Nature Everywhere Boulder: Building and activating parks through partnerships and community engagement

Boulder, Colorado, is an iconic mountain town and outdoor industry hub. Not surprisingly, it’s also a hub for connecting children to nature. 

Since joining the Cities Connecting Children to Nature cohort in 2022 and Nature Everywhere Communities in 2023, the city of Boulder has been busy increasing access to nature, especially for young children. Much of this work has been led by Nature Everywhere Boulder. 

Nature Everywhere Boulder is an initiative pairing the city with nonprofit organizations who share a vision of connecting all children to nature in Boulder. This cross-sector partnership includes city departments, Boulder Valley School District, Boulder Library District, and community partners, such as Thorne Nature Experience, Boulder Housing Partners, Cool Boulder and Growing Up Boulder. 

Over the past three years, this Nature Everywhere Community has: 

• Developed 7 pilot “naturehoods” — a network of close-to-home parks, gardens, open spaces and natural play areas — to support free play, time outdoors and environmental stewardship
• Mobilized Community Engagement Liaisons and youth leaders to help design and activate local nature spaces
• Prioritized outdoor learning, professional development and nature play through green schoolyards and school partnerships 
• Leveraged $8 million in grants to create safer access to nearby nature

Nature Everywhere Boulder participants recently completed a participatory evaluation process called Ripple Effects Mapping to understand what’s driving its effectiveness and growth. This process pointed to the power of cross-sector partnerships and community engagement as local levers of systems change specific to the Boulder community.

Key aspects of the Boulder Ripple Effects Mapping process include:

• Building strong, cross-sector partnerships guided by a shared vision of equitable access to nature
• Engaging the community through co-designing parks and activating nature spaces
• Anchoring equitable access to nature in programs, practices and policies 

Partnerships guided by a shared vision 

The Nature Everywhere Communities initiative provided intentional framing for partners to learn about each other’s work and forge deeper, more effective partnerships. According to participants in Ripple Effects Mapping, a shared vision of more equitable access to nature for children helped strengthen interdepartmental coordination, as described in this quote from the Ripple Effects Mapping process: 

Nature Everywhere Boulder grew the collaboration between Parks and Recreation, Climate Initiatives and Open Space and Mountain Parks departments. While our teams were aware of each other, many of us hadn’t had the opportunity to learn about the programs each department offers to support underserved populations. Nature Everywhere Boulder brought new faces together, created space to share ideas, and revealed exciting areas of overlap that will strengthen future partnerships.

The Boulder coalition’s work is also rooted in the idea of “constructive hope,” inspired by a literature review by Louise Chawla. Constructive hope refers to the capacity to face environmental threats and uncertainties while finding positive meaning in taking action. City of Boulder Open Space & Mountain Parks Education and Outreach Manager Curry Rosato explains,

“This coalition has leaned on the belief that individual and community-based nature connection is intricately bound to our collective ability to address the climate crisis through constructive hope in action. In other words, we cannot save that which we do not deeply appreciate, know and love.”

Engaging community through co-design

Another key asset is the coalition’s ability to engage the community through co-design. Primos Park is a great example. 

Based on equity mapping supported by Cities Connecting Children to Nature and Nature Everywhere, Nature Everywhere Boulder reached out to the community to activate Violet Park — a vacant park near many Spanish-speaking community members. Community members and youth shared their thoughts on what this space needed and then took the lead in redesigning Violet Park to make it more welcoming. Based on youth input, the city renamed it “Primos Park” — adopting a Spanish word that means “cousins,” signifying that “when you’re at Primos Park, you’re family.”  

Another theme which emerged from Ripple Effects Mapping was “co-designing with children, youth and preschools leads to more use in spaces built.” Growing Up Boulder (GUB) has been a key partner in this effort because of its extensive experience in meaningful youth engagement and leadership.  The coalition has also learned that they need to activate nature spaces through community engagement and nature-based programs — not just build or redesign them. 

To activate its redesigned pilot parks, the city has hired a “Community Connector” to co-design culturally proficient community engagement, bridge the gap between community members and city government, and surface emerging issues and community concerns. The Nature Everywhere Boulder coalition has also identified community members who can promote parks through their established social connections, and offered collaborative nature programming in redesigned spaces to encourage children and families to use them. 

These efforts have helped families feel safer outdoors, as well as growing parents’ and caregivers’ capacities to support children’s outdoor play and enjoy family time in nature. They’ve also led to more children — and new children — connecting to nearby nature. Nature Everywhere Boulder’s intentional efforts to foster trust resulted in community members who feel more comfortable spending time outdoors. Local organizations recognized that their changes to park planning and community engagement led to new connections and a sense of belonging. One community leader reflected:

“When you create a welcoming space, it fosters a connection to nature, especially when communication, programming and signage are in the community’s language and culture.”

Rooting change in policies and practices

Strengthening cross-sector partnerships and community engagement has resulted in real shifts in policies and practices in Boulder County, Colorado. Many of these structural changes have made nature more accessible to the city’s Spanish-speaking community members and people with disabilities, such as:

• Hiring a monolingual Spanish speaker as the city’s first Nature Play Community Connector 
• Adding simpler, bilingual youth employment application processes across Boulder’s Open Space and Mountain Parks
• Shifting office hours specifically to accommodate Spanish-speaking families’ schedules
• Offering bilingual Junior Ranger programs to reduce linguistic and cultural barriers to participation
• Changing city policy to focus more on nature-based play experiences and universal design, as opposed to traditional pre-fab, fixed plastic ADA play structures
• Helping to craft a Nature Everywhere policy for the updated Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, which guides future collaborative efforts in creating accessible and equitable nature spaces
• Integrating nature play, outdoor learning and green schoolyards into the Boulder Valley School District strategic plan

Because of the coalition’s efforts, the City of Boulder has integrated neighborhood parks into the Naturehoods for All framework — increasing opportunities for place-based education, nature play and local walking field trips within local schools. Multiple initiatives in the city highlight children’s access to nature as a key feature, including Boulder’s involvement in UNICEF’s Child Friendly Cities Initiative, the City of Boulder’s formal commitment to the Berlin Nature Pact, Nature Kids Boulder County and Great Outdoors Colorado’s Generation Wild initiative. 

More than parks

Nature Everywhere Boulder is building more than parks and programs. It is shaping a city where every child, in every neighborhood, has meaningful access to nature everywhere they live, learn and play. By continuing to align systems, elevate community voice and center equity, Boulder is laying the groundwork for a future where nature is not a privilege, but a shared foundation for kids to experience the joy of playing in nature.