Category Archives: Sara Tilley

OPENspace (and friends) at #RGSIBG16

It’s time for the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society, which is held in collaboration with the Institute of British Geographers.

The theme for 2016 is ‘nexus thinking’, a way of addressing the interdependencies, tensions and trade-offs between different environmental and social domains.

OPENspace is involved in five papers at this year’s conference, which you can follow on social media using the hashtag #RGSIBG16.

Here’s where you can find out more about two of our current research projects: Mobility, Mood and Place (which looks at older people’s mobility outdoors); and Woods In and Around Towns (which explores urban woodlands and quality of life in deprived communities).

RGS-IBG conference papers on Mobility, Mood and Place

Wednesday 31st August 2016

Measuring Wellbeing (11:10-12:50)      
Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 207 

Mapping brain imaging as a measure of emotional wellbeing in older people walking in different urban spaces.

Dr Steve Cinderby* of The University of York will be presenting this paper, which has been co-authored by Dr Sara Tilley of OPENspace and colleagues at the Universities of Edinburgh, York, Heriot-Watt and University College London.

Thursday 1st September 2016

Everyday geographies of ageing (1): (im)mobility, independence and ageing ‘well’ (09:00-10:40) 
Sherfield Building, Room 10  

Living in the moment or experiences of a lifetime? Considering environmental influences past, present and future on mobility in older age

Professor Jamie Pearce of the The Human Geography Research Group at the University of Edinburgh will be presenting this paper, which has been co-authored by Professor Catharine Ward Thompson, Professor Jenny Roe, Dr Katherine Brookfield and Dr Sara Tilley at OPENspace, and colleagues at the Universities of Edinburgh, York, Heriot-Watt and King’s College London.

RGS-IBG conference papers on Woods In and Around Towns

Thursday 1st September 2016

Greenspace Justice for Health and Wellbeing (16:50-18:30) 
Royal School of Mines, Room G.06

Exploring parents’ perceptions and visits to local urban woodlands in deprived communities

Dr Sara Tilley of OPENspace will be presenting this paper, which has been co-authored by Dr Eva Silveirinha de Oliveira and Professor Catharine Ward Thompson.

On Friday 2nd September, Sara will also be chairing the first session on ‘Time at the nexus: mobility and modal choice’which she co-convenes with Dr Julie Clark of the University of Glasgow, and presenting her PhD research in the second session (again co-convened with Julie) in a paper entitled Understanding the Multi-Level Forces Affecting Mobility Trends.

* Steve will also be talking about MMP at the annual ‘research into policy’ event co-hosted by the Transport Geography Research Group and UK Department for Transport (DfT). This pre-conference event takes place at the DFT on Tuesday 30th August 2016. Steve’s presentation is entitled Interactions between urban infrastructure design and use on older people’s mobility and well-being: evidence from three UK case studies.


> Browse other conference papers given by OPENspace team members

Shifting the ground of environmental design evidence

This week, we’re at one of the most important conferences of the year for us, the 47th conference of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA).

Logo for E D R A conference

Since its formation in the late 1960s, EDRA has used its annual congress to bring together design professionals, social scientists, students, educators, and facility managers.

For EDRA47, the Association has ‘come home’ to its birthplace of North Carolina, where its very first conference was convened by Henry Sanoff in June 1969, sponsored by NC State’s School of Design and UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning.

Under the theme of Innovation : Shifting Ground, the aim of EDRA47 is to take a global look at the driving force of innovation in environmental design.

Catharine Ward Thompson’s plenary on environmental design evidence

Catharine (Director of OPENspace) is one of EDRA47’s six keynote and plenary speakers.

In her plenary, she is focusing on environmental design’s potential to help address current global health crises (such as cardio-vascular disease, rising levels of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and mental illness) and growing inequalities in health and wellbeing.

Catharine’s presentation explores what kinds of approaches are needed if environmental design, and landscape design in particular, is to be taken seriously by public health policy makers and planners as both health-enhancing (salutogenic) and reducing of health inequalities (equigenic).

It therefore considers the importance of working across and between disciplines, the use of innovative of methods (such as biomarkers and mobile neural imaging), the particular challenges involved in longitudinal studies to research design interventions, and the opportunities offered by natural experiments.

Insights from current and recent OPENspace research

In Catharine’s plenary presentation, she will draw on research from large-scale, collaborative projects such as Mobility, Mood and Place (MMP), GreenHealth, and Woods In and Around Towns (WIAT).

Over the course of the four-day conference, which runs from Wednesday 18th to Saturday 21st May 2016, these projects will also be presented in a series of papers by OPENspace researchers including Dr Sara Tilley, Dr Eva Silveirinha de Oliveira and Professor Jenny Roe.

The themes covered by the papers include Longitudinal Studies and Natural Experiments; Childhood Experience, Adult Perceptions and Visits to Woodlands; Timescales in Environmental Influences on Mobility in Older Age; Older People’s Brain Activities and Self-Reported Experiences of Short Urban Walks; and Experiences of Outdoor Environments by Women with Postnatal Depression.

Colleagues from collaborating research centres, such as the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York, will also be presenting.

PhD candidate scoops EDRA Great Places Award

We’re delighted to end this post by announcing that PhD researcher, Matluba Khan, has won the EDRA Great Places Award in the Place Design category for her project, An Outdoor Learning Environment for Children.

Announced on the first day of the EDRA conference, the Award was given to Matluba for a “submission [which] truly exemplifies the concern for human factors in the design of the built environment, and a commitment to promoting the links between design research and practice”.

Matluba’s project is the co-design and build of outdoor learning and play space at a rural primary school in Bangladesh. Her PhD is co-supervised by Dr Simon Bell and Dr Eva Silveirinha De Oliveira at OPENspace, and Dr Sarah McGeown of Moray House School of Education.

In 2014, Matluba won Overall Best Paper Award at the 45th EDRA conference in New Orleans.

The annual Great Places Awards are a collaboration with the global organisation, Project for Public Spaces. Chaired by  John Shapiro of the Pratt Institute, this year’s jury included Kofi Boone (North Carolina State University), Jill Pable (Florida State University), Michael Mehaffy (Sustasis Foundation) and Katie Roden (Centerbrook Architects and Planners).

Two researchers with an award

Find out more about EDRA47 on the Environmental Design Research Association website

Another step forward for the National Walking Strategy

The National Walking Strategy Action Plan for the next ten years has been released, along with a new website and an infographic on how we can all contribute to ‘getting Scotland walking’.

OPENspace team members have played an active role in both the development of the Strategy (which was launched in 2014) and the new Action Plan, with Catharine Ward Thompson being a member of its Working Group and Delivery Forum, and Sara Tilley contributing to a workshop on its implementation.

The vision for the National Walking Strategy is “a Scotland where everyone walks as part of their everyday journeys, places are well designed for walking and everyone enjoys walking in the outdoors”.

The Action Plan was announced by Jamie Hepburn, the Scottish Government Minister for Sport, Health Improvement and Mental Health, at a ScotLINK Active Health seminar on Thursday 3rd March.

Read the Action Plan on the Step Change Scotland website

Infographic on walking

Let’s Get Scotland Walking – the new National Walking Strategy infographic

Katherine and Sarah at Active Living Research 2016

This week, two of our researchers are at ALR2016 in Florida, USA.

The Active Living Research Annual Conference brings together researchers and active living champions from over 30 disciplines to advance knowledge and action around active communities.

The 2016 conference theme, Equity in Active Living, explores opportunities to ensure that all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, economic background, level of education, age, sexual orientation, gender identify, physical and/or cognitive ability, have access to safe and enjoyable places to be physically active.

Katherine Brookfield and Sara Tilley are delivering two of the three papers in the Conference session on Older Adults; only 20 academics papers were accepted to the conference overall (in addition to 20 by practitioners), so the team have done exceptionally well.

And they won’t miss this gorgeous January weather in Edinburgh…

Edinburgh in the rain