Memphis Groups Focus on Getting Kids Outside

(Memphis) Daily News – October 17, 2008
By Rosalind Guy

This weekend, several activities will be held with one common goal: to get kids up and out into nature.

Conservation Through Art, an initiative begun three years ago by ArtsMemphis and Ducks Unlimited, is hosting the series of events, which will be held this Sunday through Oct. 25.

Family Day is the kickoff event Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Shelby Farms Park. The event, which is free and open to the public, will feature fishing, decoy painting, outdoor conservation and recreation games.

Supported by local organizations that share the mission of getting more kids outside to experience nature, such as Great Outdoors University, the initiative was spurred by former San Diego Union-Tribune journalist and author Richard Louv.

Louv, who published “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder,” offers practical solutions in the book for getting children out of their sedentary video game world and back outside.

Louv said he remembers spending lots of time outdoors as a kid, and was motivated to write the book because he thought there was a direct correlation between the rise in childhood obesity and attention disorders.

“It’s about the disengagement of children with nature today,” he said. “They watch Animal Planet and they know things about nature as an abstraction. But what they don’t do nearly enough is get their hands dirty and get their feet wet.”

Taking action
In his book, Louv describes nature-deficit disorder not as an official diagnosis but “a way of viewing the problem; (it) describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.”

Louv will share more of his insight when he’s in town next week. He arrives in Memphis on Monday to give a presentation the following day as part of Conservation Through Art’s weeklong run.

Louv, who also is co-founder and honorary chair of the Children & Nature Network, will present information from his book – which currently is on the New York Times extended best-sellers list – and propose opportunities for the Memphis area. His talk will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre. There also will be a luncheon and presentation by Louv that day at Ducks Unlimited, which is invitation only.

Other events that are part of the week-long series of events include an exhibit and auction of work from “First Shooting Light,” a photographic journal of hunting club photography. That event also is invitation only.

But Saturday, Oct. 25, a celebration dinner will be held at Dixon Gallery and Gardens at 7 p.m. The dinner is to honor brothers Allen B. Morgan Jr. and Henry W. Morgan, native Memphians and supporters of the arts and conservation efforts.

Tickets are $1,000 per person.

And, of course, the intent behind the series of events is to bring community members together and get them thinking about new and creative ways to get children back in the outdoors, “getting their hands dirty,” Louv said.

He said what’s going on in Memphis is part of a nationwide trend.

“A lot of what’s happening out there already, what happened is that over the last few years different regions have launched some type of campaign to get kids outdoors. At least 10 states have done so, there’s also national legislation that has been launched designed to get nature back into the schools. People are taking action all over the country.”

For more information about Conservation Through Art, visit www.artsmemphis.org.

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