Active Earth evening

I was recently put in touch with the people at Active Earth and last week I found myself helping out at a night they put on in Edinburgh. Active Earth run training workshops and facilitate experiences that give everyone from high powered executives to students and young people the chance to re-establish a connection with the natural world.

The overall goal of this project is both to benefit the person and also to benefit the environment. If a person feels a direct connection with the natural world, if they appreciate and value our natural resources, they are more likely to want to protect it and strive to live in a more sustainable fashion. This is a shift away from the traditional environmental lobby approach which tends to create a feeling of guilt and focuses on what we have to give up, instead this aims to give people a greater understanding of what they have to gain by protecting the environment.

As a landscape and nature photographer I was invited along to talk at one of their events in Edinburgh and help facilitate a discussion group. I printed off a range of landscape images and these were distributed about the tables as props to help the flow of discussions about nature. It was a very enjoyable evening, with lots of interesting people and plenty of lively interesting chat. Head over to their website to find out more about them, they are planning another evening in Edinburgh soon and it should be very interesting to go back to.