Small grants that got city children onto a working farm or into a residential cottage in the country, some for many, for the very first time.
For a lot of children growing up in Britain's cities, the countryside isn't far away exactly, it's just invisible. A postcode, a bus timetable and the cost of getting there can rule it out just as effectively as distance. A grant that covers a coach fare, or an electrician's bill, is sometimes the only thing standing between a child and their first proper look at rural life.
A week on a working farm
Many of the children at Flora Gardens Primary School in London had never collected an egg or seen a cow milked before their week at Farms for City Children's Nethercott Farm in Devon. Over half the school's pupils are eligible for pupil premium funding, and many had never left London before. A grant helped get a whole class there for a week of milking cows, collecting eggs, feeding pigs, building campfires and hiking through countryside most of them had only seen in books.
Bannerman Road Community Academy in Bristol makes a similar trip work in the other direction, sending pupils to Shallowford Farm on Dartmoor. Teacher Anna Hicks has seen what a week there can do for children who struggle in the classroom.
"We took children with significant behaviour challenges and these children returned to school engaged in their learning and with a newfound confidence in their abilities. For a group of some of our more vulnerable students, this experience was a life changing experience, one they will never forget."
A grant helped 16 children get there, many living in overcrowded tower blocks with little access to nature. They climbed hills, fed cows, cleaned out pigs and walked for miles, several for the first time in their lives. One child with an eating disorder tried a green bean. Another, who struggles to concentrate in class, sat spinning wool for an hour.
A cottage that outlasts any one visit
Some places do this work quietly, for generations rather than one visit at a time. Bryntail Cottage, just outside Llanidloes in mid Wales, has hosted residential trips for Birmingham children since 1915. Tile Cross Academy, the school that now hosts the cottage, secured a new 30-year lease on the condition that its electrical supply met current building regulations.
A grant went towards that work, keeping the cottage open for the next group of children to visit. The Bryntail Cottage Charity was set up in 2020 to carry the building's legacy forward for another century: somewhere young people facing hardship at home can spend time outdoors, away from whatever they're dealing with back in the city.
Getting a child to a farm, a cottage or a stretch of open country isn't complicated. It just costs money that some schools and charities don't have. Find out how to apply.