Blog
Archive
March is coming to a close, and Cliffe Castle has been showing off it’s spring-time blooms with vibrant purples and yellows. It is as busy as ever in and out of The Gatehouse, with enough stories to fill two newsletters! Inside this issue:
- Holiday Forest Schools for Easter
- Get Out More Impact Report 2024
- Level 1 and 3 Forest School training
- Annie heads to Norway!
- Staff updates and recruitment
- Volunteering opportunities
We hope you enjoy getting out more in Spring.
Read all about it here.
It’s been another busy year at Get Out More, with the months being full of new projects and the team settling into The Gatehouse. The move to own premises in the park has created such a positive shift in the way we work and how communities engage with our projects. Throughout 2024 we have been collecting data about our impact across a range of our services and we are proud to present the results in our 2024 Impact Report. Publishing our impact report represents our commitment to achieving our vision; communities and nature growing healthier together.
You can read the report below, but here are some of the highlights:
- 6105 people in 2024 accessed nature with Get Out More, over 616 sessions – that’s nearly 12 per week!
- Almost 9 out of 10 participants are spending more time in nature – with studies showing that individuals who spend at least 120 minutes a week in nature have increased physical health and mental wellbeing.
- 7 out of 10 of our participants developed new skills with Get Out More in 2024 – A Play Futures participant said that “The future feels more prosperous and exciting… It’s been like dipping my little toe into a big pool. I’m ready for things to open up for me now.”
- 8 out of 10 people feel more connected to their community. One participant said “Participating with Get Out More has reduced my social isolation and motivated me to get out and about”
Impact Report 2024
We would like to say a massive thank you to each and every person who has supported our programmes, either as participants, volunteers, freelancers, funders, or if you just spread the word! Here’s to another year of getting out more! Want to get involved? Why not come along to one of our programmes, or get in touch!
Get Out More was funded in 2024 by: The National Lottery Community Fund, Better Place, Better Start Bradford, Bradford Council, JU:MP, Groundwork UK, Keighley Big Local, The Leap and Give Bradford.
Marketing and Project Officer
37.5 hours per week Monday – Friday
£25,500 per annum
Do you want to use your marketing and admin skills to make a real difference? At Get Out More we’re looking for a Marketing & Projects Officer to join our friendly team to help us achieve our mission of connecting communities and nature so we can all grow healthier together.
You’ll need good experience of project admin, data management and be skilled in marketing as your role will involve promoting and supporting our forest school, wellbeing, training and community engagement programmes. You’ll also bring expertise in social media and using analytics to inform future campaigns.
As a growing social enterprise, based in the beautiful Cliffe Castle Park in Keighley, we’re keen to appoint someone who’s proactive, has a high level of computer literacy, and is passionate about our purpose. If this sounds like the right opportunity for you, we’d love to hear from you.
To find our more, download the application pack or contact Susan at [email protected] for an informal chat.
Closing Date: 4th April 2025 by 12 noon
What comes to mind when you think of the February half-term? Making rain-proof plans for the little ones, or chilly days wrapped up warm in the house? The chillier weather and threat of rain couldn’t stop a full house of Holiday Forest School groups from taking to the woods for two days of adventure and nature discovery!
Sue and Sam headed over to Saltaire and Ilkley respectively with a handy team of freelancers and volunteers, and all their favourite forest school activities, and braced for rain and sheltered activities. But it never came, and we were all the better for it! Sam set up his usual circuit of ninja ropes, slacklines and swings to test the children’s motor skills, keeping everyone active for hours, as others gathered round the fire circle to whittle sticks into spears, swords and other tools. In Saltaire, the children made themselves at home, quickly hurrying away to dens and hidey-holes, creating their own games and stories for the woodland environment. The younger ones loved exploring and finding treasures from the woods, including pine nuts and slime mould!
It was great seeing the changing seasons start to take shape in both the woodlands, and we can’t wait to see more signs of spring come Easter! Speaking of which, we are excited to be sharing our Holiday Forest School dates for the Easter break. We will be back at Ilkley, Saltaire and St Ives for two jam-packed days of forest school fun! Bookings go live today, 28 February, at 7pm. Check out our dates below!
- Hirst Wood, Saltaire 09/04/25 – 10/04/25
- Middleton Wood, Ilkley – 09/04/25 – 10/04/25
- St Ives Estate, Bingley – 16/04/25 – 17/04/25
JU:MP has lift off in Keighley!
The JU:MP programme is starting to kick off in Keighley, with play sessions starting to pop up in schools and parks! Parents from Parkwood Primary School are invited to a FREE outdoor play training course available, get in touch to book!
If you want to keep up with the JU:MP programme in Keighley, keep an eye on our social media or Keighley residents can join our WhatsApp group here!
Securing funding and approval for new projects can sometimes feel like waiting for a bus – you can wait a while for one, and then three come along at once! We are excited to announce the successful approval of three new or returning projects for 2025; the JU:MP Connector Programme, the Open Gate group and the continuation of the Holidays, Activities and Food (HAF) Programme are all upcoming for early 2025!
Want to know more? Keep reading!
JU:MP Connector Programme
Through February and March you can expect the first taster sessions to start popping up in local greenspaces like Park Wood, Lund Park and Cliffe Castle, with more regular play sessions in and out of schools starting to establish. As we head into April we will have a regular programme of play across Keighley, with Holiday Forest Schools and family events happening across the Easter holidays.
Keighley is full of hidden gems when it comes to green spaces, and we can’t wait to bring more outdoor play to schools and the local community alike.
The Open Gate Project
Thanks to funding from Bradford Council’s Local Community Support Grants we are looking forward to launching the Open Gate project this spring, a concept inspired by the Odensehuis movement, empowering people living with dementia to get out more, develop new friendships and regain independence. Our practitioners will be facilitating a welcoming open-house type indoor/outdoor space, supporting participants rather than doing things for them.
Those with eyes on our social media will have seen our recent venture to Bradford Cathedral to participate in the Bradford 2025 Participatory Grant Making Social Prescribing Awards. Annie and Susan were pitching to other organisations, funders and stakeholders, with every participant (Get Out More included) voting on which projects they would like to see going forward.
Holidays, Activities and Food Programme
Over the past three years, Hazel has been delivering the HAF programme during the Easter, Summer and Christmas holidays. Hosting a range of trips, forest schools, family sessions for communities around Keighley. HAF has proved to be a success to year on year, and has a massively positive impact on the children and families who come along, which is why we are over the moon that after some uncertainty, we are thrilled to be running the programme again in Easter!
This means more opportunities for local children to engage with their local woodlands or embark on trips to iconic Yorkshire attractions like Malham and Fountains Abbey, all tied together with nutritious food! We’re excited to continue providing this valuable service and look forward to seeing many familiar faces, and hopefully some new ones too!
It is a privilege to have so much going on, why not Get Out More during 2025?
Well, it’s been a huge year at Get Out More! We’ve finally made a move into our own premises in Cliffe Castle, Keighley, which has realised our long-held dream to run nature-based programmes from our own community space.
We’ve hardly had space to include all the amazing projects we have been involved with this year. Thanks to everyone who has helped to make this happen and we look forward to building on the success in 2025!
We wish you a happy Christmas and a peaceful new year.
Winter offered us the crispest of weather in parts, and we took full advantage of it in January with our Winter Wellbeing group for adults, funded by Bradford Council. The fresh and chilly air at Park Wood was the perfect backdrop for circular walks, nature identification, fire lighting and natural crafts (not forgetting plenty of cuppas to keep us warm!)
Bravo to those who came along in what was in parts, a very wet and windy winter.
Summarising six years of family play, training and community events in parks across Bradford, sounds like a big ask doesn’t it? On a snowy February day the cameras were rolling at Bowling Park for the making of a film about our Forest School Play Project.
Although Better Start Bradford is coming to an end we won’t be saying goodbye to the Forest School Play Project so soon however. With new funding from the Pears Youth Fund we’ll be back delivering a range of family play, forest schools and training in Bradford in 2025!
MARCH:
Sheltered from the winds of a blustery March day, the Outdoor Taskforce helped lay the groundworks for terraced planting stations at East Riddlesden Hall. A handy group of volunteers, including Get Out More staff spent the day digging and laying a membrane layer, a perfect spot for a plant nursery.
We are looking forward to seeing how this site develops in the future.
The Tales and Trails programme from the National Literacy Trust made it’s way to Cliffe Castle in April, bringing with it an American style library bus! This event was the culmination of visits from the library bus across Keighley and Bradford, with over 700 people attending on the day!
The team brought the campfire, ziplines, natural art activities and a storyteller from Mud Pie arts to bring books about nature to life! Each family got a copy of a nature based book to take home, continuing the fun once the day was over. Tales and Trails was a unique initiative and it was a joy to be a part of.
The big one! After months of I-dotting and T-crossing we finally moved into our new premises at The Gatehouse, set in the stunning grounds of Cliffe Castle.
Cliffe Castle has been the home of projects such as Wellbeing Wednesday for years now, so moving in felt more like coming home. The move has transformed the way we work, with more activities delivered for the community at Cliffe Castle, the goal of a community hub is well within reach.
We’re keen to extend outdoor wellbeing activities to older people and loved sharing nature activities with care homes as part of the Mental Wellbeing grant from Bradford Council The residents loved listening to birds, smelling herbs, growing seedlings and reading nature poems. All set against a backdrop of stories told of their experience in nature in the past.
We have continued to develop ideas with care settings across the district, keep your eyes peeled for more in 2025!
July saw our Mini Explorers cement itself as a firm favourite through the week. Wednesday lunchtimes were all about little ones taking their first steps into the world of outdoor play. Children splashed, jumped, played musically instruments, hunted for minibeasts, built dens and so much more.
Mini Explorers has gone from strength to strength with sessions still being fully booked in the chillier months. The Gatehouse has really shown it’s worth as a community space, with parents free to drop in and out whenever they need.
Festival season hit Keighley this year, with the the first event Creative Earth EcoFest bringing a range of artists, photographers, outdoor wellbeing practitioners, musicians and more to the grounds of Cliffe Castle. The team ran a host of activities including natural art and play and forest bathing.
It was great seeing such a large gathering of like-minded individuals in the park, same again next year?
With the Summer holidays coming to an end, Sue and Sam took off their Holiday Forest Schools hats and returned to delivering wellbeing programmes through school time. The Leap is a project focused on delivering natural artwork workshops with adults and children alike. Pictured is an incredible weaving project that children from Carlton Keighley created, with help from Emily from Keighley Creative.
OCTOBER: 
This year, we ventured into delivering our first forest school level 3 training course. 11 learners attended the Level 3 Forest School Practitioner course with a further 3 undertaking the Level 2 Assistant Practitioner course, meaning there are 14 more practitioners well on their way to qualifying and enabling more forest schools across our district. Trainees include community workers and volunteers, school staff and parents so with the sessions they each delivered during the summer and autumn, they are already making an impact in their communities and enabling more children to discover the joys of forest school
The Level 3 will be running again in June 2025, with bookings being taken now!
As we headed into autumn and winter, our attentions turned to the Play Futures programme, funded by UK Government via Groundworks. Play Futures aimed to support unemployed people into jobs in outdoor community jobs and youth work through a range of training.
Participants had the opportunity to gain qualifications in forest school, food hygiene, first aid and safeguarding, as well as work placements on Get Out More projects.
Congratulations to everyone that completed the course!
Finishing off the year strongly, Hazel launched the Nature Natters, a group focused on getting creative with natural materials and making space to have a chat and a cuppa. In December we have had wreath making and Christmas decorations, supported by local artists.
With a healthy number of people coming along to each session, and exciting new developments in our work with older people in the pipeline, we are really excited to see how this and other projects grow in the new year.
After celebrating the end Forest School Play Project at Bowling Park with stakeholders, trainees and parents alike, we knew that we didn’t want to be away from Bradford for long. Following the end of Better Start Bradford funding, Get Out More are thrilled to announce the return of the Forest School Play Project, thanks to support from the Pears Foundation.
As we discovered throughout the Forest School Play Project with Better Start Bradford. There are some fantastic green spaces and a huge appetite to explore them. We are so excited to be back at sites like Bowling Park, Peel Park, Bradford Moor Park and hopefully some more green spaces along the way.
Young child playing in the snow
The funding, which covers two years, will allow us to continue running a range of initiatives to engage children and families in nature, including:
- Delivering Family Play sessions for families to drop in and out as they please.
- Running free Holiday Forest School style clubs through the holidays and after-school.
- Accredited Level 1 Forest School Training empowers local play workers with skills and confidence to deliver outdoor play. This will help to sustain activities beyond our involvement.
- Encouraging local communities to explore green spaces outside of their local area through the provision of trips to other areas accessible by public transport.
Hear what Annie Berrington has to say about the return of the Forest School Play Project:
“We’re delighted that Get Out More can continue our work with communities in Bradford. Our long-running Forest School Play Project enabled hundreds of 0-3 year-old children and their families to enjoy outdoor play in Bradford parks, as part of the Better Start Bradford project. The young children who took part then, are now at primary school. This new support from the Pears Fund will enable us to pick up with them, and hundreds more families, making sure that communities in urban Bradford can benefit from play in natural spaces. We’re also excited to be able to provide more free training for play workers to allow them to engage their service users in nature-based play, helping everyone to get out more!”
If you have any connections with youth centres, or groups around Bradford we would love to hear from you. Get in touch with us on [email protected]
Two young children looking at flowers
It’s been another bumper summer at Get Out More with our new lottery programme, Gateway to Nature getting underway alongside another sell out Holiday Forest School programme and a hugely enjoyable summer of delivery with Holidays Activities and Food. There’s plenty to shout about, and lots to look forward to. You can read all about it below:
- Day places for Holiday Forest Schools now available
- Applications still open for Play Futures employment programme
- All for Play trips and looking back at the HAF programme
- Forest School Training opportunities with Get Out More
- Gateway to Nature, six months on…
- Life at our new office update
Get Out More and the Highfield Community Association are now recruiting for Play Futures, a free programme for adults in West Yorkshire who are unemployed and are looking to return to work. Play Futures is a skills-based programme supporting people towards outdoor careers in the community such as in play work, youth work or outdoor education. Participants will develop skills in youth work and forest schools and gain key qualifications to support them into work. They will also get to learn alongside professionals on work-based placements and receive one to one job support, guidance and signposting to help them towards work and further training. The 10-day course runs one day a week between 15 October – 13 December 2024.
Play Futures is a Community Grants project being delivered by Groundwork UK and funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF). In West Yorkshire the West Yorkshire Combined Authority leads the implementation of the Fund as part of the Mayor’s ambition to make West Yorkshire the best place to work, learn and live.
Get Out More’s Managing Director says, “Get Out More CIC and the Highfield Community Association recognise we need more skilled people to come and work in the outdoor education, youth and play sector. We have created this course to help support more local people towards these jobs. In our work we meet people who have a keen interest in working with children and young people but don’t know how to get a foot in the door. This programme will provide trainees with the opportunity to develop skills in a supportive and fun environment. They will be able to put their skills into practice in real life settings, supported by professional practitioners and will leave the programme with some accredited qualifications which are respected in our sector.”
There are 12 places on the programme. To express an interest contact Get Out More at [email protected] or Tel: 01535 668588
The winds of change have really blown since the last newsletter, it’s been a whirlwind three months at Get Out More with the completion of our move to The Gatehouse at Cliffe Castle, and a whole host of new groups and events popping up as part of our Gateway to Nature programme. There’s loads going on, and you can read all about it below.
- A nearly sell out Holiday Forest Schools!
- Gateway to Nature
- Annie Berrington receives a Churchill Fellowship
- Free HAF places for eligible children
- Away days with Get Out More
- The Forest School Play Project Movie!
