Land and Wave Ltd given ORN Success Award 2025 for Best Example of Maximising Impact with Limited Resources

The ORN Success Awards celebrate excellence, innovation and collaboration across the outdoor recreation sector. The Best Example of Maximising Impact with Limited Resources category highlights what is possible when purpose, partnerships and creativity come together. This award recognises organisations that have achieved outstanding outcomes for people and places by making the most of limited funding, capacity, or time — demonstrating creativity, partnership working and strong social impact.

Winner: Land & Wave Ltd

The Big Purbeck Campout is a powerful example of how targeted funding, local partnerships and a clear social mission can unlock transformational outdoor experiences for young people — even within tight financial and time constraints.

Delivered by Land & Wave Ltd, the project is a 24-hour adventure camp for local schoolchildren in Purbeck, designed to be delivered at cost, ensuring affordability remains central to its ethos. Through a carefully structured funding and subsidy model, the project directly addressed barriers to outdoor participation for children from lower-income households.

The challenge

The project faced a number of significant constraints. There was a very short lead-in time between funding confirmation and the school holiday period, creating logistical pressure and limiting opportunities for recruitment and promotion. At the same time, the team needed to build trust with schools, clearly communicate the project’s educational and wellbeing benefits, and keep costs low — even with subsidies in place.

Despite these challenges, Land & Wave successfully secured commitment from six local schools, demonstrating strong local relationships and effective advocacy for outdoor education.

The solution

To maximise impact, Land & Wave adopted a blended funding approach:

– The organisation subsidised the experience by 64% for all participants, reducing the cost from £151 to just £53 per child.

– A £15,000 grant was secured to fully fund places for 100 children eligible for Free School Meals, ensuring those most at risk of exclusion could attend at no cost.

– Local “champions” for outdoor learning were identified to help engage schools and reinforce the value of the experience.

– Costs were further reduced through in-kind support and collaboration, including a 10% food cost reduction from caterers, support from the National Trust, and land access facilitated by a local farmer who enabled a FIPL funding application.

Outcomes and impact

The Big Purbeck Campout will deliver:

– 96 fully funded places for local children on Free School Meals.

– A further 285 children attending at a heavily subsidised rate, significantly widening access.

– A high-quality outdoor experience focused on adventure, nature connection, confidence-building and local pride.

Judges were particularly impressed by the scale of impact achieved relative to the available resources, the strength of local collaboration, and the project’s clear commitment to equity and inclusion.

One of the judging panellists, Tim Russell (Recreation & Access Projects Officer for Dartmoor National Park and ORN Executive Committee Member) said,

“The judges were impressed by how quickly and effectively this project mobilised limited resources to achieve real impact. By engaging six schools in a short timeframe, securing funding and working collaboratively with local partners, Land & Wave enabled hundreds of children to connect with nature who might otherwise have missed out.”