Feathered Adventures: Engaging With Nature
Creative workshops with Whale Arts Agency, Wester Hailes
Researchers: Gavin Ballantyne, Michael Preston, Jay Cotton, Gregor Masson (School of Applied Sciences)
During the Easter break in April 2025 Edinburgh Napier researchers worked with the team at Whale Arts Agency to deliver four workshops for local young people.
At Edinburgh Napier University we’re interested in the urban environment, understanding how best to manage our towns and cities to benefit birds, plants and pollinators, as well as people. Our enthusiasm is something we want to share with the wider community. In a joint staff-student application for public engagement funding, we were awarded a grant to run workshops with young people about bird natural history and appreciation for nature.
To do this we partnered with the Whale Arts Agency in the nearby neighbourhood, Wester Hailes, in South West Edinburgh. Whale has been the cultural anchor in Wester Hailes since the 1990s, delivering a wide range of projects and support for and with the local community. Together we designed free workshops for young people involving both natural history experience and arts and crafts and ran them during Whale’s Easter programme.
During the workshops we made use of the great garden at the arts centre, where participants learned about bird identification and the use of binoculars and guides. Using games and activity boards we explored bird diet, habitat use and nesting behaviours. We also incorporated a bit more natural history than usual to Easter egg hunts, using replica bird eggs of local species, from wrens to kestrels, and it was great to show them the dramatic differences in egg size, shape and colouration.
Under the guidance of Whale’s resident artists Lauren Bowman and Pandora Vaughan, participants worked on bird-themed art projects. It was great to see their imagination and talent as they constructed feathered headdresses for the upcoming Wester Hailes Carnival and camouflaged bird boxes that will be set up around the arts centre.
The workshops were a brilliant chance to help local young people engage with nature, see the birds around them from a different perspective and do it in an active and creative way. They also gave the Napier students who helped run the workshops some excellent experience of teaching and community engagement. This project built on an existing strong partnership with Whale and the community in Wester Hailes. We plan to continue to work with Whale to provide further opportunities for local young people and Napier undergrads in the future.
