ExCASES mission: Beyond Ableism: Inclusive Nature Access and Biodiversity Renewal

Research team

Sicily Fiennes (project lead) – National Trust

Bryony Aitchison (project lead) – National Trust

Siobhan Vye – National Trust

Claire Collins – National Trust

David Bavin – National Trust

Matthew Heard – National Trust

Sarah Crowley – University of Exeter

Theme

ExCASES missions provide short, intense periods of focus towards issues communicated as priorities for RENEW partner organisations and external stakeholders. The ExCASES team work collaboratively with people across different sectors and disciplines, co-designing research and participatory processes to generate empowering outcomes for people and the environment. 

Aims

This mission aims to:

• Address the interconnected inequalities of both access to nature and participation in its care for Disabled people;
• Explore opportunities for Disabled people to take leadership roles in biodiversity renewal, while also creating benefits for nature by enabling people with valuable skills and knowledges to contribute to its care;
• Identify pathways for collaboration by drawing on the expertise of Community Researchers to co-develop mission findings and outputs, and to shape how this research is communicated to eNGOs and land managers.

Approach

Mission findings are being developed collaboratively with individuals with lived experience of disability, who have collectively adopted the term ‘community researchers’. Our methodology is informed by principles of co-production, though it is not formally defined as such due to the time constraints of the ExCASES ‘sprint’ model.

The community researcher group includes volunteers and employees from organisations including Disability Rights, Inclusive Paddleboarding, and the Disabled Ramblers, alongside Disabled academics and activist groups.

Through monthly meetings, the community researchers guide the direction of the work, shaping our exploration of key themes and research questions. This approach also identifies pathways for collaboration, drawing on the expertise of community researchers to shape how research outputs are communicated to eNGOs and land managers.

Next Steps

Next steps for this mission include creating a vision of what an ideal accessible environment could look and feel like. To do this, we will invite a visual scribe to one of our Community Researcher meetings. We will ensure the visual scribing process is accessible by creating post-event outputs with relevant audio clips embedded, alongside audio descriptions.

We see the involvement of a visual scribe not as a singular output, but as a pathway to a range of multisensory outputs for this mission. These outputs will be shared with stakeholders to help start conversations and support dialogue between the Community Researchers land managers about creating enabling environments.

Outputs

Mission outputs will be linked here when published.