NatureMind Conference, Preston, June 2024
The Mind and Body team were inspired after attending the NatureMind 2024 conference at the Westleigh Conference Centre, Preston on Friday 7th June, put on by Mind over Mountains in conjunction with the University of Lancashire. The conference was for practitioners, academics, commissioners, social prescribers, policy makers and all those with an interest in the power of nature and physical activity in supporting mental health. We had talks from an inspiration line up speakers, supported by a rich variety of break out workshop sessions, most of which were held outdoors in nature.
The day was expertly hosted by Dr Radha Modgil and followed the three key perspectives – that of practitioners, prescribers and policy makers. Each of the three panel sessions were inspiring and motivating for the audience, with other delegates sharing the Mind and Body view that we had been given a strong “call to action”.
There are a rich variety of projects already underway and clearly interest and enthusiasm at government level to drive things forwards. There was an emphasis on community engagement and activities reaching all parts of society. The message came across strongly that we should focus on innovating projects and activities that will bring about the outcomes we’re looking for and then go and find the funding to do them. There is some funding around, one of the barriers is accessing this though with access being fragmented and hard to secure. The talk from Jim Burt, Executive Director of Strategy, National Academy of Social Prescribing gave us hope with new of plans to widen the scope of delivery to include all 42 ICSs across the UK.
The Climbing Matter project described by its founder Richard Chapman is an amazing 5-week climbing course designed to aid the treatment and management of trauma and severe mental health challenges. The project receives support from Turning Point and has successfully had graduates apply for training to become climbing instructors, gaining a whole new career as a result of being on the course.
The delegates were given an interesting message by Rhoda Wilkinson, Head of Community Engagement at Lancashire Wildlife Trust. She encouraged the group to look outside the NHS for funding green Social Prescribing, suggesting that there were opportunities for other agencies and a different approach. Tim Rigg, a GP from Frome, detailed the pilot project conducted into social prescribing in Frome which was fascinating, especially looking at the model developed of community involvement.
Mind and Body’s key take aways were:
- A personal challenge to think of innovative ways to engage more people with nature
- A sense of urgency around nature connectivity
- Connection with nature if what makes us healthy and is key to our survival
- Current thinking is quite short term, society would do well to think more long term and use nature as a preventative agenda for many issues
- It would be wise to train more professionals to be comfortable working in the outdoors
- There is a wider picture around education for us all about how utterly vital nature connectivity is to our health and wellbeing
So lots of new connections made and things to consider for the future.