Monbiot & Rewilding
On reading and responding to George Monbiot’s ‘Feral. Rewilding the land, sea and Human Life’ ……
‘Of all the world’s creatures,’ says Monbiot, ‘perhaps those in the greatest need of rewilding are our children. The collapse of children’s engagement with nature has been ever faster than the collapse of the natural world. In the turning of one generation, the outdoor life in which many of us were immersed has gone. Since the 1970s the area in which children may roam without supervision in the UK has decreased by almost 90 per cent, while the proportion of children regularly playing in wild places has fallen from over half to fewer than one in ten. Parents are wrongly terrified of strangers and rightly terrified of the traffic. The ecosystem of the indoor world has become ever richer and more engaging …..’
A key aim of Arts Lab is to assist with this rewilding of our children through engagement in the arts. We see the importance of reconnecting dynamically not just with nature but with people and places immediately around us – in our schools, at work and play, in our relationships. Allowing exploration, experimentation and the unexpected. Allowing children to be left with art resources and equipment from which to choose and find their own means of expression. They can then effectively learn, have individual voice and be altogether better equipped for our increasingly complex world.
