Summer school nature project

Children’s Nature Photography Project
7 October 2024

We worked with celebrated psychiatrist Dr Lynne Jones and the Penwith Landscape Partnership (PLP) on a fantastic Children’s Nature Photography project with children from Mousehole School in 2021. 

The children were given a photography workshop and a camera and taken out into the local countryside and asked to look closely at the world around them, and to take photographs of things that were important to them. There was then an editing and discussion process, where the children were encouraged to express their feelings on their local environment, and to give some advice and their thoughts to the leaders of the G7 (which was happening in a nearby village at this time). 

The resulting photographs and their comments were then printed professionally and were exhibited at the hall for two weeks. The feedback we had from members of public viewing this exhibition was incredible, with many people expressing how this exhibition had made them think, and how impressed they were with the project.

All pictures and accompanying texts can be found here.

Here is an evaluation piece written by Dr Lynne Jones:

The selected classes comprised thirty 8–10-year-olds, split into two groups of 15. The morning began with a brief talk from the Penwith Landscape Partnership giving the history of the area and showing some of the things the children might see. We then took the first 15 up to the Beacon, distributed easy to use point and shoot cameras, and gave a brief lesson on how to use them. We emphasised that this was not about being a great photographer, but about enjoying looking and taking pictures of whatever caught their attention. The presence of 5 adults including myself meant that each of us was responsible for keeping 3 allocated children in line of site.

What happened next was magical. I had thought they might simply take selfies or ponies but on the contrary, the children became engrossed in the natural world around them, finding detail I would never have seen and sharing it with each other. Far from three hours being too long   we had to run round collecting the children up when it was time to go.

The second stage of the project was delayed by Lockdown as schools were closed and isolation imposed. However, I was able to take the project up again in May of 2021 to complete the story telling component.

This was simple. Each child met with me alone and reviewed their pictures. They had had access to them online during the year, but now we put them on a large screen, and they were asked to choose their favourite one for public exhibition. The choice was completely their own and not influenced by me in anyway. With children who had taken many pictures (some had taken more than 100) I suggested they first chose their top 10 and look more closely at those to make the final choice. After they had chosen, I asked if they could tell me what they liked about the picture and why they had chosen it. They could say as much or as little as they liked. Most children wanted to speak, but if they were very shy, I used three prompts to encourage them:

  • What do you remember about taking pictures/the day?
  • What do you think/feel when looking at this picture now?
  • Is there anything you want to say about nature in general?

The delay caused by Lockdown had also created another opportunity. Cornwall was about to host the meeting of the G7 in a hotel some 25 minutes from the school. I asked if the children knew who was coming to Cornwall. Every single child did because another school project had discussed the G7 visit. So, I added a second component to the project. I asked if alongside their story about the picture, they wished to include a message to the G7 politicians- it was completely up to them – many of them did.

Finally, after the pictures and text had been laid out in PDF format prior to printing I met with each child again to allow them to view their work and check the text visually. If they wanted to change, add, or remove anything, they were able to do so. The results then went on exhibition in the Solomon Browne Hall and online.  Local radio also covered the event, allowing some children to read their stories on air.

We also gave children the opportunity to provide anonymous feedback on the project. 29 of the 30 children filled in an anonymous questionnaire, the results of which are in table 1. They show that the majority of children enjoyed the project, noticed things in nature they had never noticed before, felt that it connected them to nature, and that it would be good for other children.  A majority also enjoyed sending a message to politicians and were straightforward in saying what they wanted. Here is 9-year-old Beau Eustace telling politicians to engage with nature themselves:

You should spend time with people or in nature. You should get out more and see more, then you would be happier and different, and take more care of things like trees, bushes, plants and animals; because we need trees so we can breathe, and we need animals like bees. Animals make us happy.

The feedback from the project is in keeping with the increasing number of studies that show that connecting children to nature is beneficial to their health and wellbeing. One study of 450 primary school children found that participating in supervised outdoor activities improved children’s wellbeing and health, increased their sense of connection to nature and their pro-environmental values. The increases were greatest for those children who had had the lowest amount of exposure to nature previous to the study.[i]

I will leave the last words to 8 year old Oliver Hook:

I want to be a nature boy, not a screen boy who’s inside all day. Nature’s more interesting. YouTube is cool, and gaming, but nature is more important. It helps us breathe, it helps us live, how can we do without it?

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Good mental and emotional wellbeing starts in childhood. To support local children, we run a summer…

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