*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

There is less than a week to go until I set off on my Churchill Fellowship trip to Norway. My trains and ferries are booked, my itinerary is planned and my diary is nearly full with a list of visits and appointments with organisations doing innovative work in my area of study.  All that is left for me to do is to pack my bags and say goodbye to colleagues, friends and family.  But before I do, I need to explain why I’m going.  Afterall, two months is a long time to disappear, leaving my business and family to manage without me ‘on a free holiday’, as at least one person has described it, (its not)!

My travels are being funded by the Churchill Fellowship, a UK charity  which ‘supports individual UK citizens to follow their passion for change, through learning from the world and bringing that knowledge back to the UK‘.  The Churchill Fellowship has enabled people from all walks of life to learn from good practice abroad; in its 60 years, over five thousand Churchill Fellows have travelled around the world bringing back and implementing new ideas in the fields of the arts, science, health, community work and more.  I feel honoured to have been chosen to be amongst their number and hope that I can make the best use of this opportunity of a lifetime.

My proposal is to learn how to overcome barriers for older people, particularly those with care needs, to connect with nature.  The amazing benefits of spending time in nature are well documented.  They include better mental health, increased physical fitness, improved sleep, boosted immunity, as well as a positive impact on our relationships with nature and each other. In our work at Get Out More, we are driven by the desire to connect communities and nature so we can all grow healthier together. We’re proud to work with people of all ages, from babies to adults. But a group that we feel are under-served, by ourselves and society as a whole, is older people, particularly people with care needs. Today’s generation of seniors may have lived a lifetime of enjoying the outdoors, but unfortunately in later life, are too often denied opportunities to spend time in nature and can spend most of their days completely indoors, ‘protected’ from the elements and therefore unable to access the many health benefits that spending time in nature can bring.

When looking around for examples of good practice for nature connection activity with older people, I was impressed by the amazing work by the Sensory Trust and Dementia Adventure who advocate for increasing access to nature for people living with dementia through programmes and training.  Naturally, I looked at good practice overseas too and was repeatedly drawn the Scandinavian concept of ‘friluftsliv’. The idea is so deeply rooted, especially in Norway, that it is seen as everyone’s right and valued as part of national identity.  Its expression is woven into daily life at home, at school, in the workplace and in care settings too. As one of my contacts in Norway described it, ‘We just have to be outside!‘ Thanks to Churchill Fellowship, I am going to Norway to see how friluftsliv is expressed for older people in day care services based on farms, activity programmes in care homes and through adventure programmes for seniors.  I’ll be travelling by train, so on my way I’ll be stopping in Amsterdam to visit two ‘Odensehuis’, a meeting place for people living with dementia whose approach is one we’d like to model in our own setting.

Having run a series of outdoor sessions with older people in Bradford this year, and found joy and challenge in equal measure I will be visiting projects in Norway to learn from good practice there and hopefully understand how we can overcome barriers and better enable nature-based programmes for all.

In essence, by research on my travels will focus on three questions:

• What activities are older people enjoying in nature?
• How are the perceived challenges and barriers to accessing nature overcome?
• How can we implement more ideas and approaches to nature connection with older people in UK?

As I approach this trip I am full of excitement and trepidation,  and hope that I can justify the belief that the Churchill Fellowship and the team at Get Out More have in this idea.  I’m looking forward to meeting all the people I have been contacting for the past six months, and reporting back regularly through this blog.  Wish me luck and watch this space!

Annie Berrington

Founder and Managing Director at Get Out More CIC

[Photo credit: Svoragrova – Stryn, Norway by Guisepe Milo, source:  Flickr under Creative Commons license]