2023 has been a quieter year for Sensing Nature but we have been busy launching a new, related project, called Sensing Climate.
Sensing Climate
Sensing Climate is a five-year project on disability-inclusive climate adaptation that started in July 2023.
Disabled people make up 16% of the global population and are particularly at risk of climate disruption. In part, this is due to the damaging impacts of extreme weather events and air pollution on existing health conditions. However, it is also due to eco-ableism. That is, the failure to include disabled people in climate action or to recognise that some of the actions promoted to address the climate emergency are creating new challenges for disabled people.
With disability comes a need for adaptability and creativity in navigating and building relationships within an uncertain world. These skills – and the collective experience of mobilising for societal change – are still largely overlooked within dominant climate responses.
Sensing Climate aims to place these skills at the heart of strategies to navigate the climate crisis: for countering the burnout of people and planet, for building adaptive capacity, and reconfiguring a sense of home in increasingly unfamiliar, fragile landscapes.
You can read more about the project activities and the team behind it online via www.sensing-climate.com.
Sensing Nature
We have also been involved in some exciting Sensing Nature-related activities this year!
The Sensing Nature walks at Westonbirt Arboretum are ongoing, and Westonbirt is now recruiting for more sensory guides. A poem written by one visitor after participating in a walk was published in the Friends of Westonbirt magazine, including the lovely phrase ‘Sight needs no champion, so let us awaken the subtler senses by a mindful opening of our windows’.
In April, we held the final event of our Unlocking Landscapes Network. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council from 2020-2023, the network aimed to bring people together to reflect on how arts and humanities research can develop valuable insights for landscape policy and practice. During the event, we shared reflections from across the network and from our ReStorying Landscapes for Social Inclusion project, as well as launching a report, ‘Unlocking Landscapes: The inclusive role of sensory histories of people and place’.
Sarah has also been supervising a new PhD project, led by Kate Morley, around disability and social inclusion in urban nature. Kate will be starting her research fieldwork in 2024, based in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. Kate has already written some fab blogs about the work on her website. She also shares her wider work around rewilding, sensory walks and ‘Nature’s Ear’ – a programme of activities for people with tinnitus, which uses nature sounds for sound enrichment.
Although not linked to Sensing Nature, new work on nature and sight impairment has recently been published by Natural England: ‘Enhancing Access to Green and Blue Spaces for People with Visual Impairment’. Conducted by the Research Institute for Disabled Consumers, the work reflects many of the findings of Sensing Nature, including the importance of information and planning, transportation and infrastructure, navigation and physical access, technology and safety concerns.
Resources
We have also heard about a range of valuable new guidance and super initiatives in this area, including:
The Mae Murray Foundation ‘ADAPT my Beach’ inclusive beaches guidance;
The Paths for All and Sensory Trust outdoor accessibility guidance;
Your Park’s Park Accessibility Guide;
A lovely blog sharing the writing of Andrew Elliker-Reeve, the first blind man to walk the entire 79 miles of the Yorkshire Wolds Way National Trail in seven consecutive days;
A new film about Accessibility and Inclusion in Landscape Design created by disAbility Cornwall & Isles of Scilly;
A thoughtful blog around forest therapy, nature access and disability justice;
A moving blog around returning to the sea with chronic pain;
An exciting new ‘Garden Lab Whispers Grow’ project that seeks to cultivate more caring relationships with nature and inclusive processes for climate action.
Two excellent new books have also been published: ‘Some of Us Just Fall’ by Dr Polly Atkin, which complicates the idea of nature as ‘cure’ in the context of chronic illness; and the ‘Moving Mountains’ anthology of nature writing, featuring 25 fantastic pieces by disabled authors and authors with chronic illness. As noted in the book, “Moving Mountains is not about overcoming or conquering, but about living with and connecting, shifting the reader’s attention to the things easily overlooked by those who move through the world untroubled by the body that carries them”.
It's great to hear about so many new initiatives and collections in this area! We will continue to share these, either here or via the Sensing Climate news pages as the project develops.
In the meantime, we wish you as restful a Christmas as possible and a happy New Year for 2024!
