You might have seen the headlines last week? Another piece of research reporting that we are losing touch with nature, that we don’t get enough ‘Wild Time’ in our lives and that we aren’t able to pass enough of this knowledge onto our children.

It is always helpful to get more evidence that we have a problem, but at times it feels like we continue to go over the same old ground – we have a problem, the scale of the disconnection is shocking and the impacts are huge. The problem is, talking about a problem doesn’t make it go away. Developing programmes that address the symptoms are great, but until we can start to get to the root of the deep systemic reasons then we’ll never truly start to turn it around.

Over 90% of parents believe that Wild Time is vital for their children, but despite this all the evidence suggests that Wild Time is declining. We are not getting enough and it is having impacts on us as individuals, communities and on nature.

So the question we’re asking at the Wild Network now is not how do we reconnect children, their families and communities to nature, but rather how can we overcome the profound barriers that are in place that stop us from getting enough of it, despite the vast majority of people believing in it’s benefits.

If Wild Time is so good for us, why are we all failing to get enough of it? What is stopping us? How we can we start to overcome these barriers?

More action, less talk.

What are we going to do about it?

The Wild Network has been a stand-alone organisation for nearly three years now and over that time we’ve been constantly learning about how best to involve our community and focus our efforts to serve this issue. All this whilst seeking the right funding and organisational model to keep us moving forward.

What is clear to us now is that we need to do more, much more, to address the issues at the heart of the problem, these barriers, Fear, Time, Space, Tech that prevent people from actually getting the Wild Time that they recognise is good for them and their families. So this is what we’re going to do:

• We’ll be sharing the stories of the people, organisations and communities out there who are finding ways of building Wild Time into their lives. We hope that these glimpses of a rewilded childhood can help us all to take more action in our own lives.

• We’ll form unique collaborations that develop new innovations to break down the barriers to Wild Time through our Wild Labs process. Through these programmes we intend to create new products and initiatives that become active interventions that we can all apply in our lives.

How to get involved:

Send us stories of the people and organisations rewilding childhood.

We want to uncover the best and wildest people and ideas in the UK. Over the last three years we have been fortunate to have been introduced to many amazing people and places who are doing incredible work. We think these stories have the power to inspire us all to take action, but we want to capture more of them. We want to discover the pioneers, the people pushing the boundaries of this issue – it might be you, your colleagues, friends or other people or places that you know or visit. Please do share them with us [email protected] and let us know what inspires you. 

Organise one of 250 free screenings of Project Wild Thing.

Over 1 million people have seen the film and it has proven to be a powerful way to kickstart the sort of detailed and complex conversations that need to happen in families and communities if we are to start to address these issues. Find a venue, some wild things to share it with, screen the film and have those conversations where you live and work.

Sign up to the Wild Times newsletter

To inspire you to get out there. It’s free. And we only send it fortnightly. Just enter your email address, click Sign Up and we will share our regular curation of wildness with you.

Pledge to support Wild Labs

If you are a funder, brand or NGO who want to be part of our Wild Labs coalition to specifically develop new ways of breaking down the barriers to Wild Time then we’d love to hear from you. You can read more about Wild Labs and pledge your commitment to it here.