Providing opportunities for communities to reconnect to the landscape and heritage through a programme of healthy outdoor activities.
Delivery Lead Organisation: BFER Team / Imogen Radford (Volunteer and Outdoor Swimming Society representative) / West Stow Country Park
The Brecks Wellbeing Festival was a event hosted by this project in collaboration with the Restoration Trust on Wednesday 13th March, in Thetford in the heart of the Brecks. The event provided an opportunity for health care organisations and social prescribers to learn about and connect with local heritage, nature, and arts organisations offering wellbeing activities.
You can read about more about the event through the link below.
To provide opportunities for communities to reconnect to the landscape and heritage through a programme of healthy outdoor activities
To engage people in healthy outdoor activities, including learning to enjoy the waters safely and with care for the environment; and in mapping, recognising, establishing and publicising suitable places to swim or for other recreational uses of the rivers
To provide opportunities for those audience most in need, and ‘hard to engage’ audiences in supported and fun outdoor activities.
To create sustainable, mutually beneficial partnerships and links between BFER partners, heritage organisations and local and regional public health providers, support groups and charities.
This project successfully connected communities to the Landscape through a programme of health and wellbeing focussed activities. It engaged with a wide range of audiences, but elements will focus on, supporting those with mental and physical health issues, and those who are socially isolated or excluded through illness or addiction. Activities included the creation, conservation and restoration of wetland, riparian woodland, and wild space as well as more traditional accessible outdoor activities.
The project sought to push at increasingly opening doors at NHS trusts and other health care providers to create new links and partnership to benefit communities. It provided the basis for the BFER scheme’s ‘Health Benefits’ monitoring and evaluation aspirations by providing an evidence base for demonstrating the benefits of outdoor activities.
This project also engaged people with outdoor swimming in the Brecks through a series of swimming events, and training of volunteer Open Water Swimming lifeguards. It engaged with a variety of audiences to reconnect people to the joy of swimming outdoors, enabling them to enjoy the water safely and to mitigate risks.
Half of the activities in our Healing Waters project involved actually getting into the waters! This strand of the project was created and run by Imogen Radford who, as well as running introduction events, social events and lifeguard training events, also created a number of resources related to outdoor swimming. You can download these resources below:
