2016: Highlights of the Year
16th December 2016
2016 has been an exciting year of growth at Get Out More, helping more people enjoy the benefits of engaging with nature. Here’s some of our highlights:
| JANUARY | Annie’s Year of Microadventure blog concludes with a chilly New Year’s Day outdoor swim. It followed by the Connecting with Nature blog, full of easy ideas for enjoying the outdoors, celebrating nature across the seasons. |
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| FEBRUARY | Our Go:Walking Keighley walks for men experiencing mental health issues and older Asian women continue through the winter months, in all weathers. We’re glad of those campfires! |  |
| MARCH | Welcome to Ruth McBain our Forest School Manager. Ruth, who had been running forest school sessions with us as a freelancer, is now part of the staff team and responsible for overseeing the expansion of our popular holiday programmes | 
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| APRIL | The weather warms up and our Woodland Playscheme at Dewsbury Country Park returns thanks to new funding from Kirklees Council. This popular programme brings together young people from diverse local communities to play in the young woodland. |  |
| MAY | Get Out More joins forces with Nell Bank Outdoor Education Centre and local people to restore the footpaths in Middleton Woods, as part of our commitment to reinvest in communities in which we have the privilege to work. | 
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| JUNE | We launch the Outdoor Adventure Club, a lottery funded programme to introduces more Keighley children to the play potential of local woods and parks – including opening up a school’s playing fields for play in the holidays |  |
| JULY | Our second Forest School Camp for young people takes place in July. We have a wonderful moorland campsite to ourselves for exploring, playing, climbing and sleeping out under the stars. As one camper said “Let’s just live like this forever” |  |
| AUGUST | Our holiday forest schools expand into North Yorkshire with 2 new programmes in Harrogate and York. While over 450 children enjoy our holiday programmes this summer, we are busy measuring the impact they have on their health and wellbeing. The results are great news. |  |
| SEPTEMBER | We team up with Yorkshire Water to pilot our first Workplace Wellbeing programme with staff from its Bradford HQ. We spend some beautiful days in Judy Woods, connecting with nature to combat stress and develop team resilience. |  |
| OCTOBER | Annie is proud to graduate from the School for Social Entrepreneurs Scale Up programme which supports people with enterprising social and environmental ideas to to grow their businesses – it has been a big boost to the vision and confidence of Get Out More. |  |
| NOVEMBER | Children from a Keighley primary school enjoy getting hands-on with the history of Park Wood. From scrambling in the quarries to foraging for blackberries, its all part of a Celebrating Woodland Heritage forest school for Pennine Prospects. |  |
| DECEMBER | Several elves and Father Christmas himself helped us round off the year with an event at St Ives estate, as part of the Woodland Trust’s Charter for Trees, a campaign to get better protection for Britain’s trees – something we wholeheartedly support. |  |
We want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone we have worked with, played with, learned with and explored with over the year – we can’t do it without you.
Here’s to a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hope to see you in 2017!
