By Jim Mitchell on August 12, 2009

Natural England’s One Million Children campaign

This blog was originally posted at Identity Campaigning.

You may have heard about Natural England’s One Million Children campaign. This is recognition of the phenomenon that has been mentioned in recent posts- e.g. Richard Louv’s Nature deficit disorder.

What interests me as a practitioner is how identity campaigning could be used in this opportunity. From what I can see on Natural England’s website the campaign is very much targeted at getting children outdoors and then hoping this will influence them to become custodians of the outdoors. Whilst this is a laudable and highly welcome campaign, one could suggest that our experience of 40 years of environmental education in a context of rising materialism indicates that this hope might not be realised.

Could we engage with the people at the top of Natural England to suggest that the campaign should explicitly address the value of nature to the children? A campaign like this could be so much more powerful if coupled with the ‘deconstructing’ of advertising and materialistic concepts and the relation to them and harm to the environment which is suggested in Identity Campaigning (Part II top of page 33).

Jim Mitchell

About Jim Mitchell

I work in the field of interpretation - meaning interpreting our heritage, both natural and social, to help people understand and gain a sense of place. In my current role I work for a National Park Authority, previously I have plied my trade with councils, charities and in land management, as well as working as a tourist/wildlife guide. In this vein I’ve been involved with many forms of communication - publications, face to face, events, websites, walks, talks, trails, visitor centres, etc. One of my main interests is how experiences can shape attitudes (and consequently behaviour), in particular those experienced in nature or ‘wild’ settings. I’m interested in how childhood experience shapes values as well as those who come to the natural world later in life.
  • tim kasser

    Jim,

    I think you raise a very important point. It would be great to point these issues out to the organizers of this campaign and see how they respond. There might be some excellent opportunities for collaboration here.