Manchester Museums’s experiment – Popping up and engaging people with nature – aimed to raise awareness of the valuable role nature plays in the lifecycle of a community. It was developed in collaboration with Southway Housing and Manchester’s Age Friendly Cultural Champions in the Old Moat area of the city. Old Moat is a naturally occurring retirement area where Southway Housing are working with residents to, as Cathy Ayrton of Southway Housing describes, empower local people, give them a voice and create a resilient community where they have an opportunity to participate in the community at all sorts of levels.

Led by artist Lucy Burscough, participants took part in a range of sessions, starting with a behind the scenes tour of the museum’s collections with Rachel Webster, Curator of Botany. The collections were used to stimulate discussion and encourage understanding of the fragile and delicate balance in our communities between people and the natural world. Close encounters with specimens from the natural environment allowed participants the opportunity to examine the hidden beauty of animals and plants.

Building on from these conversations, Lucy worked closely with participants, using natural resources to create artworks, including cotton bees, that were displayed as part of a ‘pop up museum’ in the local library, to engage the community in the positive benefits of connecting with nature for individual wellbeing.

In the short film clip, artist Lucy Burscough, describes the benefits for participants of framing the collections through nature connectedness:

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