Dear reader,

For your sake I tried to remain neutral, to maintain professional distance and be objective about PROJECT WILD THING, but I’m sorry – I couldn’t do it.

Don’t get me wrong, I was really looking forward to this one. Before the screening I researched the project, agreed with the director’s general principle of trying to prise children away from computer screens and get them running around outside, but I was soon fizzing with indignation at the way PWT plans to achieve this. Director and project creator David Bond is the self-appointed Marketing Director for ‘nature’, complete with business cards to that effect. My problem was with the campaign’s modus operandi rather than the actual film, which had some cute bits of animation (in case any children were watching) and some very gorgeous location shoots on Eigg (with reputedly the highest UK rates of happiness) and elsewhere, but it’s more of a reasonably made TV doc than a cinema release.

David Bond realised that his cute children (Ivy, nearly 5 and Alby, 3) were spending way too much time glued to screens of various kinds, and they didn’t like playing outside. So, bizarrely, David dreamed up a marketing project to tackle the parlous state of children’s lack of interaction with the natural world. I say bizarrely, because he could have saved a whole lot of energy by just switching off his own computer/tablet/phone and taking those adorable children outside. Just because it’s part of their lives, and not as part of a marketing project.

It was sad to see more ‘stuff’ being produced to ‘sell’ nature itself…

PROJECT WILD THING’s marketing campaign is aimed at kids, but perhaps adults would be a much more productive target. David hosted a convention of marketing consultants, usual cost £1,000 a day each, to design a logo, posters and tee shirt to promote the scheme. It was sad to see more ‘stuff’ being produced to ‘sell’ nature itself: isn’t there another way to encourage people to interact with the natural world that doesn’t involve creating a gigantic carbon footprint? And, while we’re on the subject, how about tackling the closely related problem of the school run?

On the positive side, David interviewed some very interesting people: a psychologist who discussed the importance of outdoor play in our social development, and a branding guru; who explained how branding works, how it wriggles its way into our heads and sits there making us willing participants in the advertising game. Mason, a remarkably eloquent 10-year-old, showed David around his East London housing estate and regretted that he had few opportunities for messing about outside in anything other than, you’ve guessed it – dog mess; this is perhaps an issue for town planners rather than a film maker. Chris Packham (he of recent tight-trouser YouTube fame) was easily the most concise interviewee: it’s the parents who say no to mud pies, puddle jumping, climbing trees and running wild.

PROJECT WILD THING highlighted many genuinely disturbing facts about the generational shift to a largely indoor existence: that space for children to roam has decreased by 90% in the last decade. Also very much in people’s minds are issues such as obesity, poor behaviour and reducing life span. But pretty quickly I was asking questions such as ‘how come it’s taken until your kids are 5 and 3 before you notice they don’t go outside much?’ I’m afraid I lost patience when David revealed to camera that ‘In the baby manuals, along with telling you how to nurture your newborn, there was no mention of taking your child out into nature’. Does anyone need to be told this? I really hope he was using dramatic license, or perhaps there’s a playful tone I didn’t pick up on. I wondered about restricting kids’ access to the dread screen and if it is wise to let a three-year-old use an iPad at all. None of my friends let their kids gorge themselves on technology; there are always time restrictions in place. Perhaps I don’t know the right people.

The biggest help of all might be for adults to look away from their screens first, and kids might just follow.

It was disappointing to see Screen 1 so under-used, around 20 people gathered to watch WILD THING; I wondered, how come? Isn’t the future well-being of our children a topic of burning debate among parents and professionals? Where was everyone? Then the penny dropped – the screening was at mid-day on a Saturday, just when lots of kids are out playing in footie or netball matches. And their parents are on the side-lines cheering the little darlings. Unfortunate timing. I don’t know the answer to the fundamental problem of our ever-decreasing interaction with nature, but this film seems to me to be more of the same marketing hype, producing more ‘stuff’ that our overburdened planet could well do without. The biggest help of all might be for adults to look away from their screens first, and kids might just follow.

As a footnote to PROJECT WILD THING, I came out of Screen 1 and headed straight into Screen 2 for the Estonian film MUSHROOMING. I chuckled. Here was precisely why you should keep your children (and indeed yourself) well away from grubby old nature, especially forests. If you go down to the woods today…

httpvh://youtu.be/bWqrbYwn7K4