CHE graduate Ann Nix has recently taken up a post with conservation charity BTCV starting up Green Gym groups in Renfrewshire, Scotland. Ann writes: Green Gym is a concept that was developed in Oxfordshire in 1997 by a local GP and BTCV working in partnership. Working outdoors with other volunteers to improve local green spaces has multiple health, environmental and social benefits. Many people need to keep physically active but working out in a gym or playing competitive sports is not appealing to everyone. There is also a mental health benefit associated with contact with nature and spending time in green spaces.

Renfrewshire has several areas of multiple deprivation where rates of long-term illness, suicide and self-harm are above average. One of these is Linwood, where the Fair Share Trust funded a pilot to test the community’s response to Green Gym. In Linwood the project has been a huge success. We have ten to twelve volunteers out each week, about half from the local Disability Resource Centre and includung others who have suffered from a range of health problems from heart attacks to depression. Good friendships have been formed and the team have achieved a lot already in the local area. Projects include making and installing nest boxes in the local woodlands, helping to maintain the community garden, footpath improvements, work in school grounds and looking after a stretch of the National Cycle Network which passes through Linwood.

At the end of October two new groups will be starting up in Paisley, and the aim is to have six Green Gyms operating in Renfrewshire by the end of my three year contract. It is a lovely job and I feel privileged to be working outside much of the time and with such good friends. In some ways it seems a million miles from my previous career as a local studies librarian, but actually they have a great deal in common. Essentially both are about connecting people with the place where they live and this is surely also something a the very base of human ecology.

For more information on the Green Gym programme, please visit:  www2.btcv.org.uk/display/greengym.