Improving the Ethnic Diversity of Visitors to England's National Landscapes

The Government's 25 Year Environment Plan (25 YEP), launched in 2018, makes an explicit commitment to connecting more people to the environment 'to promote greater well-being', as part of long-term plans to protect it for the next generation. Nonetheless, not everyone engages with the environment in the same way. This disparity in engagement with the environment, and specifically with national landscapes, is highlighted in the final report from the Landscapes Review, published in 2019. This research will contribute to the development of such plans by collating existing evidence and generating new qualitative evidence exploring how the ethnic diversity of visitors to national landscapes could be increased. This research will provide an opportunity to explore and learn from the ways Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups experience, utilise, and understand national landscapes. The research should consider barriers and facilitators to engaging with national landscapes, differentiating between behavioural barriers and broader structural barriers. This research should also identify suggestions for shorter and longer-term solutions for overcoming some of these barriers, covering a range of scales and delivery mechanisms. This research will provide valuable evidence to support the Landscapes Review's proposal for: New long-term programmes to increase the ethnic diversity of visitors.