Always on
This project successfully funded on 31st March 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
Youth and Community Wellbeing in East London
London, England, United Kingdom
Aim: The Line is an art trail supporting community wellbeing through creative walks and Youth Employment programmes along East London's waterways
The Line is “London’s groundbreaking art trail” (Financial Times, 2024), connecting Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford and The O2 in North Greenwich, following East London’s waterways and the line of the Greenwich Meridian. Its route runs through some of the most densely populated boroughs in London, with many residents facing extremely limited access to green and blue spaces.
Our intergenerational Wellbeing Walks programme draws under-served audiences away from polluted, heavily trafficked areas, and deepens connections with East London’s hidden green and blue landscapes. The Line invites local community to explore public art and heritage through the rich biodiversity corridors of waterways along East London waterways. We deliver free socially prescribed walks each week year-round. The walks are led by an experienced mindfulness practitioner and qualified fitness coach and incorporate creative activities that respond to nature on the route through the seasons.
Each session is co-facilitated by local young people through our wider Youth Employability programme. Each year, we employ local young people as Youth Guides to deliver free guided public tours that connect people to The Line’s outdoor exhibitions, East London’s rich heritage, and unique urban nature on the route. Young people employed through this programme acquire new connections with and knowledge about their local natural landscapes. They also gain valuable experience in public engagement and further employment opportunities through our evolving exhibitions and wellbeing-focused engagement programmes.
Local Context and Challenges
The route of The Line runs through the London boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich. Our project will expand opportunities for local young people and community groups who face structural inequalities affecting health and wellbeing, and who have limited access to local green and blue spaces.
Some of the challenges faced locally are:
Structural inequalities:
- In Newham, 38% of local populations live in social housing, which is more than double the rest of London (Trust for London, 2023).
- Newham and Tower Hamlets have the highest rates of child poverty in the UK (49% and 51%, respectively). (London Child Poverty Report 2023)
- Greenwich is the 60th most deprived borough in the country, with 20% of neighbourhoods being in the most deprived in England. (Royal Borough of Greenwich, 2019)
Limited access to green spaces:
- Publicly accessible green space in Newham and Tower Hamlets is amongst the worst in London (32nd and 29th respectively, out of 33 boroughs), with only 0.71 and 0.89 hectares of public green space per 1000 residents. This is drastically lower than the 2.4 ha/1000 people that is recommended by Fields in Trust and the Accessible Natural Greenspace Standard. Greenwich, however, has 4.8ha/1000 people of accessible green space, the 6th highest in London, and double the recommended amount.
- Only 13.1% of Newham is made up of green space, despite its size and high population density; this leaves the borough having one of the least publicly accessible spaces per person compared to other London boroughs. (CPRE, 2023)
- There is only 16% tree cover in Newham, which is the second lowest in London (Newham council)
Mental health and wellbeing:
- Newham has an estimated 23.9% prevalence of common mental health disorders amongst residents. (NHS, 2021)
- Greenwich has a high prevalence of anxiety rates, and lower levels of happiness than the national average. (ONS, 2022)
Young people:
- In Newham and Tower Hamlets, 49% and 51% of children are living in poverty, respectively (London Child Poverty Report, 2023)
- In Newham, 3.7% of young people are NEET (not in employment or education). Furthermore, 17.6% of children live in households where the parents are unemployed. (Newham Safeguarding Children Partnership)
- While 93% of the population of England attend state-funded schools, only 22% of those working in the cultural sector are from a working-class background (Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre)
A 2020 report by public health researchers states that the combined wellbeing benefits of art and nature are greater than the sum of their parts (UCL Department of Behavioural Science & Health, 2020).
With the growing pressure on local health services and the employment challenges facing young people in the local area, our Wellbeing and Youth Employment programmes have been designed to alleviate the pressure on local services and support communities affected by the challenges above.
Your support
Our Wellbeing Walks and Youth Employment programmes were piloted in 2021, and have continued since, highlighting the demand and successful impacts that they have had on participants. We are seeking support to sustain and expand these programmes to further connect young people and local communities to underutilised green and blue spaces, support community wellbeing and deepen knowledge of local biodiversity through walks, creative activities and youth employment.
We know that these programmes have made an impact - you can learn more in the project sections below. To meet the increased need and evidenced success, we have developed our Wellbeing Walks and Youth Employment programmes to connect more young people and communities to East London’s green and blue spaces, through public art. We need your help to bring them to life.
Your support will help us to deliver, expand and ensure the sustainability of these programmes over the next two years, directly responding to feedback from participants, partners and local communities.
Your donation towards:
£14,784 will help to deliver and expand the Wellbeing Walks programme in 2025
This will increase wellbeing support for people impacted by systemic inequalities, experiencing social anxiety or stress and loneliness, living in areas with limited access to green space.
£15,043 will allow the programme to continue into 2026
Our Wellbeing Walks are currently offered every week in Newham and attendees have come to rely on them for vital support. Your help will fund a mindfulness practitioner to deliver 50 weekly walks and the necessary operational costs. That is an estimated 250 annual participants.
Participants have told us they would like to undertake day trips to arts and nature venues, a biannual celebration lunch and extended walking routes for further nature exploration. These costs include the provision of 8 monthly field trips.
£10,118 will allow the expansion of our Wellbeing Walks into Greenwich in 2026
Your help will help us extend the reach of the Wellbeing Walk into Greenwich Peninsula alongside the River Thames, to provide a 6-month pilot project of 24 weekly Wellbeing Walks in collaboration with local partners. This section of The Line’s route is fully wheelchair-accessible which allows us to serve disabled participants who are wheelchair users. We estimate to reach 30 individual participants.
£7,414 will allow us to deliver Wellbeing Walks and nature-inspired creative workshops for migrants and refugees in 2025
In June 2024, we delivered a successful pilot project supporting men’s and women’s groups at Praxis, a refugee and migrants’ rights charity in partnership with Counterpoints Arts. Your help will enable us to expand this into a series of 8 walks and creative workshops in 2025, with 72 annual participants.
“Our participants were connected with nature, artwork, creativity and each other in a profound and moving way”
– Praxis Coordinator
£80,000 will allow us to realise our Youth Guides Programme in 2025 and 2026
This budget will allow us to reach more young people by furthering our capacity to reach out, recruit and retain underrepresented participants and extend the age of participants up to 25.
£3,883 will fund one young person’s place on the programme
This will allow a local young person to benefit from enhanced employability, wellbeing and mental health benefits from being in nature.
Following up on evaluation feedback and working closely with our Youth Guides, we know that we need to extend the benefits of the programme to underrepresented participants. We want to work closely with local youth organisations to connect with, recruit and support young men and NEET young people into the programme.
‘It’s been beneficial for my wellbeing, the different exercises such as the water meditations and nature activities allow me to put my mind off stresses in my life and focus on the present moment... It has also taught me to be more observant of the nature around my local area. There are always new things to discover about your local area if you take the time to observe.’
- Former Youth Guide employed as co-facilitator on Wellbeing Walks, 2024
Project Background
Wellbeing Walks Programme
We piloted this programme as the only offer of its kind in London, promoting social connection by combining public art and local heritage while also creating new forms of engagement with nature. We have continued delivering the programme weekly over three years, offering sessions of gentle walking and guided nature-inspired activities, such as drawing, foraging, poetry, and wildlife identification. The programme has been developed in consultation with social prescribers, Newham Department of Health teams and local GPs. Participants are either self-referred or formally referred through social prescribing.
Our programmes are guided by key outcomes:
- Connection to nature: Encouraging participants to move away from polluted, heavily trafficked areas and deepen their connection to hidden green and blue spaces, local wildlife, and waterways.
- Learning about nature: Fostering awareness of river health and biodiversity along the River Lea.
- Creative skills: Inspiring individuals to develop creative skills and gain confidence in exploring these spaces independently.
- Wellbeing: Enhancing physical health and emotional resilience through walking in nature.
- Reducing loneliness: Creating safe opportunities for guided social interaction in outdoor settings.
- Community and support network: Building a sense of community among participants, fostering mutual support and long-term social connections, which can help combat isolation and promote sustained wellbeing.
- Confidence: Building participants' confidence in social, physical, and creative activities.
- Accessibility: Ensuring inclusivity by being responsive to diverse needs and abilities.
- Opportunity: Offering regular and diverse opportunities for vulnerable individuals to engage with art, heritage, and nature.
- Youth employment: Supporting local young people through employment and training opportunities, while promoting intergenerational learning by fostering shared knowledge and experiences between participants of all ages.
Youth Employment Programme: Youth Guides on The Line
Our Youth Guides programme is entering its fifth year of empowering local young people to connect with communities through the power of experiencing art in nature. We employ 20 Youth Guides annually and 6 former Youth Guides as Supervisors. The programme provides bespoke training opportunities and experiences for them to learn about their local environment, hone public speaking skills, build a lasting network within their cohort, and gain confidence in sharing their knowledge through public engagement.
During their training, the Youth Guides learn about the river and green spaces, how they can look after them and become stewards for their local environment. The programme runs through the summer months each year, provides young people with the opportunity to work outdoors in some of London’s most densely populated boroughs and will allow them to gain a deeper awareness of the environment and the importance of being active outside. Youth Guides spend time around East London’s waterways including the River Thames, the Royal Docks, Bow Creek, the River Lea, the Channelsea River, the Prescott Channel, the Waterwork Rivers and the City Mill River. Each shift includes walking along a different section of The Line’s route, providing access to the physical and mental benefits that can be gained from walking and spending time outdoors in nature.
“I think I've been able to see so much of London. I know I've grown up here, but there's a lot that I haven't seen, especially The Line before. Now, I actually have the opportunity of always coming here when I want to.”
- Former Youth Guide, 2024
The programme has run annually since 2021, however does not have annual funding in place. The programme supports local young people to develop key transferable skills and improve employability through paid training and employment. Each year we employ a cohort of 18–21-year-olds from Newham, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich and Waltham Forest as Youth Guides, with each role paid the London Living Wage. In 2024, we had a retention rate of 97% within the programme with 93% of the Youth Guides saying they would work on the programme again.
We recruit Youth Guides through schools and colleges local to The Line’s route, in the boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich. With an increasingly unstable economic landscape due to the cost-of-living crisis and the aforementioned impacts on local communities, we believe that it is more important than ever for us to tackle the inequality of opportunity in our local context.
Our aim
Our programmes aim to break barriers of unequal access to green and blue spaces in cities. We have been committed to evaluating and improving our programmes through research and knowledge exchange partnerships with universities; in our ongoing partnership with University College London’s MA Creative Health, a student wrote a dissertation focussed on the Wellbeing Walks, and through our formal partnership with the University of East London, an artist and PhD student will be volunteering on the Wellbeing Walks in 2025 to develop her practice-based research into walking.
We want to expand our work in making a meaningful impact on the intergenerational health and well-being of people in East London through our art, wellbeing and youth employment programmes.
Our Impact
“It’s really good to get out in the fresh air – feel the wind on your face. I love looking at the trees and birds and feel that green spaces are crucial to my well-being"
- Wellbeing Walk participant, Winter reflection session
From our own evaluation and impact measurements, we know that these programmes genuinely improve the lives, health and wellbeing of East London people.
Since the start of 2022, we have delivered walks for over 588 attendees (including repeat attendees) through our wellbeing programme, generating a 95% increase in referrals over the past year.
The Wellbeing Walk sessions currently run 50 weeks a year, with an average attendance of 6 people per week. This equates to a combined total of 300 hours spent outdoors in East London’s nature spaces annually. Each walk covers roughly 0.5 miles, equating to 150 miles and approximately 396000 steps covered by combined participants over a year.
In 2024, 93% of participants have reported that attending wellbeing walks has a sustained positive impact on their wellbeing with 100% reporting that it makes them spend more time outside and connect with local green spaces.
An evaluation report undertaken in collaboration with the University of East London reported that Youth Guides identified key benefits from the programme including:
- Experiencing The Line as a break and a refuge from the city
- Being near water and greenery, feeling connected to nature
“I enjoyed working with other creatives similar age to me, getting to know The Line organisation more, strengthening the valuable skill of confidently talking about art to the public, being in nature and gaining new responsibilities as a supervisor this year.”
– 2024 Youth Guide Supervisor