Study title

This project is the first work package of the UKRI-NERC funded ‘Voices of the Future: Collaborating with Young People to reimagine Treescapes’ The aim of this particular sub-project is to map and evaluate the ethos, activities, structure and impact of organisations and initiatives in the UK which seek to engage young people (age 12-24 years) in nature connection, place change and/or environmental activism in rural and urban environments. Depending on the group remit and context, we were particularly interested in opportunities and barriers to involvement by children and young people from commonly marginalised backgrounds. This will inform shared understandings of what constitutes genuine, effective and sustained inclusion and power for Children and Young People (CYP) with supporting their potential influence with regard to changing UK treescapes (woodlands, parks, street trees). There will be a digital resource to demonstrate good practice and innovation in this field.The future of treescapes belongs to children and young people. Yet there is a lack of interdisciplinary research that explores their engagement with treescapes over time. This project aims to re-imagine future treescapes with children and young people, working with local and national partners including Natural England, Forest Research and the Community Forests and Scottish stakeholders. We will identify opportunities and barriers to treescape expansion and pilot innovative child and youth-focused pathways to realising this goal. We will create curricula material which will be disseminated with the support of our project partners, Early Childhood Outdoors and the Chartered College of Teachers. The aim of this project is to integrate children and young people's knowledge, experiences, and hopes with scientific knowledge of how trees adapt to and mitigate climate change in order to co-produce new approaches to creating and caring for resilient treescapes that benefit the environment and society....