The Outdoors and Health film is now available on YouTube.

Well, after my last update work continued on the Outdoors and Health Network film. I spent the day in Edinburgh with Gareth from Sound View Media filming the last of the ‘talking heads’  and then Melanie went down to Plymouth at the end of last week to work on the final editing with the team of professionals.

We did have some fun making the film but really it has a very serious message. As William Bird says in the final section of the film ”The natural environment is vital to human health and well being if we fail to understand its full potential it will be a great opportunity lost.” Lets hope the film does a good job of conveying our message from this project. Let us know what you think, you can see it on our home page. Outdoors Health Network.

As the year long OHN project draws to a close everyone is busily putting the finishing touches to all the reports and database and other interesting research outputs we have been working on. There have been some other very, very exciting developments though… we’re making a film!! Not a Hollywood blockbuster kind of feature length multi-million pound job with superstar actors. No, no we are making a different kind of film, a short film. Everyone knows that researchers find out all sorts of interesting things but communicating the findings of their work is not the easiest thing to do.  We decided that it would be really interesting to join the social media bandwagon and make a short film that could be used on this website, be posted on you tube and used in presentations.

This film idea was first mooted when Melanie Smith and I travelled down to Plymouth earlier this year. We visited the Eden project to meet Philip Waters to hear about his Mud between your Toes programme and then met up with Michael Depledge and Ben Wheeler at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry for a buddying session. There have been a number of buddying sessions going on throughout this project. They basically allow OHN members to visit each others institutions to spend time ‘on the job’ with researchers from a different subject area. We met Michael and Ben and during our discussions the film idea was born. Michael had already made one such film for the Blue Gym project. We were lucky to have a chance to meet the Blue Gym team while we were down there and discussed their award-winning film and how links could be made between the network and their work.

The film will tell a little bit of what we have been doing and aims to communicate to policy-makers and funders the need for more research in the area of outdoors and health and the need for interdisciplinary collaboration i.e. we need to all work together to try and understand better the interactions between people and the outdoors and what types of environments and activities give the biggest, best and (most interesting to policy-makers at the moment) most cost-effective health benefits.

Some of the network members have been roped in as ‘talking heads’ on the film. William Bird MBE, Strategic Health Advisor to Natural England, GP and all round advocate of green exercise and health walking has taking the leading role. Catharine Ward Thompson, Pete Higgins and Ben Wheeler will speak about their research areas and what are the most important research questions they have and Marcus Sangster will give the policy-makers perspective. The film-maker is trying to find a 20 minute slot in Michael’s schedule to get a soundbite from him and Clare Freeman from Dorset County Council has been talking about how people doing ‘on the ground’ work need evidence to back up and inform their work. Her team were filmed showing off their fabulous outdoor fitness equipment at Poole Park, lcukily during this weeks spell of good weather.  Gareth Allen from SoundView Media, the film-maker, has been out and about filming in locations including Plymouth Hoe, Dartmoor and one of the Mentro Allan projects in Wales.

The Caerphilly based Stepping Out project is part of the nation-wide Mentro Allan initiave and aims to help disadvantaged people to increase their physical activity levels by using the outdoors. Gareth met up with a group of people with learning difficulties as they took part in a group walking session and an afternoon of archery in the Welsh sunshine.

Next week I am meeting Gareth in Edinburgh for the last day of filming. We will speak to Catharine about landscape researchers interests in this area, Pete Higgins about the role of the outdoors in the health of children and young people. Marcus Sangster will speak about the role of research evidence on the outdoors and health in forestry policy-making and the opportunities for mutual benefits through collaboration for public agencies and academics interested in this field.

Next it will be off to the editing suite where all the fabulous camera shots of lots of lovely outdoor locations will be combined with some stunning stills provided by Wild Media Foundation to make the final product. Melanie will ‘premiere’ the film in her presentation at the UIBEN meeting with the research councils in September. Check back here soon to see the film for yourself…