Conference Agenda

Although wellbeing is a complex term, it can be understood as a social model of health which places individual experience within social contexts, emphasizing the promotion of health rather than causes of illness (Atkinson et al., 2012). Critically, 18% of children and young people in England suffer a severe mental health illness (NHS, 2022), and yet 70% of those who experience mental health problems have not received appropriate support at a sufficiently early age (DfE, 2018). To combat this, schools are increasingly expected to support mental health and wellbeing, but receive few resources to do so. As such, there is a need for establishing mechanisms for supporting the health and wellbeing of children and young people which are relatively easy embedded within the school day, as well as using limited financial resource, to ensure sustainability.

Substantial benefits for wellbeing may be derived from contact with nature (WHO, 2016), and schools that promote children’s engagement with nature have reported children have fewer social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties and higher academic engagement and achievements (Browning and Rigolon, 2019). Despite this, six in ten children reported to have spent less time outdoors since the start of coronavirus and the initial lockdown (Natural England, 2020) and opportunities for outdoor learning in school are diminishing due to staff confidence in outdoor teaching and high demands in delivering the curriculum (Plymouth University, 2016). Although providing good quality greenspace within communities may begin to address this, undertaking activities outdoors which support children developing an affective relationship with nature can bring benefits for health and wellbeing ‘over and above’ those expected from visiting nature alone. One approach to addressing this is through arts and creative practice within nature.

There is a growing consensus around the importance of arts for children in schools, with evidence suggesting that arts education can aid physical, cognitive, social and emotional development, as well as improving both mental health and social inclusion (Durham Commission on Creativity and Education, 2019). Muhr (2020) argues that arts-based activities offer a powerful way for people to connect to nature because they evoke an embodied response that fosters an emotional connection. In a systematic review, Moula, Palmer and Walshe (2022) synthesised existing evidence concerning the interconnectedness between arts and nature, and their impact on the health and wellbeing of children and young people. The review suggested that engagement with arts in nature was found to increase nature connectivity with nature explicit, thereby increasing children’s broader wellbeing. However, despite the evidence as to the benefits of arts-in-nature practice for both children’s wellbeing and their nature-connectedness, it is important to consider their reach and sustainability. Such programmes are often stand alone or require significant funding for long-term engagement of external creative practitioners and organisations. There is a need for greater sustainability with implications for how creative practitioners delivering arts-in-nature practice engage and work with primary schools and how the practice is embedded in the school culture and ethos. Accordingly, this paper reports on the findings from a survey of creative practitioners delivering arts-in-nature practice with children to explore the following research questions:

RQ1: What are the perceived impacts of the arts-in-nature practice undertaken by organisations?

RQ2: In what ways do organisations work with volunteers, teachers, and schools to make their arts-in-nature practice more sustainable?

RQ3: What are barriers to greater reach and sustainability for organisations and practitioners in delivering arts-in-nature practice for children in schools?

This is part of a wider Branching Out project to establish how successful elements from an established mental health arts-in-nature programme can be scaled up from small, school-based approaches to whole school communities.

A recent report by UNICEF (2021) revealed that across Europe 16.3% of children aged 10-19 years are living with a mental disorder, equating to 9 million children and young people (CYP). In England this is thought to be even higher with 18.0% of children aged 7 to 16 years and 22.0% of young people aged 17 to 24 years living with a probable mental disorder (Newlove-Delgado et al, 2022). The Covid-19 pandemic has caused many additional stresses for children and families (Crawley et al., 2020) and those already experiencing social and economic disadvantage are also more likely to experience mental health difficulties (Reiss, 2013), with concerns in the UK that the socio-economic mental health gap is widening (Collishaw et al., 2019). Poor mental health impacts on many areas of a young person’s life, including educational disadvantage and increased risk of school exclusion (Ford et al., 2018) with many young people unable to satisfactorily engage in their education and schools increasingly looking for ways in which they can support the mental health and wellbeing of their pupils.

Forest School is an outdoor educational experience, usually in a wooded area, that takes place regularly over an extended period of time (minimum of two seasons in the UK). It is facilitated by a trained practitioner, who supports the CYP to lead their own learning (Knight, 2011). Its popularity has been increasing across the UK and internationally over the past 20 years, with a developing body of research evidence of the positive benefits on young people’s emotional wellbeing and behaviour (McCree, Cutting & Sherwin, 2018; Coates & Pimlott-Wilson, 2019). Forest School sessions are designed to build confidence and wellbeing through providing enjoyable and achievable challenges in a supportive environment, developing good relationships (between young people and adults and supporting relationships between the young people) and using reflection to encourage the CYP to internalise positive self-narratives as they emerge.

Scotswood Garden is an award winning independent charity based in an urban area of the North East of England. The garden is located in one of the most deprived neighbourhoods of the UK, classified in the highest 10% for income, education, skills and training, health and crime deprivation (DCLG, 2019). The education manager (Menter) has Level 3 Forest School accreditation and extensive experience delivering sessions with local schools and delivering Forest School training. Through school-community partnerships, the Breeze project uses the Forest School approach with CYP experiencing social and emotional difficulties, including mental health concerns and difficulties engaging in education. Following a pilot year in 2017-2018, Breeze worked with four local schools from 2018 to 2021; sessions took place at the community garden and were initially co-planned and co-delivered between the Forest School practitioner and school staff for one day a week over a school year (some adaptations were necessary during school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic). In parallel two members of school staff engaged in Forest School training and accreditation and over the school year gradually took on independent delivery of sessions. After the first year, schools either continued to access the garden independently or were assisted to find suitable alternative woodland and schools were invited to join a Breeze Forest School network, which continues to develop with new schools and offers on-going support to aid long-term sustainability.

This paper will present evidence of the impact of the Breeze project for the CYP in relation to wellbeing and engagement in education, together with the processes that led to change and affordances and barriers experienced. Findings will be discussed in relation to European context and relevance in supporting CYP’s wellbeing and engagement in education internationally.

This paper presents a literature review that highlights educational perspectives on social justice, equity and children and young peoples’ agency when schools address health, wellbeing and sustainability challenges. The study furthermore explores the approaches and contributions of interventions addressing these challenges. As pointed out in UNs Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 and the UNESCO 2021 policy paper Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education, the crises following the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing global environmental and climate change has deepened the global learning crisis. The pandemic has highlighted our close links with nature and increased a long-standing concern for the physical, mental and emotional well-being of children and young people. The pandemic has also highlighted the interconnectedness of health and wellbeing challenges and broader sustainability challenges related to the degradation of nature, and environmental and/or climate change (Franzolin et al. 2022; Malqvist and Powell 2022). Research on global challenges in education’s response to the pandemic underline the critical role of education to strengthen children and young peoples’ agency, as well as the need for equitable education (Darlington et al. 2022, Hill et al. 2020). Due to the resurgence of interest in young peoples’ agency in research within the related areas of health, wellbeing and sustainability education, it has become clear that agency is understood and conceptualized in many different ways, from what we have power to do, to experiences of reflecting and deciding (Gallay, Pykett and Flanagan 2021; Lorimer, Knight and Shoveller 2022).

Global environmental changes in conjunction with substantial social justice issues related to health and wellbeing are impacting us all, raising significant concerns related to how education can address these sustainability challenges. Although they are impacting us all, we are not all of us “in this together”, as some are more afflicted by health, wellbeing and sustainability issues because of race, ethnicity, gender, economy and geographic locality (Andreotti et al. 2018). Current research findings indicate that Nordic countries typically relate to educational ideas such as democracy, and critical citizenship (Carlsson 2023), whereas other countries, such as Japan, might have more natural science or health science grounded understandings of how to address these challenges (Dean and Elliot 2022). In low and middle-income countries in regions such as Central/South America and Southern Africa, social justice issues have had a broader societal resonance conceptualized in debates about health, wellbeing and climate challenges (Lotz-Sisitka 2009; Torres and Faucher 2022). Perspectives on inequalities and social justice issues related to health, wellbeing and sustainability challenges are understood in different ways in different cultural contexts, which underlines the relevance of education research exploring and recognizing many forms of social and cultural diversity (Carlsson and Torres 2022; Dean and Elliot 2022).

Broad explorations of educational perspectives on social justice and equity in relation to how health, wellbeing and sustainability challenges are addressed in education, and the approaches and contributions of interventions addressing these challenges has been relatively absent, especially ones that takes into account the agency of children and young people. The literature review study is guided by the following research question: Which educational perspectives (on social justice, equity and young peoples’ agency), approaches and contributions of educational interventions in schools, or in collaboration with schools, addressing health, wellbeing and sustainability challenges can be identified in literature? The key findings from the analysis of the included journal articles in the study will be presented at the conference. Below I report on the methodology and primary findings from the search and selection processes in the literature review, and highlight a few selected interim findings on educational perspectives identified in the studies.