nature screen - our mission
we connect children to nature to transform their learning experience and improve their mental health and wellbeing
1. How Nature Screen improves children’s mental health and wellbeing
Research by NHS Digital shows that around six in every class of thirty children are struggling with a mental health difficulty. In some classes this may be as high as ten children. It is most prevalent in urban settings and among more susceptible groups where parents cannot afford out of school activities. We know that exposure to nature is an effective way to help these children but it is difficult for teachers to take children out of class and access nature directly. To meet this challenge, Nature Screen offers ‘digital nature’, delivered via the classroom white board or screen. It reinforces and complements a wide spectrum of approaches to mental health and wellbeing: whole class, small group or individual interventions. It also offers a coherent resource for a whole school strategy of social and emotional learning to reinforce the positive wellbeing of all children. It gives teachers a flexible and child-centred response to a variety of needs that can be deployed at any time of the school day.
2. How Nature Screen Transforms the school climate for learning
Nature Screen fosters a positive climate for learning. It does not displace existing successful learning strategies, nor does it add to cognitive load (or teacher workload). It brings nature into the classroom, changing the teaching and learning environment and helping children manage their emotions, pay attention, be creative and enjoy learning. This transformation is achieved through screening high quality digital video and audio recordings of nature that develop on the screen, uninterrupted and unmediated, for up to an hour. These Nature Screen experiences act on the brain in a similar way to first hand encounters with the natural world - with the inherent benefits and changes in behaviour. Like nature, it rewards attention and inattention equally and operates on an individual and group level. It offers almost unlimited scope for teachers to make meaningful connections across the curriculum.
3. How Nature Screen connects children and young people to nature
With Nature Screen, schools can include nature as part of children’s everyday experience, weaving it into the consciousness of every child. This is critical because we know that children and young people need to feel connected to nature in order to develop pro-environmental behaviours into adulthood. Of course, we want to inspire a connection with authentic nature experiences, so we ensure that Nature Screen will mesh seamlessly with initiatives such as the National Education Nature Parks. We believe that through Nature Screen and ‘digital nature’, we can offer both a complementary experience and a beautiful alternative for those who are less able to enjoy direct access. By doing so we hope Nature Screen will connect a diverse audience with nature and contribute to the essential goal of combatting climate change and saving our planet (see below).
“Saving our planet is now a communication challenge”
Sir David Attenborough 2020
4. the Nature Screen vision for digital nature interventions
Through Nature Screen, we are developing a system of both diagnosis and prescription of digital nature experiences to support children’s learning and ensure all children can flourish. We want to put children at the centre of this process by encouraging them to think about how they feel and enabling them to choose appropriate nature experiences for themselves - our Nature Team is an example of this approach. This applies as much to those without identified needs as to more susceptible groups, avoiding the problem of shining a light on certain children and stigmatising them. Nature Screen is developing further tools to assist with this assessment and support, both teacher and child led, but it is not intended to be a targeted intervention per se. Instead we hope it is seen as part of a positive and healthy schools culture that foregrounds an environmental dimension to social and emotional learning and places mental health and wellbeing at the centre of everything schools do.