providing essential services, like food, warmth and shelter.  These same social pressures will lead to less disposable income, and even less ability and willingness for the public to pay for our type of wellbeing services.  

We’ve spent 7 years trying to develop income streams and trade successfully as a CIC, to break away from funding dependence. Repeatedly applying for funding saps our time and energy (taking this away from beneficiaries). It’s demoralising to keep having our ideas, hopes and vision for the future dashed, especially when we feel that we are one of the leading organisations in our field.  Under the current economic climate, we’re forced to take the reluctant decision to move away from face-to-face delivery of wellbeing activities, and abandon our vision to create a formal base to work from.  Moving forwards it will be our intention to focus squarely on our digital wellbeing outputs (as least cost option), growing our project through our on-line creative community, providing wellbeing inspiration via the website and our ‘Nature’s Ways to Wellbeing’ model.  

Due to a shortfall in funding, this will inevitably mean that our Founder & Director leading the project and delivery of wellbeing activities and digital content, will have to find alternative paid employment, with the hopes of continuing the project digitally on a part-time basis only.