Reconnecting with our roots - An Interview with Wild in the City
For Beth Collier, the founder and Chief Executive of Wild and City, everything the organisation does has to be rooted in authenticity. From training nature guides to influencing policy, her team ensures that people of colour don’t just build a relationship with nature but are also equipped with cultural and ancestral knowledge and tools that they can pass on to future generations.
Wild in the City at a glance…
Founded in… 2013 and became a non-profit CIC in 2016.
Specialise in… Nature Allied Psychotherapeutic support on relationship with nature, Woodland living skills, learning through oral tradition and ancestral ecological knowledge.
Biggest achievement… Nature Guide programme training people of colour as leaders in nature, influencing national conversations on dynamics of race in nature while centering Black perspectives.
Community size… Core staff team of seven, supporting a national network of hundreds of participants and volunteers.
One thing they want you to know… We use the skills of our ancestors to nurture a deeper a relationship with the natural world and a sense of belonging to communities past and present.
Find them on… wildinthecity.org.uk, Instagram and LinkedIn.
How does your work build transformative spaces for People of Colour?
When I trained as a psychotherapist I started to question why I was sitting in a box with white walls and a very sterile environment talking about people’s emotional health. Instead, I started to take clients out into the natural world. The transformation in people was self-evident, particularly with children who were able to express heavy emotions in a more constructive way in a natural setting. Instead of being labelled as disruptive, they’re observant, explorative, leaders…
I then developed a modality of psychotherapeutic practice called ‘Nature Allied Psychotherapy’ which centralises the relationship with nature as both a co-therapist and as a healing element. We find our sense of self and belonging in nature. I do this work alongside running Wild in the City. Both practices emerged as an awakening to my own authenticity and integrity. I started training other therapists. Then I started Wild in the City in 2013 to build an organisation where we could reach many more people, particularly communities of colour.
I was aware that many of my Black and Asian friends were reticent about going out into nature, and when I’d say, “Why not be or spend time in nature?”, they’d respond with something like, “It’s boring,” or a dismissive comment. But if you stuck with the conversation, they would share how much they enjoyed nature back at their grandmother’s house in Jamaica, or when they return to India, and you realise there’s a block that initially comes up, but there is a deep yearning to spend more time in the natural world.
How did you figure out what gaps Wild in the City was best suited to tackle?
I started to conduct ethnographic research, looking at the relationship people of colour have with nature in the UK. And then at Wild in the City we continued this through our Nature Connectors programme, visiting different local habitats, wetlands, woodlands and exploring our felt senses of how it was to be there, learning about the ecology of the space and why certain plants and animals lived there and the related symbiosis. We had conversations about the barriers and how we’re made to feel when we’re in natural spaces.
With Wild in the City, we focus on creating welcoming spaces to support communities of colour to find a sense of belonging in nature and the countryside here in the UK. The Nature Allied Psychotherapy approach gives us time to help people address the trauma of that disconnect and allows space to build a community response to try to repair the breaks. For a lot of people there’s a sense of real violence in why they haven’t had that connection to nature. When there is time to reflect on it, there is a sense of anger – “Why was this taken away from me? I could have had this my whole life.”
What role does ancestral learning play in your work?
For those of us lucky enough to have been on a walk with a grandparent who's familiar with the local habitat, when you find something interesting, you go back and you show it to your grandparent. They could name it or tell you a story about it, or they might point out something of interest to you. You're learning through the relationship, and their knowledge which is probably coming from their elders. It’s very much rooted in an oral tradition and relationship. It’s in contrast to an experience a lot of our members have had, where it’s about handout information sheets and being spoken down to. We call what we do ‘The Grandparent Model’.
“When you find something interesting, you go back and you show it to your grandparent. They could name it or tell you a story about it, or they might point out something of interest to you.”
I bring my bushcraft and woodland living skills, the therapeutic work, but also an understanding of natural history and ecology. Most of my knowledge comes from growing up on a small holding in Suffolk being surrounded by country people.
There, as a child I spent most of my time gardening or roaming across open fields and woodlands - that was my playground. I really enjoyed discovering how I could meet my needs in nature such as the basics of going to the loo or reading the weather so I could stay out longer. I built emotional and spiritual relationships with nature, as well as this practical one. But as much as it was idyllic in terms of the immersiveness in nature, my childhood was very isolating racially and culturally. I was the only one in my community.
Later in life when I went back to Zimbabwe and the villages where my relatives lived, I realised there exists a very real connection to culture and ancestry that's beyond time and space, that I was able to access as a child. Ancestral presence is available wherever we are. It involves an embodied sense of knowledge and knowing. As a child I experienced a very deep sense of belonging to something I didn’t have the words for at the time, but, then later in life because of these trips, the work I had done in the human rights field and the psychotherapy work I was doing, I was able to piece it all together.
“I realised there exists a very real connection to culture and ancestry that's beyond time and space, that I was able to access as a child. Ancestral presence is available wherever we are.”
At Wild in the City, we set up a yearlong Nature Guides training programme where we supported people of colour to be leaders in nature. It’s based primarily on oral tradition. We now have Senior Nature Guides. We have got to a place where we can employ them or take them on as freelancers.
With other people to lead the training, I can focus on research, and thought leadership and policy. I do as much as I can whilst being pulled still into the more delivery and operations side of things. Our aim is to have a communications team and research team with parliamentary affairs and policy staff, so we can be at the table giving voice to our experience where decisions are made.
How do you operate as an organisation?
The first eight years of Wild in the City, was largely self-sustained. We've never really had ‘good funding’ until the last couple of recent years, and this is with the background of being an organisation in constant demand.
We have been lucky enough to have had a good profile through the research that we do, but that doesn’t mean it generates remuneration funding or NGOs creating budgets to say ’Come work with us on this’. There has been that real struggle of being in demand, so in some ways being valued, but not actually valued in a way where we're going to be remunerated so we can create budgets and employ staff.
Throughout the years we’ve had amazing people work with us, many of whom have also been therapists. We have a great sense of team. Our team meetings are very therapeutic, reflective gatherings on the socio-politics of the ecological system that we're working within; the struggle to decolonise, be seen as credible peers, and the emotional, mental health toll that that takes.
How do you stay true to your values?
I'm lucky to be embedded within a Black team. When we speak amongst us, we normalise our perspectives. We’ll have discussed at length and analyse our perspectives on a particular issue. When we go into the wider world, we often forget that what we say might feel quite striking to some people, because we're assertive about our perspective.
And when we do speak, we speak as if we're speaking to Black and Asian others, knowing that others will be experiencing what we're experiencing. That's who we're speaking to, but we’re also aware that the white, middle class environmental field will also be looking, but not necessarily adapting or adjusting because of that.
There is a jarring reality when the sector is saying, “Let’s do diversity.” But to do it well, you need to help the organisations – the people of colour led organisations - that are doing most of the work on the ground to really engage. There's always a dance of trying to name this as much as you can, within the capacity that you have, without then undermining business as normal, and all the other functions that we need to get to. But I think it’s very important to speak the truth of what we are experiencing.
“We’ve committed to: ‘We'd rather go slowly with the right people than rush ahead with the wrong people’ strategy. We need to live our values.”
We've got some great partnerships, and that's visible. What probably isn't visible is all of the failures, and they've been a lot. We’ve committed to: ‘We'd rather go slowly with the right people than rush ahead with the wrong people’ strategy. We need to live our values. We hold out for things that both feel aligned and also for those individuals who get it. They listen to us about what our challenges are and are proactive in sharing responsibility for the impact of racism. For example, when looking for ways to help us boost our capacity over the longer term within the collaboration we’ve embarked on, they say: ‘Okay, so we've said we're going to do these outputs, but what I can hear is actually this would be really useful. Let's ask for more funding to get you a business development consultant’.
What are your aims for the future?
We want to be truly national in terms of delivery and reach. We want to be in five city regions by 2030 so people can come along and take part in in-person programmes, such as Nature Connectors, Nature Guides, foraging, and natural navigation. But also we want proper national reach in terms of our voice and being a resource hub for people. We also want to be a much bigger team.
My biggest success comes from being around, embedded, connected and in peership with other people of colour who are doing this work. Mentorship is really important as there is burnout, demoralisation, fatigue in our field. Being around people that understand but also can help you think creatively about how to overcome this, that’s certainly what's saved me from giving up.
How can people find out more about your work?
You can visit our website wildinthecity.org.uk find us on Instagram @wildinthecityuk or on Linkedin Wild In The City.
How can people help you?
For our community and the sector: Help to amplify our voice and mission by becoming ambassadors and connectors, follow us on Linkedin, Instagram, and sign up to our mailing list.
For the sector, funders and corporates: We’re looking for sponsors to help us scale provision and voice nationally and throughout the regions. Help us build the team and our reach so that more people find belonging in nature in the UK. We want to recruit five Nature Guide Coordinators who will work across the regions training and supporting our team of leaders of colour, who are bringing back the oral tradition for learning about nature within family and community.
