Nearby Nature

Nearby Nature: A walkshop to connect with urban nature, developed by Caitlyn Forster, Dieter Hochuli and Zoë Sadokierski, in collaboration with headspace: Youth National Mental Health Foundation. The first iteration of the walkshop was held at Oatley Park on 16 November 2023. This is part of an ongoing series of walkshops developed alongside the larger Urban Field Naturalist project.

In this iteration, Dieter provided information and stories about local plant and animal species we observed, and Zoë led exercises developed for this location from the Urban Field Naturalist book, to ground participants in place and sketch observations of what we could see, hear, smell and feel (no tasting!) A few of the exercises are below:

The workshop is the first iteration in what we aim to be a program headspace can run nationally, led by their staff rather than needing us to deliver it. This will take further testing and development.