What are Wild Labs? And why Birmingham?

Our Wild Labs collaboration with Swarm is a core part of our on-going work. Through Wild Labs we will be working with partners to pioneer new ways to rewild families, communities and schools. We’ll be exploring how we can overcome the really complex issues that we all face through new initiatives and collaborations to grow Wild Time.

Our latest Wild Lab has been about reimagining the City of Birmingham as a wild city.  Massive thanks to the 130 of you that shared your insights into the barriers stopping Wild Time from happening in the Birmingham and also the people and organisations pioneering a wilder side to the city.

We learned a huge amount about the importance of supporting communities to take more control of their spaces, to be more actively involved in shaping the way they are used. All of which will require new ways of encouraging more people to participate, to feel that they have a say and can a voice in their community. This to us is the heart of being wild again.

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks working with Birmingham City Council to understand how we might fund and deliver a range of outputs that includes a process of working directly with some specific communities to build interventions that actively re-wild their spaces.

We made a short film to support the first phase of the project. We think that it brings the idea to life really nicely and we’re starting to use it as we meet funders, backers and partners for the next phase of the project.

This is just the beginning for Wild Labs in Birmingham and we hope to have some exciting news about our next Wild Lab challenge very soon.

In the meantime please do get in touch if you come across any initiatives, in Birmingham or beyond or if you have any bright ideas that you think could fit well with this wild city vision.