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Rewilding Childhood - In The News


New Richard Louv article in Orion

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

In "A Walk in the Woods", Richard Louv, author "Last Child in the Woods", explores the question of whether we - and in particular, children - should have a right to free access to wild spaces, drawing parallels with the growth of the civil rights movement in the US.





Lost for words

Thursday, March 12th, 2009


The respected Oxford Children’s Dictionary has elected to drop a large number of the names of wild creatures and in its latest edition. No longer can children learn more about "newt", "heron" or "minnow" as they are deemed to be less relevant to "modern children" than words including "celebrity" (I’d like to see the definition of that), "dyslexia" (there could be a logic gap here) and "childhood".

We have to hope that "flower", "bird" and (daringly) "mammal" remain in for a bit longer. I would love to provide the definition of "deprivation", given the chance...

Adventure playgrounds

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j022h

Here’s an interesting history of the adventure playground, not least because it highlights the importance of "waste ground" as an introductory arena to wild nature. These are exactly the sort of places that are rapidly disappearing in a bid to build millions of new houses in the UK to accommodate our burgeoning population. But this is as nothing as to the numbers we will need to accommodate on these islands if predictions of mass migration from all points south (as warming proceeds during the 21st century), are proved right.



Playground kill-joys

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

The UK has had its snowiest winter for many years and children across the country have been sent home early as schools close. The media has chosen to emphasise the cost to the British economy of lost work days and additional road clearance without reflecting too deeply on the less quantifiable benefits many families have enjoyed of having unexpected time together and being able to have fun outside. 

A story told by a friend from the Lothian town of Musselburgh left me despairing. Her son’s primary school remained open but the children were not allowed out to play in the snow at break or lunchtime. When she questioned the playground supervisor at the end of the day she was told that the head teacher was worried that someone would get hurt if the children started to throw snowballs at each other.

It seems to me that one of the problems we have in getting children outdoors to play in Scotland is that, by and large, we have a rather miserable climate for much of the time: rarely very warm in summer and rarely snowy in winter. Preventing children from going outside to play when they actually, actively WANT to is arguably less an act of responsibility than downright cowardice.

As seen in this picture, the Estonias take a more relaxed attitude to the dangers of snow, although boy here was prevented from taking his snowball on to the bus...

More trolls spotted..

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

Vegetable aversion

Monday, February 9th, 2009

At my daughter’s school, there are "food cutters" for the youngest children who come to school lunches - staff dedicated to making bite size morsels for Primary Ones. Perhaps what we really need in Scotland - a nation noted for its aversion to leaves and roots (and not unrelated chronic health problems) - are vegetable enforcers. Here’s the picture to head up the campaign...

Nature photography and children Part 2

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

 


In late 2007, the Irish sound artist, Cat Lee-Marr and I set up Rewilding Childhood, a media project constituted as a not-for-profit company dedicated to the production of images and audio material about children and nature. As well as servicing the project’s own objectives we are also creating documentary and conceptual material for use by organisations and individuals trying to re-establish contact between children and wild nature.

 

An important content-building part of the project is “100 Ways”. Acknowledging that it takes one hundred different ways to get one hundred different children hooked on the outdoors, we are inviting anyone involved in cultivating children to contribute their own great ideas for getting them outside and having fun. Photography clearly works for some older children; crude bribery (hot chocolate, ice cream etc.) is usually effective with younger ones. We want to grow the Rewilding Childhood website into the first port of call for anyone with an interest in these issues and need to collect and share your good ideas in order to do so. We also want to hear about the part nature played in your childhood and how that has informed your attitude to the environment in adult life.

 

Rewilding Childhood is a media project, not a programme of activities. We record, reflect, re-present and report. Nevertheless, I feel very positive about the role photography itself can play in re-establishing the link between the natural and human spheres – for children and adults. Photography, necessarily, engages the photographer with the subject, especially if it is viewed as something other than mere “subject matter”. Engagement is the first step along the road to caring about something. This sort of caring stems from first-hand knowledge rather than emotional manipulation by mediators with their own agendas. First hand knowledge lends authority to your public discourse about the subject – be that through pictures or words - and for children in particular, knowledge gained through experience builds self-esteem.

 

At a time of unprecedented environmental upheaval (and for once in history, that can be said with justification) it seems to me that the need to reflect on our abusive relationship with Mother Nature is greater than ever. And the best place to do that is where we stand shoulder to shoulder with her. She hasn’t given up on us yet.


 

 

 

 

Trolls all around 2

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

Keep hunting for those trolls! 

Orion Magazine article, January February 2009

Friday, February 6th, 2009

Sandra Steingraber’s lucid article, "A Bunny Runs Around a Tree" expands on the theme of preparation for a changing world I touched on on 25th January. Have a look!http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4259
Nature photography and children Part 1

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Let’s face it: for many children, nature is a hard sell. Not necessarily the furry animal side of it but the cold, wet, sweat, dirt and boredom that go with experiencing it at first hand; the sort things that you don’t get when, say, looking at nature on a computer screen. In his  book, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder”, Richard Louv famously cites a young boy who, when asked where he enjoyed playing best replied, “Indoors – because that’s where the electrical outlets are.”

 

Those of us who believe that separating children from Mother Nature is bad for both should think twice before laying all the blame at the door of the computer and game console peddlers. Play expert Tim Gill argues in “No Fear: Growing up in a Risk Averse Society,http://www.rethinkingchildhood.com/ that one of the reasons the virtual world holds so much appeal to youngsters is that they experience freedoms there that are too often denied them in the physical world. In a society obsessed with real or imagined threats to our children, the “domain of childhood” in the UK has shrunk dramatically over two or three generations and with it, opportunities for children to learn to asses and manage risk for themselves. In trying to protect our children from any harm that might ever befall them we are in danger of fostering a generation of infantilised adults lacking the resilience and nouse to handle whatever life throws at them. I know: I‘m as guilty as the next concerned parent.

 

I believe that nature photography can provide a bridge between real and cyber worlds - a way of getting children “out there” while appealing to their desire to communicate through electronic media. I’ve seen this in action in Estonia where my friend and colleague Jaanus Järva teaches a photography class to teenagers for whom the process provides a great reason for being outdoors. I think that a number of these youngsters are what Harvard Professor Howard Gardner in his theory of multiple intelligence terms, “nature smart” – that is, they have an unforced affinity with and curiosity about the natural world and would be drawn to the outdoors even without photography to channel their interest. Nature is a soft sell to those of us with brains wired this way. Attention needs to be focused on the much larger cohort of children who, with a little encouragement and guidance, can have an abiding interest in the natural world ignited by meeting it through a camera. A few might be turned on by aesthetics but for the rest, the appeal is to other instincts: exploration; collection; competition; ownership of something unique. Once hooked on “nailing the shot”, the discomfort and boredom that may have to be endured to get it is no longer such a big deal. Outdoor education for its own improving sake, in contrast, is doomed to fail if, in the child’s mind, there is no objective beyond being educated about the outdoors. [more to follow]

Trolls all around

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

When we are out in nature, it is all too easy to look at things without seeing. And I mean really see. Seeing is where we start to notice things and to make connections between the landscape and ourselves. Children are often more adept at this but you can be sure of catching their attention by creating "trolls" on the route you are going to take, and asking the children to be on the look out for them. Here is the first of several recent ones I’ve made. The tasteful eyes are available at all bad toy shops...

Preparing for a changing world

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

This week’s (24th January 2009) New Scientist interview with Prof. James Lovelock - formulator of the Gaia Hypothesis - makes for pretty grim reading. When asked whether we have enough time to cut carbon emissions to the point that we will be saved the most serious effects of climate change, he asserts that, "[there is] Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It’s not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it’ll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning."

If that’s not enough, he further insists that, "I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 degrees C of warming. There are already too many people on Earth. At 4 degrees C we could not survive with even one tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 percent."

Now, whether you regard these predictions as plain speaking by someone who is better informed than most of the rest of us or the wailings of Cassandra, it is clear already that the main challenges of this century will relate to how we adapt to a changing climate rather than competing political ideologies. We need a generation of children who are more deeply connected with the "real" world than we have been for a long time and who understand that we are sustained, ultimately, not by economic growth, but by healthy ecosystems. This understanding may well offer the best hope of thriving in the years to come.

What names tell us.

Friday, January 16th, 2009

In the natural world, names are the way-markers of biodiversity. Give an animal or a plant a name and not does it acquire an identity, its singularity is defined. Give a child the chance to develop this skill – of identification and naming – and you give them two gifts.

One is a rather healthy compulsion to see individuals rather than an undifferentiated, homogenous mass, to acknowledge and value difference. Children who acquire the ability to identify and name also enjoy the authority of first hand knowledge – and it’s nice knowing something that the grown-ups don’t.

It is more common, perhaps, for children today to know the names of characters from the latest animation than the plants and animals around them. This picture offers encouragement to those rare children for whom the names of their “neighbours” are more familiar than those of the latest moulded temptations.


And in case you are having difficulty reading the text...

Top row: 1. Toy caterpillar-track robot; 2. Space man doll; 3.Plastic man and dog figures.

Bottom:  4. Cowlslip, Primula veris; 5. Earwig, Forficula auricularia; 6. Slow worm, Anguis fragilis.

Welcome to the Blog!

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Welcome to the new Rewilding Childhood blog. Already, there is a vast amount of material in print about the alienation of people from nature and part of our job is to feature the choicest morsels here. But we want it to be made real by hearing YOUR response to these stories and how they match up with YOUR experience. You may want to contribute them directly to the 100 Ways part of the site. Why’s it called 100 Ways? – because we recognise that it takes 100 different approaches to get 100 different children interested and enthused about nature. And we want to hear your great ideas and insights: things that have worked for you.

Here is a GREAT starting off point:

www.banc.org.uk/Articles/November2003/PDF/Ecos24_34.pdf

www.banc.org.uk/Articles/April2005/PDF/Ecos26_1.pdf

ECOS, published by the British Association for Nature Conservation, is a leading forum for thinking about our relationship with the natural world by informed commentators and researchers,  as well as more “hard core” conservation issues. These particular issues present an excellent framework for understanding the issues at play in Britain today relating to the disconnection of people from nature – as well as presenting some inspiring examples of new initiative to bridge the divide.

www.realworldlearning-scotland.org.uk

Real World Learning shares Rewildling Childhood’s core values but rather than being a media project is a partnership campaigning for children to be given the opportunity for first hand experience of nature rather than through the mediation of electronic media. It is currently focused on children in Scotland.

For a broader, often very deep, reflection on how we might all live more sustainably (and that certainly involves getting everyone more connected to wild nature), have a look at the WWF supported Natural Change Project www.naturalchange.org.uk These are people who know the writing is on the wall for the way we live now and their ideas will no doubt position each of us in either the let’s-hang-on-as-long-as-we-can-like this or let’s-start-preparing-now camps. www.valuingnature.org/ is another interesting forum reflecting on our relationship with the environment.

So much for all this reflection. To see what is actually being done, take a look at Cathy Bache’s work at Scotland’s first nature nursery – The Secret Garden – in Fife. www.secretgardenoutdoor-nursery.co.uk While this model is quite common in many parts of Scandinavia, the British press remains in awe of the audaciousness of keeping children outside in all weathers. Yet, according to Cathy the obstacles to running such a nursery are not so much institutional as in people’s expectations of being hampered by legal and health and safety issues. “The Care Commission Scotland, couldn’t have been more helpful, in fact,” she commented to me on one of several visits there.

While the focus of this project in European, it’s instructive to see what’s happening in the US where Richard Louv’s seminal book, “Last Child in the Woods. Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”, has brought the debate into sharp focus. The Children and Nature Network, chaired by Louv, is a movement dedicated to re-establishing broken bonds between children and nature and in the process, allowing them to re-discover “wonder”. www.childrenandnature.org/