Green Spaces Issue
Issue
8
Guidance Paper 8
Increasing physical activity
within ethnic minority communities
Opportunities linking health and
the built and natural environment
Black Environment Network – March
2004
Linking health and the built and
natural environment is a central theme
for improving the health of ethnic
minorities in Britain. Ethnic communities
live in some of the worst environments.
The resources within the education and
environmental sectors are enormous but
they have little or no access to them,
e.g. Walking for Health programme, a vast
range of outdoor activities.
This paper concentrates on
opportunities for increasing physical
activity within ethnic minority
communities. Local green space can be a
focal point for this work.
1. The necessity for outreach in
relation to physical activities in the
built and natural environment
Many outdoor activities, ranging from
walking to horse riding in an urban or
rural setting, are not on the agenda of
ethnic communities - the “not for
us” factor due to:
• unfamiliarity and lack of
opportunity to experience these
• lack of consistent nurturing of
interest and provision of support to
enter new areas of endeavour. The image
of ethnic communities as not being
interested means that within the
mainstream there is the “not for
them” factor
• initial economic barriers. The
fact is that no one will spend money to
try something they know nothing about.
However, many members of ethnic
communities are rising into the middle
class and can afford to pay for what they
may become interested in. Even for groups
which may not be able to afford such
activities, there is the fact that even
they can pay for them through fundraising
if only they are interested.
2. Addressing barriers to taking
part in outdoor activities
Nurturing initial interest, providing
culturally sensitive opportunities, and
consistently providing support are
essential when introducing new
activities.
We introduced outdoor activities
including horseriding to the Minority
Ethnic Women's Network in South Wales
about 4 years ago. Now there is a keen
group of horse riders, and the group know
about and take part in a range of
physical activities including walking and
horseriding. Recently they designed a
programme of summer activities and
successfully got a grant of £3000 from
Awards for All to implement these
independently. We :
• introduced activities with a
taster programme
• provided consistent support to
the ethnic minority group including
identifying where they can carry on with
activities they are initially interested
in, assisting with fundraising to
continue activities, acting as acted as
facilitator to connect them to mainstream
personnel and organisations which can
support them
• act as their representative
supporting and negotiating with
mainstream organisations to ensure they
are welcome and that cultural aspects for
engagement are known
• identified training needed to
enable them to organise activities, build
working relationships with relevant
organisations, negotiate for what they
need, and fundraising for themselves.
2. Promotion and creation of
relevant physical activities within the
urban adult learning institutions
Because of the unsympathetic outdoor
environment in many of the deprived
areas, and the fact that we cannot rely
on the weather, indoor physical
activities is important.
Many of the members of the younger
generation of ethnic community are now
Many ethnic minority cultures have forms
of physical exercise as part of their
culture, often integrated into their
spiritual/religious/cultural systems.
Some of these, yoga and Tai Chi, have
become mainstream interests. However, we
need to be aware that some of the ethnic
minority groups, because of the spiritual
and cultural context, will shy away from
these “classes” because the
classes are adapted to British needs.
There is real scope for increasing
physical activity through :
• identifying and creating a
greater range of classes around physical
activity related to different cultures,
consulting with ethnic community groups
as to how they may be offered within the
adult education institutions
• identifying the various
age/gender groups which have specific
interests and needs in relation to these
and other mainstream physical activity
classes
• identifying the possibility of
running such physical activity classes at
the premises of ethnic community groups,
and other locations such as school halls
near to where they live
3. Opening up activities in the
outdoor environment through concrete
action to recognise the legitimacy of
ethnic minority presence and heritage in
the built environment
Ethnic communities are as a whole
stressed by a feeling of rejection by the
mainstream. Anything which promotes a
sense of belonging and recognition of
their legitimate presence contributes to
their well-being and health.
Very often, urban green spaces are the
only significant pleasant spaces in which
physical activities can take place. But
many ethnic groups feel that they are not
for them. We need to:
• reach out to ethnic groups and
make known to them that they are welcome
to use green spaces. Unless there are
substantial green spaces, the
incorporation of use by newcomers is a
negotiation.
• Social exclusion is a
framework. Working for social inclusion
disturbs that framework, particularly in
small places where a scene can become
set, e.g. someone is used to coming into
a small park and sitting on a particular
bench at a particular time of day.
Suddenly they find a new ethnic minority
person sitting there... they have to
accept it that other people have a right
too...and the ethnic minority person
needs to feel comfortable. Mile End Park
actually has to support various groups to
claim this comfortable right to use
space.
• Lister Park is a shining
example of attending to the recognition
of the presence of ethnic groups by
consulting them in the regeneration of
the park and investing significant sums
to create a Mughal garden. Everyone now
enjoys the Mughal garden, but for ethnic
groups it is something special. It is a
statement of commitment to them from the
park, a setting which is cultural and
concrete in their locality giving a sense
of accepted belonging. Many Walking for
Health Programmes have difficulties in
unsympathetic surroundings of inner
cities, but here a pleasant and cultural
and large space has been created in
continuity with the rest of the park.
Every day at 8.30 in the morning you can
witness over 50 ethnic minority women
walking for health in Lister Park.
• in general create more pleasant
spaces, and mark them as multicultural
spaces, providing room for children to
play, adults to walk, cycle, do exercise
outdoors
4. Linking up locations for
activities and encouraging people to walk
to shop, to school and to work
Although there may be pleasant spaces,
many vulnerable members of ethnic
minorities will not venture out because
of issues of safety , cleanliness and
general bleakness of the connecting
streets and space. We need to:
• make the general built
environment more pleasant so that the
sense of being in a pleasant place
outside encourages people to be outside
• make streets and connecting
areas safe to encourage people to be
outside and to walk to school and to
work. Over and over again we have heard
for example that mothers with young
children just do not want to breathe all
the traffic fumes and walk along dirty
littered streets to get to a nice park
• consult and nurture the
capacity of ethnic groups to contribute
to the shaping of the local environment
which affects them most
5. Things to do outdoors and
volunteering in the urban area and
further afield into the countryside
• Allotments and community
gardens have already proved to be a great
success to bring people outdoors and to
do the many physical activities
associated with it.
• Many locations such as inner
city nature reserves, city fringe country
parks and woodland, and the countryside
further afield offer a whole range of
activities, including volunteering. It is
also particularly important to ethnic
groups which have low income because so
much of these are free. Benefiting from
positive activity and access to nature is
a major factor in increasing the quality
of life of ethnic communities, and
therefore their health and well-being.
Such activities are crucial to lay down
the basis for contact with and
understanding of what it means to be part
of the environment. It also brings ethnic
communities out of isolation.
• Refer to 1 for necessity for
outreach and support to increase access
and relevance of activities.
6. Health information,
healthcare and environment
Information and understanding is a
basis for participation and gives impetus
to action. We need to:
• Put information where people
are - in the case of ethnic groups they
have named mosques, corner shops, post
office, schools as key places from which
to pick up information
• Places where healthcare is
given are also important, in particular
if it links into the state of health.
Already GPs are aware of the Walking for
Health programme. Information about all
kinds of activities can appear at GP
surgeries, baby clinics, be given to
clients by Health Visitors which are in
touch with all families with children
under 5
• Use events which physical
activity is already happening and give
even more information to those who are
already taking part to become interested
in a whole range of activities.
• Work in partnership with ethnic
community groups and representative
networks such as Black Environment
Network to give information
• Spend time with those who one
can see will make good champions. They
will be a great investment for spreading
the word and increasing the numbers of
people who begin to know about,
understand and become in touch with
opportunities.
• Increase representation through
consultation and enabling ethnic groups
to inform and take part in
decision-making. Here capacity building
is needed.
7. Employment opportunities
Unemployment and poor income result in
huge stresses on the health of ethnic
communities. There is a need to create
opportunities for ethnic communities to
aspire to enter employment in sectors new
to them, such as the environmental
sector. They are traditionally folded
back into a narrow spectrum of employment
due to discrimination and social
exclusion.
In the effort to create opportunities
for physical activities and promote these
to ethnic communities, there lies an
opportunity to provide employment in :
• Using skills within ethnic
communities, e.g. around traditional
forms of exercise
• Using ethnic minorities for
their community connections and skills to
reach out to their own communities to
promote physical activity
Appendix
Some statistics re Social and
Environmental Inequality - Ethnic
Communities
• People living in the 44 most
deprived areas in England, stated
pollution, poor public transport, and the
appearance of the estate as major issues
about where they live
• The 44 most deprived areas in
England contain 4 times more people from
ethnic communities as other areas
• 66% of all cancer-causing
chemicals emitted into the air comes from
factories in the most deprived 10 % of
communities in England
• Pollution is a major factor in
poor health and health inequalities
• People from ethnic minority
backgrounds experience more health
consequences from isolation and fear of
crime in their local environment -
instances of stress, depression, loss of
appetite, increased alcohol consumption
and lack of self esteem are consistently
double in number compared to the
population as a whole.
• Only 1 in 20 of people from
ethnic minorities live in an area of low
unemployment compared to 1 in 5 of white
people. Black and Asian people with A
levels experienced higher levels of
unemployment than white people with no
qualifications.
• Overall the ethnic minorities
have younger age structures than the
white population. Different ethnic groups
are experiencing inequality and increased
disadvantage in education. Overall ethnic
minority pupils made up 17% of exclusions
from school while making up only 11 % of
the school population. Only 4% of ethnic
minority 16 year olds were in government
training in 1994 compared to 13% of white
young people of the same age.
• Open spaces are more accessible
to ethnic minority children than any
other leisure activity, but their
satisfaction rates are lower , often
related to fears over personal safety and
racial abuse.
• Until recently much research on
themes significant to ethnic minorities
exclude references to them, resulting in
a lack of essential information to steer
policy on many fronts. Unease over the
issue of ethnicity often results in
professionals adopting colour-blind
attitudes that ignore ethnic and cultural
differences altogether.
References
Ethnic Environmental Participation.
Volumes 1 to 4. BEN
Multi-ethnic Britain - facts and
trends. The Runneymede Trust.
Achieson Report : Independent enquiry
into inequalities in health report - 1998
Pollution Injustice - research report.
Friends of the Earth - 2001
Bringing Britain Together. Social
exclusion Unit Report - 1998
Ethnic Minority Issues in Social
Exclusion and Neighbourhood Renewal -
2000. The Black Pakistani Children in
Sheffield and their Perception and Use of
Public Open Spaces. Children's
Environments. 121 (0):479-488. Woolley
H., Amin N. 1995
Mapping disadvantage - young people
who need help in England and Wales. The
Princes Trust 2001
Multicultural Interpretation and
Access to Heritage - BEN paper
How to increase ethnic participation
in National Parks - BEN paper
Ethnic Environmental Participation -
Key articles Vol 1 & 2. BEN
publications.
Maximising ethnic minority involvement
in environmental activities - report .
Groundwork Blackburn
Ethnic communities - communication and
the environment. Bolton MBC
Celebrating diversity: learning by
sharing cultural differences, 3rd
European Congress for Outdoor Adventure,
Education and Experiential learning.
Institute for Outdoor learning
Linking People and Place. National
Trust
Whose Heritage ? Conference report.
Arts Council of Great Britain
Note
All BEN resources are accessible free,
downloadable from the BEN website
www.ben-network.org.uk
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