Green Space Stories

Share your memorable experience in the landscape with us

Green Space Stories is bringing together the stories of thousands of people from across the UK, sharing their relationship with nature and the landscape, whether hills or mountains, lakes or beaches, woodlands or local parks.

Share your story Story highlights

There is no story too short to tell, e.g. one line about your favourite green or blue (water) place – and no experience that we cannot learn from. It’ll take less than 10 minutes to complete.

We are just as interested in hearing about your dog walk, or daily exercise in nature, as we are about bigger adventures in the natural landscape, and of course your experience as a Lumenator, if you take part in Green Space Dark Skies.

Why should I share my story?

By sharing your story, you will help to create a snapshot of people’s relationships with nature in 2022. Thousands of stories are being gathered in an online archive that anyone can access to understand our connection with the landscape. You don’t have to have been a Lumenator to tell us your story, so please encourage people you know to share their experiences too.

What will happen to my story?

Highlights of the anonymous stories, photographs and recordings are available to view through our online dashboard (best viewed on a desktop computer). Anyone can sift and sort through them, based on a particular theme or where they were collected, for example.

The archive might be used by artists to inspire a song, poem, artwork, film or book. It might be used by government organisations or local councils to inform and shape policies. It might be used by researchers looking for information about how certain themes emerge in our relationship with the landscape. Educators or community groups might use it to find stories from people of certain ages, or in a specific area of the country. The possibilities are endless.

The National Parks of the UK will look after the archive for five years keeping it accessible to use long after Green Space Dark Skies ended.

How can I take part?

You can tell your story through a photo, a few words, or a poem or you can record yourself talking about your memorable or meaningful experience. You might like to take a photo of a painting or natural sculpture made by your child, inspired by their time in nature, or tell us what being in a green or blue (water) space means for you: does it make you feel connected to your past, your family, the future? How does it make you feel? What is a favourite memory? Have a look at some of the stories shared so far.

Tell us your stories

Click on the link below and tell us your story. We will also ask you a few questions to help us understand what your experience means to you. Some of them might look a bit unusual, but we hope that you will find them interesting. Find out more here.

You can share as many stories as you like, but you will have to enter each one separately.

We look forward to reading and seeing your stories.

Share your story View data highlights

Lumenators collectively holding lights above their heads at dusk with the sea in the distance. Photo taken at our first test event at Dinas Dinlle, Caernarfon

Photo: Geraint Thomas, Panorama Photography

Storytelling is a powerful way of communicating our hopes, our dreams, and our fears. People have been using stories for thousands of years and we use them to shape our understanding, to communicate how we feel and think, and we use them to make sense of the world around us.

Catrina Page
University Engagement Liaison Manager, Walk the Plank

Be inspired

Have a browse through the stories shared so far and be inspired to share your own.

View story wall

The Kinder Scout trespass, back in 1932, sparked a national conversation about our relationship to landscape in this country and our allied rights and responsibilities. The response to the COVID pandemic and lockdown, the causes of and need to address the climate emergency, and the evident requirement to restore the quality of nature and biodiversity all urge us to recognise that this conversation is very much alive and relevant – even vital – in the UK today. Green Space Stories is our attempt to make a space for that conversation where the necessary subtleties, nuance and varied perspectives can thrive, so that we can all listen, learn, change and benefit based on an open, safe dialogue inspired by our precious, nurturing landscapes.

Alastair Barber
Director of Communications, National Parks UK

Two female walkers watching the sunset on top of a hill with the Brecon Beacons rolling in the background. One of the females is pointing out over the hill.

Photo: Brecon Beacons National Park, Tim Jones

A mother and father walking with their son and daughter along a path that has a autumnal bush on their right side.

Photo: Exmoor National Park, Jim Johnston

Whether you love the countryside or feel you are not welcome there, we want to hear your stories. For many people the shared experience of coming together, meeting new people and creating living artworks in nature at dusk, might be emotional and transformational. Whether your story is funny or sad, joyful or painful, short or long, a picture or words, whether you have been a Lumenator or not, it matters, and we’d like you to share it with us.

Liz Pugh
Producer (Wales) & Co-founder Walk the Plank

Green Space Stories is part of Green Space Dark Skies and is a partnership between Walk the Plank, National Parks UK and the University of Salford, commissioned by UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK.