Good from Woods (GfW) was a lottery-funded research project, led by the Silvanus Trust and the University of Plymouth, in partnership with the Forestry Commission, the Neroche Scheme and the Woodland Trust. It ran from April 2010 to December 2014.
It aimed to explore the social and wellbeing outcomes of woodland activities across the south-west of England. The concept of wellbeing entered UK policy on health as part of a movement to reform public health structures and has become intrinsic to modernisation of health services (La Placa & Knight, 2014). Mainstreaming of health and happiness is evident in the reshaping of public health frameworks to reflect local community agendas and a broader range of needs (ibid., p. 6). Restructuring includes the Health and Social Care Act (2012), transferring responsibility for public health and a new duty to promote health to local authorities with the establishment of local Health and Wellbeing Boards (Heath, 2014). The strategic use of wellbeing, associated measures and positive psychology ideas within this devolution is not without its critics (Scott, 2015). Nevertheless, the shift towards tailored localised provision has created new opportunities for different types of wellbeing service delivery to emerge with the third sector, amongst others, supplying health promotion and therapeutic activities conceived around local people and place (La Placa & Knight, 2014). These activities can be socially prescribed by general practitioners, signposting patients towards projects which can support health and happiness (Bloomfield, 2017).
Initiatives across the south-west deliver a range of woodland-based activities that provide people taking part with personal and social benefits that potentially fit within this devolved and broader conception of health service provision . Activities range from forest education to recreation and involve people of all ages and backgrounds. While each initiative might individually evaluate their success, this information was rarely available for wider use, consideration or demonstration of its benefits. GfW therefore supported organisations to find out and record how people taking part felt about the experience in terms of feeling healthy and happy, worked with providers to develop appropriate research approaches and trained staff to collect evidence, analyse and report it. Tools and findings were shared across the project and with wider communities through workshops, conferences and research articles.
GfW was based on the premise that woodland service providers were well placed to understand, collect and share findings on woodland wellbeing. The project recognised and supported the value of local environmental and social knowledge. Some of the services that engaged with GfW had been developed over a considerable length of time to meet specific needs within wooded settings. Others were in the process of testing newer contexts for the delivery of health and wellbeing in and via the natural world.
Our intention was to
- Contribute to our growing understanding of how outdoor environments benefit the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities;
- Help organisations providing woodland activities understand what makes them effective;
- Help demonstrate to funding bodies the value of supporting woodland activities ;
- Potentially increase the opportunities for enjoying the social and wellbeing benefits of activities in woodlands across the south-west.
After the official projectâs end, GfW has continued as a series of collaborations between its practitioner-researchers and the research team and many of its outputs are stored on the University of Plymouthâs Peninsular Research in Outdoor Learning website https://âwww.âplymouth.âac.âuk/âresearch/âpeninsula-research-in-outdoor-learning/âgood-from-woods.
Why âWellbeing from Woodlandâ?
We each have personal reasons with deep roots anchoring our interest and determination to explore issues around wellbeing from woodland and we would like to share some of these in this introduction to set the context for our book.
Alice: Growing up in a market town, my friends and I spent most of our time wandering out into local countryside to find places where we could relax, explore, take risks and have fun without fear of being told off! We used the local canal as a route in and out of town and I was always excited as we left behind the streets, explored post-industrial spaces being slowly recolonised by nature and emerged into wooded valleys. I loved the deeper immersion into green that these journeys took us on. As I grew up, I watched the small natural spaces within town being filled up by development and expeditions to find somewhere kids could relax and enjoy wilder places become more remote. Later, while at University in London, I had frequent dreams that I could not escape the hard landscaping of the city and was wandering the streets looking for a way out to the green. When taking the train back home, I was often surprised by waves of emotion as we emerged from a last black tunnel into the steep wooded hillsides that I had spent time in when young.
These experiences established my abiding interest in our need for and attachment to green places and what governs and supports access to the wellbeing that I personally found within them. During MA research, I explored the ways in which people invest themselves in different landscapes, experiencing them as an important part of their identity and fiercely defending them from change. My Ph.D. focused on the engagement of young people in the creation/regeneration of green spaces in both urban and rural settings, and the evidence that I found of their attachments to and playful relationship with nature felt familiar. I also listened to young people for whom use of local green environment was uncomfortable (if they were not welcome) and sometimes unsafe (when disruptive or criminal activity took place there). In these circumstances, they were effectively cut off from the valuable effects of nearby nature.
At the same time as researching, I worked as an environmental educationalist and began exploring how supported access to nature-inspired activities helped overcome barriers to young people and adults experiencing natural wellbeing. This led to my interest in Forest Schools and later training as a Forest School leader.
Joining the GfW project in 2010 was an amazing opportunity to pull together my experience as both a researcher and educator and support others to investigate and report on how nature supports our health and happiness. Collaborating with practitioners helped me understand so much about how trees, woods and forests support human flourishing.
Sue: My parents worked in special education and my childhood was spent in residential schools which were often set in magnificent grounds. Although there were few scientific studies evidencing the benefits at that time, locating health and wellbeing promoting institutions in natural surroundings was long established by the 1960s (Hartig et al., 2011). Outside our flat in one school, there was a majestic Cedar of Lebanon where children (including me) would sit cross-legged on the flat rafts of needled branches, like eagles in their nest. A mixed broadleaf wood lay between my home and primary school and my mum and I would walk through the patterns of hazel leaf shadows dappling onto wood anemones, dogâs mercury and bluebells, drinking in the air, sounds and smell. Secondary school was also housed in a former manor house and break times were spent playing with pals under rhododendron bushes. At university, I chose a campus with a series of lakes running through woodland and remember the shock to my system when I became a postgraduate and went to live in one of the Pottery towns, prompting me to write a poem/lament âNot a tree in sightâ. Within a term, I had moved to the countryside and trees again. When our first child was born, in early mornings we would cradle her so she could watch the ...