Sensing Nature was a two-year in-depth qualitative research project, based at the University of Exeter, from 2016-2018, to explore opportunities to promote more inclusive nature experiences for wellbeing amongst people with sight impairment in the UK. In the initial phase of the research the lead researcher has volunteered with a range of activity groups across England, including those involving participants with visual impairment. This opportunity was used to build an awareness of people’s diverse sensory worlds and to explore how people might like to share their experiences and stories. In the project's second phase, both narrative and go-along interviews were conducted with people of different ages and backgrounds, and with varying forms of visual impairment. These interviews offered a much deeper understanding of people’s diverse sensory experiences in nature, alongside the conditions that can both enhance and undermine these experiences.Over 40 years ago, visually impaired singer and author, Tom Sullivan, argued that sight paints a picture of life, but sound, touch, taste and smell are actually life itself. This is an important message given 285 million people worldwide are estimated to live with sight impairment; a number that is increasing with the rising incidence of underlying causes such as diabetes, and an ageing population. Recognising the vitalising influence of the wider senses is also important for researchers exploring the potential for varied nature encounters to promote human health and wellbeing. Much of this work emphasises the visual sense, highlighting the importance of colours, people 'watching', viewing distant horizons, and the sense of space achieved through visual encounters with these settings. Yet, when we stop to think about the global prevalence of visual impairment (now and in the future), we realise that sight cannot be taken for granted as the most important means of interacting with nature. The aims of this Future Research Leaders project are to explore how and why natural environments (including our back gardens, local parks, woodlands, countryside and coastlines) feature within the everyday lives of people with sight impairment. It will examine how diverse visual impairments shape people's opportunities for positive and therapeutic experiences in nature. It will also explore how this varies between individuals with different life histories, including those born with a visual impairment and those experiencing sight loss later in life. An in-depth two-phase research approach will be used to explore these issues. In Phase I, 3-4 months will be spent volunteering with visual impairment support groups across the south west of England (described as 'ethnographic participation'), helping out with indoor and outdoor recreational and support activities. Through maximising opportunities to spend time with and talk to blind and partially sighted adults during this period, valuable relationships will be built and initial understandings gained of their sensory priorities and experiences. Phase II will involve two sets of interviews with blind and partially sighted adults at different life stages. The first interview (an in-depth 'narrative' interview) will examine the impacts of visual impairment on varied aspects of their daily lives and place interactions. It will also explore recalled shifts in these experiences during their lifetimes. The second interview (a 'go along' interview) will take place in a setting identified by each participant as a local 'natural' environment in which they feel a sense of wellbeing. Whilst there, participants will be asked to reflect on and explain the diverse sensory, emotional and social dimensions of their experiences in that environment. In exploring these aspects of experience, this research will provide novel understandings of the non-visual cues in nature that we respond to. It will address calls to explore the conditions that enable flourishing lives amongst individuals with visual impairments rather than focusing solely on narratives of loss, and will promote greater sensory awareness amongst the diverse stakeholders involved in the delivery of socially inclusive natural environment interactions. Dr. Bell will convene and lead a series of stakeholder engagement and dissemination events, alongside the production of high profile academic outputs, in order to raise awareness of how visually impaired individuals support and sustain a sense of wellbeing through interactions with nature.

Conducted from February to December 2017 in England, the Sensing Nature fieldwork comprised two overlapping fieldwork phases. In the first phase, the lead researcher, Dr Sarah Bell, participated in both sight loss awareness and sighted guiding training, before volunteering with a range of activity groups around the country. These included both indoor and outdoor groups (e.g. walking groups, social groups) designed to bring together sight-impaired individuals with common interests. Time spent volunteering with these groups (attending over 15 activity sessions in total) provided a valuable opportunity to build an initial awareness of people’s diverse sensory worlds. Two informal interviews were also conducted with the coordinators of these groups. Phase 2 involved a series of in-depth face-to-face interviews with a purposive sample of 31 people, recruited from around the country with the assistance of the Royal National Institute for the Blind ‘RNIB Connect’ magazine, the Thomas Pocklington Trust, Blind Veterans UK, the Macular Society, Retina UK, and local and regional sight support organisations who offered to raise awareness of the study through their member networks. The Phase 2 sample included: 15 men, 16 women; aging from mid-20s to mid-80s; living in rural areas, towns and cities; with a range of eye conditions (including glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetic retinopathy, congenital cataracts, retinopathy of prematurity, Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis, Leber’s Hereditory Optic Neuropathy, coloboma, retinal detachment, rod-cone dystrophy, and sight loss caused by accident and/or brain injury). Fifteen participants were born with at least one eye condition, with 12 of these experiencing further sight changes later in life. Of the 31 people who took part in Phase 2, everyone participated in an initial nature-themed life history interview, lasting between one and three hours, examining what nature is to them, how they perceive, experience and negotiate different types of nature in the context of their day-to-day lives, how this had changed through key life transitions and ‘chapters’ of their lives, and how they feel about existing efforts to support more inclusive multisensory nature encounters, based on their experiences both within the UK and beyond. Twenty-five of the 31 participants took part in a second ‘go-along’ interview within a setting they valued for encountering nature in their day-to-day lives. These in situ – or ‘emplaced’ – interviews offered more subtle insights into the strategies used by participants to negotiate varied forms of nature. Settings included participant gardens, local residential road/path networks, urban parks, woodland, coastal and countryside areas, with interviews lasting between 20 minutes and four hours (according to participant preference). All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, anonymised (as far as possible with such narrative data) and subject to in-depth inductive thematic narrative analysis.