6 years on from George Floyd, how much more accessible is the outdoors for People of Colour?

It was 2019, and I was at the start/​finish line of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc race. The Chamonix town square in the French Alps, overlooked by western Europe’s highest peak, was bathed in hazy light bouncing between the broken clouds and the mountain top glaciers. The square was heaving with athletic bodies, coiled and bristling with nervous excitement. The energy in the air made me anxious even though I was just there to take photos.

The DJ dropped ​‘Conquest of Paradise’ by Vangelis, the theme tune from Gladiator and I saw grown men burst into tears. The hairs on the nape of my neck couldn’t handle it, were these people going into war or going for a run? It was truly a magnificent moment, one that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It was the first time I fully realised that there were hardly any Black people in the outdoor industry.

Looking around the sea of bodies about to embark on the 100miler, I was caught off guard. As someone who has been involved on the fringes of the industry for 30 years, this was the moment it hit me – other than myself and a work colleague, there were no other Black people visible, it was a wake-up slap across the face.

Since then we’ve had a pandemic, George Floyd and the BLM movement, all of which have acted as a catalyst to spur more people to venture outdoors. A number of community groups and charities have been created with the sole purpose of increasing participation and representation. We’ve even seen the involvement of the outdoor industry itself addressing its moral and commercial blind spots. But what has changed, what have we learned and what is still to be done?

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A new report by The Mix Global, Second Nature, attempts to answer this. Co-hosted by Kew Gardens as part of their series of ongoing conversations around access to nature, in an event and panel that featured Passenger Clothing and Touch Grass – a community for Queer Women, Trans and Non-Binary People of Colour – its ambition is to understand how brands can build trust and make the outdoors more accessible to traditionally marginalised folks.

As an example of successful action, the report highlights Passenger’s partnership with the Touch Grass community through facilitating retreats and platforming their Camp Letters series, which documents what went down at them. ​“This is what true allyship in the outdoors looks like,” says Toni Ann-Murphy, founder of Touch Grass. ​“Not just saying everyone is welcome, but actively removing the barriers that keep people coming in.”

And yet although Second Nature’s data is new and welcome, it shows clearly that the core structural issues largely remain. Racism exists, there are barriers around access and knowledge and the truth is that many of the people who run the outdoors come from the outdoors, not the city where the majority of People of Colour are, which creates something of a challenge.

Participants that were interviewed for the report described these barriers not as major moments of exclusion, but rather as an accumulation of small micro aggressions reinforcing a feeling of not belonging. Rachel Ayeh-Datey, one of the report’s authors, draws on one of her own uncomfortable personal experiences from a hike with London based bird watching community Flock Together. ​“It’s 100 to 200 black and brown people walking through nature with binoculars,” she recalls. ​“And people were just staring at us asking, ​‘What are you doing?’” 

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The language, etiquette and assumptions around who these spaces are designed for all add up to a feeling of otherness. Several contributors spoke about entering retail spaces and feeling alienated, intimidated by both the environment and the expectation that they should already understand it. For others it was an unfamiliarity with outdoor culture itself, in safety and gaps in knowledge due to generational severance. These findings are all too familiar with minoritised groups or individuals who navigate nature’s rugged landscapes.

What the report does make clear is that despite the noise from brands, the campaigns and the promises, very little has fundamentally shifted – almost a stagnation. For brands, representation still operates as an entry point or on an on-ramp but with little else in the way of substance. Put more diverse faces in the frame and participation will follow. ​“People are smart. They can see through that,” Ayeh-Datey tells me.

The report complicates the industry’s reliance on representation as a solution. While brands often frame visibility as central to participation, many of the respondents that are already active in the outdoors (68%) said community, safety and access are far more important than seeing a face that ​“looks like me” in an ad. Representation may help people imagine themselves outdoors, but it does little to address what happens once they arrive, where the deeper, more structural issues remain generally untouched – the cost of equipment and transport, the softening of your true self and the access to the land itself. The assumption that visibility alone drives change perhaps reveals a deeper misunderstanding of the problem, that inclusion isn’t just about who is seen, but how people are supported once they are there.

In the years since my Chamonix experience, the outdoor industry has been eager to present itself as evolving. Campaigns have certainly broadened their appeal, it’s hard to have a conversation around marketing without diversity being raised. Subsequently the messaging has shifted, representation, at least visually, has improved. But as Christian Hurley, co-author of the report, acknowledges, ​“We wanted to bring data to things that we instinctively know.”

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That tension runs throughout the report, contributors describe experiences many marginalised outdoor users would recognise, code-switching in outdoor landscapes, the feeling of being ​‘hyper-visible’ in predominantly white racialised spaces, or questioning themselves on whether certain activities culturally ​“belong” to them. The findings are less a revelation than a confirmation of how persistent these feelings remain. 

Hurley, himself a man of mixed heritage, identifies with this. ​“What we’re doing is having a trauma response to not feeling like we can just be settled and safe and be ourselves in an outdoor space,” he says.

Community groups don’t form in a vacuum. They are built to address very specific issues that aren’t being dealt with on their behalf, creating their own solutions in a world where they aren’t yet truly welcomed. The report cites 86% of people choosing to ​“take part in outdoor activities with people who have a similar racial, ethnic, cultural background as them”. The group environment offers safety, knowledge and belonging, a signpost to acceptance, something that is assumed historically in the outdoor community but denied for marginalised groups. 

Their very existence backs this up. Throughout Second Nature, the collectives come across not just as social groups but rather as support networks, where questions can be asked without judgement, from understanding kit and route planning to navigating the unspoken cultural codes that are often embedded within the outdoor world. They exist because of a systemic failure, a manageable and immediate stop gap, while the system lumbers to keep up.

Ayeh-Datey sums it up, ​“This is really beautiful,” she says, ​“but they shouldn’t have to. I think the solution needs to be more systemic than just really well-meaning individuals coming together to make safe spaces for each other.” 

This doesn’t diminish the role of the brand to support. In some instances it can act as an accelerant opportunity. While the most cynical may claim their involvement can be seen as purely transactional – insight, credibility and cultural relevance in exchange for some waterproofs and a bus fare, when they do get it right, they can deliver real meaningful results. This requires a long-term commitment and a deeper understanding of the nuance and lived experience of People of Colour, something which is often both overlooked and under recruited for.

Read the full Second Nature report at The Mix Global’s website.

Phil Young is the founder of the Outsiders Project. Follow him on Instagram.

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