A Case for Eco-wellbeing Hubs

As a mental health charity in south Essex, Trust Links runs a number of projects that engage with nature as a tool for promoting wellbeing. This whole effort was born in 2000 as a way of using a community and nature-centred model to address the non-clinical needs of its members, and to champion local biodiversity, community greening, and sustainability efforts. Its eco-wellbeing activities are carried out through projects and events such as community gardening, local community fayres, conferences, training and workshops, local climate action, and much more. Ultimately, the aim is to improve people’s wellbeing through social and ecological connection, and to help transform unsustainable ways of living into sustainable ones. This is as relevant today as when the project first started. In fact, it is because of the social, global, and ecological crises that we find ourselves in today – ones so widely covered that it would be redundant to present data on – that charities like Trust Links play an ever-important role in their localities. As such, this article will be a (very) brief case study on the potential impact that eco-wellbeing hubs can have during our transition towards building a wellbeing economy.

It is at this intersection between wellbeing and environmental sustainability that I initially encountered Trust Links. Living in South Essex and benefitting from large green spaces and the sea, I am exposed to the impact that nature has on myself and the community. From this position, I initially wanted to write about how local, environmentally sustainable business models are not only profitable, but are preferable to the community as well. I wanted to draw attention to the growing demand that already exists for businesses consciously aligned this way. Trust Links was one of the organisations that I wanted to showcase. However, due to the scale and variety of its work, it not only proves itself as a sustainable model, but as an influential, community driven vehicle for change. Very broadly, the arms of this organisation’s reach, and the ways that it cultivates influence and impacts those around it, are non-exhaustively laid out below.

Having expanded from their initial allotment project, Trust Links now operates seven therapeutic gardening sites, and is still expanding. Some of these also function as spaces to deliver workshops and offer support. If placed together, the therapeutic gardens would amount to a vast collection of natural space for members to benefit from – which they do – and would form something like a network of wellbeing. Within that network lives their founding garden in Westcliff, Essex, which I found to be a developed and biodiverse space in which to encounter a plethora of life and activity. This, among other things, includes a beehive, bird boxes and a chicken coop, as well as a variety of trees, flowers, plants, and polytunnels from which to grow food. The huts and group activity spaces are all also made as naturally and sustainably as possible. From my personal experience of being at what appeared to be a nature playground, it is no surprise to me that Trust Links receive both volunteers and professional referrals.

This network of wellbeing also extends well into the community via Trust Links non-member events, such as local fayres, music events, quizzes, and challenges. With the intention to promote wellbeing as widely as possible, these events create opportunities for families, friends and strangers to enjoy each other’s company and have fun. However, it is also at this point of facing the wider community that it starts to impact environmental attitudes and affect local ecological action. Whether through the Eco Days workshops, the Greening Basildon Project, or the Essex Green Weekend, locals can use Trust Links as a sustainability resource and centre for environmental activism. On this arm of its activity, it states that these efforts are designed to ‘promote positive, practical ways to living a more sustainable lifestyle’. Some examples include growing food, home composting and other circular practices. It also includes getting the ‘green light’ from the local authority to enhance public green spaces and increase biodiversity in one of the towns it serves.

Much like its work with a local authority, Trust links seems to have also thrived through building partnerships. Working with other organisations and individuals has enabled Trust Links to offer additional services, such as hosting training in horticulture and permaculture, for example. It also hosted the conference I attended entitled Developing Green Urban Spaces. I experienced this conference as an opportunity for Trust Links to inspire more activity in the field, and to facilitate connection between developing and developed eco-businesses, changemakers, investors, and others. This was additionally represented by the diversity of people presenting at the event, from seminal speakers on green infrastructure and environmental design, to alumni of the Nature-based Solutions Workshops. Even Basildon council’s Executive Director of Growth and Partnerships was there to present opportunities to improve local biodiversity and tackle climate change. There was a collective desire in the room that day to re-envision our relationship with nature, repositioning ourselves as within the natural world, and not apart from it. This was evident from the valuing of green urban spaces as vital for functions such as water drainage and heat absorption in buildings and on the earth. A range of green roofing pioneers and specialists were also there, such as Dusty Gedge and Chris Bridgman, sharing projects they had worked on and to present the human and ecological wellbeing that green spaces create.

What stands out most to me across Trust Links’ work, in addition to its tireless effort to expand its reach and share what it can offer, is that none of this would be possible were contact with natural life not so essential to wellbeing. We know we feel love when we are around babies or other new life. We know we want to play in parks and natural environments when we are children (or even as adults). We know the joy of being at the beach in the summer, and the power of being together at music, or other, festivals. Our most life-affirming moments will always be when we feel a deep sense of connection to the living. But, living in a production-driven, individualistic, capitalist ideology as we do, it is easy to forget that living relationships require maintenance. And that’s where charities like Trust Links play an essential role in fostering living relationships in their communities. This is one of the primary roles that I see eco-wellbeing hubs having in the transition towards a sustainable existence: to empower relationships through our common love of the living world. This also includes, as demonstrated in Trust Links’ work, our relationship with ourselves.

Eco-wellbeing hubs are vital to promoting the transition in our thinking about, and interacting with, each other and the environment. I position them – alongside many others – as being at the intersection between commercial interest, and personal, community, and environmental interests. The interconnection between them could not be more apparent than during these modern times, and ‘sustainability’ is proving to only be truly sustainable when it is equally so for all. Eco-wellbeing hubs have the potential to impact the locality at multiple levels, including the hierarchical model of change – such as local authority – and the emergent model of change – such as grassroots activism. This is testament to Trust Links’ ongoing success, and reflects the current necessity for collective effort in building a wellbeing economy in England, and beyond.

                                                                Visit Trust Links at www.trustlinks.org to find out more, or to get involved.