‘Children and Nature: Why they need each other’ was the title of a seminar held last week at the Royal Botanic Garden’s Australian Garden in Cranbourne, Melbourne.
The speaker was Tim Gill, one of the UK’s leading thinkers on childhood. Tim has spent over 15 years focusing on the changing nature of childhood, children’s play and free time and their evolving relationships with the people and places around them. He has written on risk and how our risk adverse society has had impacts on child development and socialisation. Last year Tim authored a report for the City of London entitled ‘Sowing the Seeds- Reconnecting Children with Nature’ and he spoke of the challenges and opportunities in creating nature experiences in a city with 1.1million children under the age of 12yrs with a rate of child poverty of 1/3.
The seminar was co-presented by the Victorian Child & Nature Connection of which I am a co-founder and Health Advisor. I think the relationship between our children and nature is important and fundamental for wellbeing- I hope you will take the time to listen to the podcast of Tim Gill’s interview on the abc, link below or even peruse the report at http://www.londonsdc.org/documents/Sowing%20the%20Seeds%20-%20Full%20Report.pdf
Dr Dimity Williams- National Management Committee Member, DEA.