Exploring collaboration opportunities around social prescribing at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Our team at Oxford has conducted a number of studies about social prescribing, including how social prescribing link workers are being implemented across England, their recruitment and retention and the provision of social prescribing in green spaces and the cultural sector.

The recently completed TOUS study (‘Tailoring cultural offers with and for diverse older users of social prescribing’) centred on how to provide creative or cultural activities that are attractive, accessible and acceptable to older people (60+ years) from global majority backgrounds. Such activities have been shown to promote health and well-being. Our definition of ‘cultural’ included heritage and green spaces, audio-visual, visual and performance arts, books and literature and festivals and celebrations. This study was a collaboration with the Gardens, Libraries and Museums at the University of Oxford.

For the TOUS study, we conducted a mapping exercise of what is being delivered for older people from the global majority across the United Kingdom and a literature review of both academic and reports on cultural activities with these communities. We also conducted interviews with cultural/creative providers and collected data from six case study sites: these were organisations across England and Wales offering cultural and/or creative activities used by global majority older people. From these data we have developed a prototype model exploring how the cultural sector can tailor offers to make them more inclusive. This model sets out how and why older people might get involved in activities, the ways in which communities can be involved in cultural offers, and the mechanisms by which organisations can ensure people not only enter a cultural space but stay with it and gain benefits.

The team at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Kew) were interested in exploring how their work might overlap with our research on social prescribing and, in particular, with our findings from the TOUS study. In July 2025, I visited this green space to explore and discuss the activities being undertaken there that fit within social prescribing, some of which involve link workers. I presented evidence from studies suggesting that nature-based or ‘green’ social prescribing has benefits to mental health and wellbeing. The Department of Health and Social Care published a report in 2023 which explored whether provision of nature-based activities in England was equitable and sufficient to support social prescribing referrals. It found inequities in availability and affordability of nature-based prescriptions. Socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender, age and physical health all influenced how far people were able to participate. Where there was provision, link workers’ prescriptions tended to be limited to sports and exercise aspects of nature-based activities. There was a lack of knowledge among GPs, link workers and service users about the benefits of a wider range of potential activities in green spaces. In the meeting, we considered how these findings are pertinent to participation work at Kew and to our findings from the TOUS study. We also discussed our team’s research findings about link workers. We explored how the Kew team might collaborate with link workers to promote referrals to their nature-based projects. We explored the prototype TOUS model, which is being developed in consultation with a wide variety of cultural providers and participants.

The following are reflections from Lingjia Zhao (Learning and Participation Research Officer, Kew) and I about the discussions we had at this meeting and potential collaboration points:

Application of the TOUS model

The Kew team found the concepts in our TOUS model resonated strongly with their experiences of inclusive engagement challenges and opportunities. They welcomed a model that lays the process out in a clear way, and which can promote learning about how to facilitate and evaluate inclusive engagement. They saw it as a useful framework to inform future thinking and as a potential foundation for developing co-created models.

Community representation and trusted facilitators

The importance of working with trusted community partners was discussed, especially when engaging people from diverse or minoritized backgrounds. Involving familiar local organizations or representatives helps to build trust and a sense of safety for participants.

Different evidence types

Participants discussed the challenge of providing impact evidence for funders of nature-based activities. Funders may prioritize quantitative data, such as number of people attending. However, qualitative stories often provide deeper, more meaningful insight about how and why certain groups do, or do not, participate. The Kew team were interested in the Storytelling evaluation method (which was used in the TOUS study) as a potential approach to evidence their work.

Engaging link workers and overcoming barriers

Barriers to involving link workers in prescribing cultural sector activities were discussed, with suggestions to build link worker familiarity and create more welcoming and accessible environments. A survey by the National Academy for Social Prescribing, completed by 411 link workers, suggested that compared to referrals to other forms of support, link workers refer less often to cultural activities or groups. This could be due to limited knowledge or availability of such provision, or a lack of understanding around how the cultural sector can benefit the health and well-being of people they are supporting.

Ongoing communication

It was agreed our team would keep in touch with Kew staff and exchange updates on relevant projects, with a view to identifying future opportunities for collaboration where appropriate.

The study mentioned in this blog is funded by a grant from UK Research and Innovation (MR/Y010000/1). The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the funder or the author’s host institution.