Booking information will follow very soon.
About the webinar
Providing access to the outdoors does not automatically create inclusion or sustained participation. Cultural expectations, trust, representation, belonging and the way outdoor opportunities are designed and communicated can all influence whether people feel that outdoor spaces and activities are genuinely for them.
This webinar will bring together research, lived experience and practical insight to explore how outdoor organisations can move beyond simply opening the gate. It will consider how organisations can build trust, work alongside communities, support grassroots leadership and design culturally appropriate opportunities that enable meaningful and sustained participation.
The webinar supports the ORN Action Plan 2025–2028 and its commitments to:
– Increase equality, diversity and inclusion in outdoor recreation.
– Better understand and remove structural and cultural barriers to participation.
– Strengthen the use of evidence and community insight in policy and practice.
– Help organisations design more inclusive opportunities that move beyond access towards meaningful participation.
Programme
10:00am – Welcome and introduction
An introduction to the webinar, the ORN Action Plan and the need to move the conversation from access to participation and belonging.
10:05am – The Gate Is Open—but Who Still Holds the Keys? Race, Belonging and Participation in the Outdoors
Mohammed Dhalech, Mosaic Outdoors
Drawing on his work with Mosaic Outdoors, his environmental and social justice practice and his PhD research on race, rurality and belonging, Mohammed will ask why access is still not the same as inclusion.
Outdoor spaces may be open, but for many racially and culturally diverse communities, the countryside can still feel like someone else’s place. Mohammed will explore what it takes to move from access to belonging: building trust, supporting grassroots leadership and advocacy, strengthening connectedness, and challenging the whiteness of outdoor recreation through more honest conversations about race, power and history.
The challenge is not simply how to encourage more people into the outdoors, but whether outdoor organisations are prepared to change who shapes, leads, interprets and belongs within it.
10:30am – From Evidence to Co-creation: Designing Culturally Competent and Inclusive Greenspaces
Professor Nasreen Ali, Professor of Public Health Equality, University of Bedfordshire
Drawing on the Inclusive Greenspaces research programme—including the Chalkscapes research and current work connected to the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Nature Towns and Cities programme—Professor Ali will explore how research evidence and community insight can inform more culturally competent and inclusive greenspaces.
The presentation will consider how organisations can engage lesser-heard communities, understand the intersectional barriers affecting participation and work with communities to co-create spaces, services and programmes that are relevant, welcoming and responsive.
10:55am – From Insight to Action: Facilitated Discussion and Questions
A facilitated conversation with both speakers exploring:
– How outdoor organisations can build trust with communities.
– What meaningful co-creation looks like in practice.
– How organisations can support community leadership and advocacy.
– What needs to change within organisations – not only among prospective participants.
– How progress towards inclusion, belonging and sustained participation can be measured.
Participants will also have an opportunity to put their questions to the speakers and share relevant learning from their own work.
11:25am – Reflections and Close
Key messages and practical considerations for ORN members and the wider outdoor recreation sector.
Speakers
Mohammed Dhalech
Mohammed is a pracademic, environmental and social justice practitioner, consultant and PhD researcher at the University of Leicester. His work focuses on race, rurality, access, connectedness and belonging, drawing on more than 30 years’ experience in equality, grassroots community practice and advocacy, as well as research into the hidden histories of racially diverse people in rural Britain.
He leads Mosaic Outdoors and is a Churchill Fellow, Trustee of Friends of the Dales, and a Secretary of State-appointed Member of the Northumberland National Park Authority.
Professor Nasreen Ali
Nasreen is Professor of Public Health Equality at the University of Bedfordshire. She leads the Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care System’s Talk, Listen, Change Workforce Research Programme and its Tackling Health Inequalities research portfolio.
Her applied research focuses on reducing health inequalities, using intersectional approaches to understand how factors including ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic circumstances and location influence people’s experiences. Her work prioritises lesser-heard voices, lived experience, participatory research and co-production to help shape more inclusive and responsive policies and services.