Children are retreating indoors and neglecting nature – let's change that.
Documentary film maker and founder of Project Wild Thing, David Bond, discusses why nature needs a rebrand to get kids active.
Sport and recreation play a vital part in getting children outdoors – whether it’s playing football on the grass at the end of the street or going climbing.
For me, an early interest in and access to sailing dinghies develops into a lifetime love of time spent outdoors.
In October last year we released Project Wild Thing, a feature-length documentary film about children’s vanishing connection with nature and the outdoors.
I’m a filmmaker and father of two small children. We live in London, one of the busiest cities in the world. I looked at my children’s lives and noticed that something was missing. Nature had disappeared.
I decided to appoint myself the Marketing Director for Nature and to try to reconnect a generation of children with the natural world.
As a child I spent my time playing in the garden or trying to do wheelies on the street outside my house. My own two children don’t do that.
I attached a camera to my six year old daughter’s head to measure how she spent her time. Almost a third of her life was spent on screens. She spent just 4% of her time playing outdoors – the same amount of time as she spent in the bathroom.
She is not alone. Across the UK children are retreating indoors. Time spent playing outdoors has halved in a generation. Just one child in five has a connection to nature.
I want to find out why – and what effect this disconnection from nature is having on our children.
My children’s lives are consumed by stuff. The marketing department at Disney is better at persuading my kids to do things than I am. I began to wonder whether I could play the brands at their own game and use classic marketing techniques to ‘sell’ children what they really needed: nature.
With my film company, Green Lions, we began to create an ambitious marketing campaign to get children outdoors. We enlisted the help of brand experts, conservationists, ad-men, designers, parents, children and a stunt frog called Henry. I put on a suit and found myself a new job: the Marketing Director for Nature.
We travelled from a remote Scottish island to the heart of inner city London. Rattling a box of tic tacs as inducement, I convinced my daughter Ivy to get her picture taken licking a frog.
The image formed the basis for an advertising campaign – ‘Get into nature!’ – to present the outdoors to kids as fun and adventurous. It was weird to see Ivy’s face squinting down from hoardings in railway stations and above motorways.
Not everyone took me seriously. Simon Middleton, author of Build a Brand in 30 Days, visited me in my office – the shed at the bottom of my garden. He took one look at my logo and laughed. Branding nature, he told me, couldn’t be done. It would be ‘like heroically charging the machine gun posts with a cavalry regiment’.
Others, like the naturalist Chris Packham, were gloomy. I was up against money beyond comprehension, he said. Nature was too interesting and too diverse to be branded.
But some gave me hope. I headed out of the shed to meet branding guru, Michael Wolff. Nature is endlessly fascinating and inspiring, he told me. Just show people what’s there.
So I toured the country in a squirrel costume asking people to pledge to swap some screen time for ‘wild time’.
From Speakers’ Corner to the main stage of Shambala music festival – people seemed to like the idea of a campaign to reconnect kids with nature.
But there was only one of me.
Even with the incredible goodwill of all the individuals who had helped get Project Wild Thing off the ground, I could never hope to compete with the big brands that could pour millions into advertising and product development.
So two things happened.
First, we went guerrilla, driving out on night raids to housing estates where we’d hang bags full of footballs labelled ‘No Balls’ against ‘No Ball Games’ signs.
Second, we joined with a growing body of organisations and individuals who were all passionately committed to getting children out into nature.
We finished making the film, releasing it in one hundred cinemas nationwide in late October 2013.
But the movement lives on. This movement, the Wild Network, is now over a thousand organisations strong, with a further 4,000 individuals supporting it.
What’s exciting about the network is that it brings together organisations from wildly different sectors: from the NHS to conservation bodies like the National Trust, RSPB and Woodland Trust, children’s charities, play associations, schools, health authorities and clothing brands.
We believe that every child should have the right to access nature and the outdoors for play, learning, expression and development of healthy mind and body.
The network’s first campaign, Project Wild Thing, uses the film to make people care about the problem of children’s disconnection from nature.
We want every child to spend more time outdoors. We’re asking people (especially children and families) to take the wild time pledge and get at least 30 minutes more ‘wild time’ every day.
We’ve developed a free smartphone app full of outdoor activities for people to do anywhere.
Over the coming year we’ll be influencing government and coming up with a broad range of solutions to help reconnect children in the UK with nature. By working together with the team at the Sport and Activity Professionals we can carry more weight and have greater impact than by acting alone.
That’s why we’re so delighted that Sport and Activity Professionals have signed up to the Wild Network. You too can sign up online. It is free.
You do a fabulous amount to connect kids with nature and the outdoors. We need your support.
Could you screen the Project Wild Thing film to your supporters and partners – to persuade them of the importance of this issue?
Could you work with us to develop policy asks to enable more children to access green spaces for sport, recreation and play?
We need your help to reconnect a generation with nature and the outdoors.
Get in touch, sign up and find out more at www.projectwildthing.com or email wildscreening@greenlions.com
David Bond
Director
PROJECT WILD THING
THE WILD NETWORK
watch the film
www.projectwildthing.com
projectwildthing.com / @wearewildthing
"Funny, alarming and uplifting, this film will change your life. No other ninety minutes in a darkened room is more likely to get you – or your children – into the great outdoors. An exciting, inspirational exploration of our estrangement from nature and how we can all put some wildness back into our own lives. Every parent should watch it."
Patrick Barkham, The Guardian
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