Walshe, N; Moula, Z; Lee, E; (2020) Eco-Capabilities: Making nature explicit in children’s drawings about wellbeing. Presented at: North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) 2020 Virtual Conference on Environmental Education, Online conference.

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Abstract

Global interest in children’s wellbeing is growing and is now central to major international policy documents regarding children’s life quality. Substantial benefits for wellbeing may be derived from contact with nature; despite this, in the last 30 years the number of children regularly playing in wild places fell by 90% and children living with high deprivation are significantly less likely to have access to green spaces. An innovative way to address this is through art in outdoor places; there is evidence that separately both nature and the arts can improve wellbeing and social inclusion. The Eco-Capabilities project is situated at the intersection of these issues. It builds on Sen’s work on capabilities as a proxy for wellbeing, developing the term eco-capabilities to describe how children define what they feel they need to live a fully good life through environmental sustainability, social justice and future economic wellbeing. We will undertake arts-based practice with 8-year old children in two primary schools in Cambridgeshire, UK (fieldwork has been delayed as a result of Covid-19). The project deliberately focuses on children living with high deprivation who generally have less access both to green spaces and the arts. This poster presents data from the pre-intervention stage of the project which explored children’s wellbeing through their drawings and discussions. Ninety-one seven and eight-year old children from two primary schools in areas of relatively high deprivation in eastern England participated. We identified indicators of wellbeing that were made explicit in children’s drawings, such as the need for safety, happiness and positive relationships; however, of note was that indicators of the environment and nature were prolific but generally remained implicit. We analysed these findings through the theoretical lenses of positive psychology, self-actualisation, social mentality and the human-nature relationship, and ultimately speculate that these implicit references to nature in children’s drawings could be because of a tendency towards taking for granted the presence of nature for positive wellbeing. We suggest that making nature explicit, and restoring the interconnectedness between the arts and nature in the current literature, should be a priority for future research and practice on children’s wellbeing.

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