Environmental Education

Everyone can benefit from taking part in nature projects, but for some people access to the natural world can have extra therapeutic benefits. Access to green space has been shown to have wide-ranging benefits, including improvements to confidence and self-esteem, communication skills and physical activity levels. There is also evidence that spending time in greenspace can have a restorative effect on mental wellbeing. Our staff have a great deal of experience providing therapeutic projects to groups as wide-ranging as mental health services, learning disability groups, black and minority ethnic groups, children with special educational needs, and Woman’s Aid groups. We can provide individual sessions or longer-term projects.

Branching Out is a Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) project which provides conservation and greenspace on referral for mental health services. Caledonian Conservation Ltd has fully delivered and assisted with Branching Out groups, including the Compass Centre refugee and asylum seekers mental health service at Rouken Glen Country Park, and at Plean Country Park with Forth Valley College.

As a registered John Muir Award provider, we are always happy to help groups who want to work towards any level of their John Muir Award. Any of our long-term projects (e.g. Branching Out) can be adapted to fit in with the requirements of the John Muir Award scheme. We can also help you come up with a proposal for the award.

We can work with any groups or individuals to come up with your own project ideas. This can range from a one-off event (e.g. a bird guided walk or a den-building event) to long-term projects. We are happy to work with people from any age, background or interest. Previous projects have included providing workshops at the Glasgow Council Biodiversity Action Day, teaching adult volunteers and school children about minibeasts at Urban Roots, and a series of summer nature workshops for Doune Community Woodland Group. We can also help produce interpretive materials and leaflets for projects, and have previously provided photographs for interpretation panels. We can also provide high-quality photographs of projects run, as part of our services, if required.

We regularly give talks and presentations to schools, universities, clubs and special interest groups. These have ranged from species specific talks to general talks about Scottish Conservation or working with wildlife. Depending upon the topic and proposed audience we may be able to give these for free or at a low cost rate. In addition, we are able to provide input into more formal education courses as guest lecturer. For example, Director Chris Cathrine was recently guest lecturer for much of the Animal Diversity course at the University of the West of Scotland. We have also been involved in a wide range of media productions, not least the recent 16 Legs film about spiders starring Stephen Fry and Neil Gaiman.