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Access to Nature
Access to Nature
Access to Nature is a £28.75 million grant scheme to encourage people from all backgrounds to understand, access and enjoy our natural environment.
Funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Changing Spaces programme and by Natural England, Access to Nature is run by Natural England on behalf of a consortium of major environmental organisations.
What is Access to Nature?
Access to Nature aims to encourage more people to enjoy the outdoors, particularly those who face social exclusion or those that currently have little or no contact with the natural environment - perhaps because they lack the confidence to get out and enjoy natural places or have few opportunities to do so.
By 2014 we want 1.7 million people - in urban, rural and coastal communities across England - to have benefited from this grant programme by giving them improved opportunities to experience and enjoy the natural environment and providing more opportunities to gain new skills.
Since it opened for applications in April 2008 Access to Nature has funded some excellent projects that are helping people all over England get greater access to the natural environment – including for example disability trampers being available across the South West; supporting black and minority ethnic (BME) communities to get more involved with national parks; as well as many projects which are providing a range of volunteering and educational opportunities for local communities and young people.
A selection of our project stories illustrates the diversity of these schemes.
The programme closed to new applications in May 2010, with the final grant awards being made in December 2010.
Latest News
March 2012: Supporting Change and Supporting Impact Funding - additional funding for existing Access to Nature projects, courtesy of the Big Lottery Fund.
On 7 March 2012 Natural England officially opened its application window for applications for existing eligible Access to Nature grant holders. Successful applicants will use the funding to sustain the benefits of their project.
Eligible projects have been contacted and sent an application form which must be returned by 4pm on the closing date of 28 May 2012.
Attached are the Guidance Notes for applicants: (110kb)
and a list of Frequently Asked Questions: (152kb) (FAQs). The FAQs will be updated regularly with any new questions arising.
If you have any queries not addressed in the FAQs please contact your Lead Adviser.January 2012: Natural England has been awarded £1.36m of additional funding to help existing eligible Access to Nature projects continue their good work.
The funding comes from Big Lottery Fund’s Supporting Change and Impact initiative which was launched last year. The money will give existing projects that meet the eligibility criteria – which include being in the last 18 months of their funding from 1 November 2011 - some vital time to review the way they work and explore ways of becoming more sustainable.
There will be two strands to the funding, ‘Supporting Change’ grants of up to £10,000, and ‘Supporting Impact’ grants, where projects that can show that they are having particularly significant impact will be able to apply for an additional year’s funding.
Full details and guidance will be available soon on the website.
Note: This additional funding is for existing eligible projects, to help them plan for the future in an uncertain economic climate. The scheme remains closed to new applications.
We will be contacting our projects with further details, and a short FAQ will be added to the website shortly. In the meantime, please email any questions you may have to accesstonature@naturalengland.org.uk, so that we can log these for response when application and guidance materials are complete.
January 2012: Work on the Access to Nature programme evaluation is progressing well. Many thanks to all who have contributed. So far three annual overall evaluation reports and two report summaries have been produced, plus four Early Findings learning papers. These reports – and those that will follow – are particularly useful for understanding how the programme and projects are proceeding and the findings feed in to Natural England’s continuous review of the programme and learning for the future.
- Executive Summary Evaluation report 2011
- Evaluation report 2011
- Evaluation report 2010 summary
Early Findings learning papers
:- Natural Curiosity
- Best Foot Forward
- Volunteering
- Minority Ethnic Communities
Contents
- Who we fund
- What we fund
- Outcomes and targets
- Match funding
- Types of grant
- Grants awarded
- Frequently asked questions
- Guidance
- Contact us
Related links
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Access to Nature gather to share the secrets of their success
(22 March 2012) Community groups, conservationists and charities from across the country are meeting today to share their experiences and expertise gained through the Big Lottery Fund’s Access to Nature scheme.
