Case study
Rooted: connecting trees and people
Looking After the Wildness is an outdoor learning provision in Rushden, Northamptonshire, with young people aged 14-20, led by Hannah Persaud. While getting to know their new site at Hall Park, they each chose a tree, spent time with it, and were inspired to produce creative and investigative work in response.
The Rooted project
After noticing what an impact this person-tree relationship had on their wellbeing and their feeling of connection to nature, they wanted to spread this to the wider community. Partnering with the local council, they applied for and were awarded funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to do just that. They are inviting people to choose their own tree, visit it throughout the seasons, and then submit whatever written, visual or audio response they have for an exhibition.
What did they need to spread the word and tell people how to get involved? A website, of course.
Who does an ex-teacher and Forest School leader seek out to build such a website? Me, of course.
What they needed
The site needed to be simple but inviting. Nature-inspired and reflective of the young people without being twee or childish. The details of the project and the steps to take to get involved needed to be crystal clear. They were also keen to get it off the ground as quickly as possible, so the year-long project could begin.
Challenge accepted.
Growing from the roots
The young people had designed their own logo for Looking After the Wildness, so I selected some of the colours from it as the palette for the Rooted site. I found a playful and striking font for the headers (appropriately enough called BioRhyme) and a clear san-serif as the body font. One of the young people drew the fantastic tree person character and I isolated the head to use in the logo and put the full image on the homepage.
I used outlined, boxed sections to make the ‘getting involved’ steps super clear, break up longer text, and make the most of the nice colours. Hannah had written the copy and I just did a few little tweaks.
So they can add updates as the project goes along, I set up a blog and renamed it Log for obvious reasons. After making author logins for the young people, I recorded some training videos to explain how to resize and compress images ready for upload and how to publish posts.
The result
Reader, I went from getting the content to launching the site in 6 days. The young people loved the result and the designer of the tree character was particularly excited to see their work published online.
They’ve already published their first Log and it looks great. I’m looking forward to seeing how it progresses and what gets submitted for the exhibition. And I’ll try and remember to come back and update the screenshot of the Log page when there’s more on there!
Please take a look at the Rooted site, spread the word to anyone you know who might be interested and consider adopting a tree of your own.
“Molly completely understood the brief, and worked independently to get it done quickly for a tight deadline.
Really pleased – it’s perfect.”
