Based out of the Edinburgh College of Art, OPENspace is committed to making outdoor environments accessible for everyone – people of the Global Majority, children, young people, carers, older people, disabled people, economically or socially disadvantaged groups.
OPENspace leverages the potential that open spaces hold for promoting meaningful outdoor activity and fostering people’s positive engagement with the natural environment, enhancing their overall health and wellbeing in the process.
Established in 2001, OPENspace has raised over £5 million external funding, organised four international conferences and published two books, as well as advising public agencies and professional groups on rural and urban area planning, tackling safety and crime, promotion of tourism, and advocating for environmental justice.
The interdisciplinary team at OPENspace has curated the postgraduate-taught programme – MSc in Landscape and Wellbeing – the first postgraduate-taught programme of its kind in the UK that acknowledges and addresses the need to understand relationships between landscapes and humans, and using that understanding to inform landscape design.
OPENspace Projects
Recently, Dr Simon Bell, co-director of OPENspace, introduced the BlueHealth Toolkit, a tried and tested free resource that urban planners and designers can consult and benefit from while working on blue space projects (blue space is defined as all forms of natural and manmade surface water). This toolkit was a part of the BlueHealth project, a research initiative that probed into the interconnections between urban blue spaces, climate, and health. The project, spanning four years between 2016—20, brought together large-scale data surveys with local interventions to emphasise on the interconnections.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson, Director of OPENspace, was a keynote speaker at the 49th PARJAP Congress in Madrid – an event organised by the Spanish Association of Public Parks and Gardens, where she spoke about her research on the multifaceted impacts well-designed green spaces can have on public health and well-being by aiding in the reduction of stress, promoting physical activity, and mitigating the adverse effects of climate change.
Edinburgh Earth Initiative Earth Fellow, Ki Tong, is also a PhD candidate with OPENspace, exploring space and the elderly population. As an Earth Fellow, Ki is worked with Dr Arno Verhoeven in the School of Design on the Low Voltage Living project. She worked in a team to deliver workshops with researchers to challenge predominant sociotechnical narratives regarding social behaviour, technical emancipation and the role of critical infrastructures in energy production, storage and distribution.
A collaboration between researchers, local communities, implementers, and policymakers, the GroundsWell project is geared towards better understanding the role of Urban Green and Blue Spaces (UGBS) within cultural, social, economic, environmental, and health systems. The research is split across Belfast, Edinburgh, and the Liverpool City Region, owing to the similarities connecting them.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson, Director of OPENspace, was a keynote speaker at the 49th PARJAP Congress in Madrid – an event organised by the Spanish Association of Public Parks and Gardens, where she spoke about her research on the multifaceted impacts well-designed green spaces can have on public health and well-being by aiding in the reduction of stress, promoting physical activity, and mitigating the adverse effects of climate change.
The Edinburgh’s Thriving Green Spaces project is another example of a collaboration that OPENspace are a part of this time with The City of Edinburgh Council’s Parks, Greenspace and Cemeteries service, with the involvement of Master’s and PhD students at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
The Mobility, Mood and Place project is an undertaking that seeks to understand how to design spaces that can enhance pedestrian mobility, making the experience enjoyable and meaningful for older people. This research stems from the evidence that environments, and more specifically – how people experience them – influences moods, and their activity and mobility levels. This project Iinvolves a range of academic and public, policy, and not-for-profit partners.
The Woods In and Around Towns Project II, building on Part I of the project, addresses some of the urgent and most pressing questions facing forestry agencies across the UK, Europe, and the world, especially pertaining to sustainability and human health.
The Lifecourse of Place, Making Connections, Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors (I’DGO), and Memory-Friendly Neighbourhoods projects also focus on the intersecting drivers of climate and health.
Climate and Health
Climate change is the single greatest threat to humanity, with many impacts on human health. Read out about some of the vital, interdisciplinary research underway here at The University of Edinburgh that addresses the complex, intersecting drivers of climate and health globally. Explore further on our dedicated climate and health page.
Useful Links
Check out the 2023/24 OPENspace seminar series, running until April 2024
