Woodland Trust: Forest of Youth

DRG partnered with the Woodland Trust to explore the UK youth audience and the things they love to help inform the development and planning of their new Young People’s Forest at Mead, Derbyshire. This project aims to entice 10-20 year olds to plan, visit, nurture and ultimately take ownership of the forest and therefore it was key that the Woodland Trust gained a clear, profound understanding of who this age group are and what makes them tick.

Through a detailed and creative online survey we spoke to 600 children and young people, split equally between key age groups of interest: 10-13, 14-17 and 18-20 to uncover crowd pleasers which would work across all age groups and any particularities that could be used to engage and inspire specific age groups.

The questionnaire covered profiling, personality and interests, device usage and environmental attitudes to paint a picture of these age groups before testing out specific attitudes and perceptions of Young People’s Forest specifics.

We developed a bespoke insights report which made recommendations and inspired ideas for engagement with youth throughout, and communicated these findings back to the Woodland Trust team through a face-to-face debrief session where thoughts were shared, and ideas discussed.