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Walking for Wellbeing
This AHRC-funded Impact Accelerator Award project produced transformative public experiences, improving participants’ mental health and providing them with access to the cultural, literary and natural riches of the Morecambe Bay area.
Professor Simon Bainbridge (with professional guides) led four walks in places important to Wordsworth’s poetry: Black Combe; Piel Island; Fleetwood; and the Bay itself. Alongside research-informed commentaries, actors read from Wordsworth’s writing, bringing the area’s literature and history to life. The walks were linked to museum and archive-based public sessions held at Wordsworth Grasmere, Fleetwood Museum, and The Dock Museum, Barrow, that gave participants access to cultural materials such as Wordsworth’s manuscript writings about Morecambe Bay.
The walks included families, participants with learning disabilities, and ethnically diverse participants and resulted in creative outputs such as writing by young poets, an exhibition on Wordsworth and Morecambe Bay by mixed-media community group ‘Flax’, and the film ‘Walking for Wellbeing: Around Morecambe Bay with William Wordsworth’, shown at Kendal Mountain Festival. Project partners included Wordsworth Grasmere, Trek Therapy and Mosaic Outdoors.
