December seems to have come round very quickly this year and as we approach the end of 2022, it’s time to reflect on the year’s activities.
ReStorying Landscapes
A huge highlight for this year has been our ‘ReStorying Landscapes for Social Inclusion’ project. The overall aim of the project was to inform interpretation, access and management decisions that respect the diverse ways in which landscapes are sensed, valued and experienced by individuals and groups over time.
One strand of the project involved working with fantastic sensory inclusion specialist, Joanna Grace, and Access Lizard Adventure to develop a kayaking sensory story. In sensory stories, each sentence is partnered with a rich sensory experience. Our kayaking sensory story can be experienced at home to gain a sense of what it might feel like to kayak. It can also provide a stepping-stone to kayaking in situ, building points of sensory familiarity before taking part on the water for the first time.
After a few pandemic-related delays, a group of kayakers with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities took to the water with Access Lizard Adventure and The Children’s Sailing Trust in the spring this year! They had explored the sensory story once a week for 5-6 weeks as part of a sport and movement project around the 2021 Olympics and repeated it at the beginning of the kayaking day together.
The teacher involved in coordinating the session wrote to the team afterwards to say, “I honestly don't how to thank you enough. Staff and students had the most incredible day … Thank you to everyone involved, what an amazing experience for the students and something that they are all now keen to do again in the new term”. The college has since arranged for regular kayaking sessions with their students, which is really exciting!
Our two other project strands involved a brilliant collaboration with Westonbirt Arboretum, based in Gloucestershire. Joining Westonbirt’s volunteer guide team, and working with Andy Shipley of Natural Inclusion, visually impaired volunteers – Mark, Louise and Mike – have been immersing visitors in new sensory journeys of the arboretum, discovering rich scents, sounds, textures and other sensations amidst Westonbirt’s unique treescape. You may have heard the guides sharing their experiences on BBC Points West, RNIB Connect or Gardeners’ World, and you can read more about their activities online.
We had an exciting opportunity to share our experiences with a parallel initiative underway in Victoria, Australia. Blind Sports and Recreation Victoria have started working with visually impaired guides there to design and lead new immersive forest therapy walks, informed by the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing”. You can read more about their activities online.
In April, we also launched our ‘Fragile with Attitude’ exhibition at Westonbirt. Curated by contemporary artist and creative consultant, Zoe Partington, in collaboration with Art Shape and six fantastic artists, the exhibition encouraged people to recognise more affirmative understandings of disability rooted in strength, interconnection, collective experience and expertise. Over 500 members of the public visited the exhibition, describing it as a “fantastic, calming experience” with “such beautiful, thought-provoking work with an important message behind it”.
The exhibition coincided with our immersive ‘Sensing History’ sound installation, created by project partner Andy Shipley and sound artist James Bulley, alongside technical production manager Ed Borgnis, script writer Imogen Robertson, and voiceover artist Michelle Newell.
Exploring and celebrating the multisensory histories and ecologies of Westonbirt, Sensing History aimed to inspire visitor imaginations about the diverse histories of Westonbirt and its inhabitants (human and otherwise). The sounds, unfolding at different heights through the trees and undergrowth, took visitors on an imaginary journey from the Ice Age to the Iron Age, to the creation of the Arboretum, and the present day.
In April, we shared learning from across the project in a two-day conference at Westonbirt, bringing together the project team and representatives from Forestry England, National Trust, Natural England, Historic England, the Sensory Trust, Kew Gardens, Friends of Westonbirt Arboretum and the Wild Museum, amongst others. This was a joint event with our Unlocking Landscapes Network, with a second event planned for April next year to discuss the broader network activities.
To share insights developed through the project, we have produced a ‘ReStorying Landscapes’ guidance document, which is available to download in various formats online. Aspects of the work are also featured in a new series of Natural England ‘Included Outside’ evidence briefings, which are available to download online.
Fantastic resources continue to be developed beyond Sensing Nature too, including the brilliant work of Bryan’s Quest (who has also featured on Gardener’s World) and the National Trust, an exciting new programme of inclusive arts and cultural activities led by Sense, and the Sensory Trust’s exciting explorations of industrial heritage through the senses.
Disability-inclusive climate adaptation
Much of our work in the Sensing Nature project has focused on experiences of nature, wellbeing and social inclusion. Over the last few years, it has felt increasingly important to understand not just how people are interacting with the world as it is now, but also how to cope and adapt in the face of accelerating climate change.
After writing a few different funding proposals in this area, we’re really excited to be starting a new five-year project around disability-inclusive climate adaptation from July 2023!
In 2019, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on climate adaptation and disability. Yet, there remains limited research in this area, and a tendency to frame disabled people solely as ‘climate victims’. This framing overlooks the role of disabled people as knowers, doers and change-makers, and homogenises diverse experiences into a single, disempowering story of vulnerability.
Working with brilliant collaborators across three case study cities – Bristol, Glasgow and Dublin – the project will explore opportunities to harness climate adaptation to create inclusive liveable cities in our ever-changing world, foregrounding disability rights and knowledge in climate adaptation efforts.
We will provide more information about the project in the coming months.
If you would like to hear more – or to access any of the Sensing Nature outputs in alternative formats to those online – please do get in touch, either via this website or via email: Sarah.Bell@exeter.ac.uk.
In the meantime, we wish you as restful and safe a Christmas as possible, and a hopeful New Year for 2023.
