Nature for wellbeing photography competition

Kirstie Buckridge (Faculty Operations Manager, IOE) organised a 'Nature for wellbeing' photography competition to encourage colleagues to share their connection with nature during remote-working.

What were you aiming to achieve from your wellbeing initiative? 

Finding solace in nature has been a recurring theme during the pandemic with many staff taking the opportunity to go for walks and reconnect with the natural world as a way to combat stress and improve their wellbeing. We, myself and the Departmental Administrators from the six academic departments of the IOE, decided to run a photography competition during July 2021 with the brief “Nature for wellbeing” and open it up to staff across the IOE. 

Tell us how you delivered your wellbeing initiative. 

Through the IOE staff intranet and via department newsletters we asked people to submit their photos online using a Microsoft Form. All submissions were then uploaded (anonymously) to a Padlet dashboard and the link was made public and shared to the intranet so that staff could see the entries and vote for them. 

What was the positive impact of your wellbeing initiative? 

We received over 50 entries which really displayed the creativity and enthusiasm of our staff, not to mention their artistic talents! It was really difficult to judge the submissions, and the panel, which was comprised of Departmental Administrators from each academic department and myself, spent a full hour deliberating. The funding went towards the competition awards. We awarded a first and second prize plus a prize for the entry with the most popular votes; all of our winners received Amazon vouchers and their photos have been displayed on the IOE intranet.

We had such a good response, both in terms of submissions and votes and it was really lovely to see how people had interpreted the brief. There were some truly beautiful photos and some great captions to go with them! 

What did you learn from running your wellbeing initiative? 

Nature really can improve wellbeing! One great suggestion that came from Pani in the UCL Wellbeing team was to create the Padlet dashboard as a way to share all the entries – we had originally intended to just share the winners online. Once this had been set up, we decided to open up the voting too and give everyone the chance to take part more fully. The biggest takeaway was how difficult it was to judge the competition! Photography is a very subjective art form and it was hard to agree on the final winners. The brief was rather broad, so we should maybe have decided on different categories within the overall theme. That said, our goal, to encourage staff to share their take on “Nature for wellbeing”, was definitely achieved.