Atiya Wells honored with inaugural Richard Louv Prize for Innovation in Nature Connection

Editor’s note: Thank you to Lisa Donahue, Nature Connection Network, for nominating Atiya Wells and for providing the content for this piece.

BLISS Meadows founder Atiya Wells was named as the recipient of the inaugural Richard Louv Prize for Innovation in Nature Connection on May 12, 2022 at the Inside-Out International Conference. Wells was selected from over 125 distinguished nominees doing exemplary work to advance equitable access to nature in their community or region. She initially felt hesitant about the honor, remarking in her acceptance speech, “At first I was having a little bit of imposter syndrome, like, ‘Do I deserve to be here?’” But to resounding applause from more than 550 children and nature leaders attending the conference, she joyfully exclaimed, “I do!”

Atiya Wells of BLISS Meadows. Photo courtesy of Backyard Basecamp.

And she certainly does. The term “innovation” only begins to describe the transformation that Wells has achieved and continues to inspire in her community. Growing up in an urban setting, like many African-Americans impacted by the history of segregation and other patterns of systemic racism, Wells did not have access to experiences that might have fostered a healthy, loving relationship with nature. When her husband took her hiking for the first time, a whole new world opened up and she began to seek ways to fill in the gaps in her own understanding. Noting the lack of “people who look like me” in most outdoor education spaces, she learned of the legacy of trauma of enslaved Black people and of violence they experienced while outdoors, then and now. A pediatric nurse and mother of two, Wells was determined to give her children and those in her community the opportunity to develop their own connection to place, naturally and without the barriers of cost and transportation.

In her Baltimore City neighborhood — a community with few green spaces and fewer grocery stores — Wells found a neglected and largely wooded 10-acre space with potential. Her aim was to create a space with two important amenities for local residents: a convenient place for nature-based playing and learning, and a community garden to provide fresh healthy food.

At the time, the space was a city park in name only, but Wells envisioned its transformation. She brought together a coalition of neighbors, nonprofits, farmers and educators, as well as the National Park Service, to design a space that serves the health and wellness of community members, with a focus on building relationships with “nearby nature.” Wells’ colleague, and founder and director of the Wildwood Path, Trevanna Frost Grenfell remarked, “The thing I find the most inspiring about Tia and her work is the way she is able to call people in and support everyone around her to step up and contribute in their own unique ways.”

Today, within walking distance of the thousands of children who call Baltimore’s Frankford neighborhood home, BLISS Meadows (a project of nonprofit Backyard Basecamp) provides opportunities for children and their families to get to know their ecosystem, to reframe and reclaim the history of their ancestors’ relationship to land and food, and to contribute to a sustainable community resource right in their neighborhood.

Wells’ primary goal is to connect the 5,000 people who live within a 10-minute walk of the site with nature and community. She also wants BLISS Meadows to be a resource for all of Northeast Baltimore and is building partnerships with the neighborhood schools to become a resource for students and teachers to explore nature in their own community. Financial support for families is built into the BLISS economic model to ensure that everyone can participate in programming, regardless of access to resources.

The once-vacant land now features a garden, a pond, a nature trail and a growing number of chickens and goats. Programming also includes a summer camp, festivals and weekly free food distribution —  all designed with the needs of the community in mind. When programming paused due to COVID restrictions, the work to rebuild soil health and prepare an adjacent building to serve as an Education Center continued apace. Now, midway through a five-year plan, the work toward this vision continues, with connections to the medical community serving to inform the design of the community kitchen in the LEED-certified Education Center, and the farm and forest school providing accessible urban agricultural programming to local youth.

The inherent sustainability of BLISS Meadows project is embedded in the diverse group of community stakeholders who have engaged with Atiya in the reclamation and rehabilitation of the land.

A coalition of neighbors and nonprofits, farmers and city agencies share the responsibilities for the long term viability of BLISS Meadows. Determined to give communities of color access to and comfort within outdoor spaces where they have not traditionally felt welcome, Wells leans on local knowledge keepers and enthusiastic volunteers to create opportunities to learn about local birds and other wildlife along with the skills and tools to try camping out in a safe setting close to home.

As Grenfell described her, “Tia leads multiple remarkable initiatives that are changing lives and landscapes, and it’s still somehow never about her, it’s about the shared love and learning and labor of tending land and people and the regeneration of lifeways that will carry us and our future generations forward into the unknown future equipped with more love and skills than we knew were possible.” The benefits of nearby nature-based play as well as fresh and healthy food have magnetized the effort and energy required to keep it going and ensure its sustainability for generations to come.

The collective vision of these partners and collaborators is to continue to serve the communities as they evolve and grow. Engaging with city agencies, Wells and her team are creating change with every conversation, application and consultation in the sometimes-fraught world of the city planning process. BLISS Meadows’ advocacy for equitable access to nature and continued engagement with the land and the people who rely on it for health and wellness leaves a legacy of community transformation and a path for the future.

While BLISS is built on the foundation of respect for the specific acreage on which it sits, and the plants and wildlife that inhabit it, along with the unique essence of the Frankford neighborhood residents, the framework itself is ultimately scalable and replicable across regions, landforms and community cultural expressions. No doubt there are other community leaders with a vision of and a longing for (re)connection who will be inspired by Wells’ example of partnership and collaboration. Colleague Amy Beam, a naturalist at Beyond the Walls, described Wells’ advocacy style as “personal, personable, impressive and humble, and I know that she hopes that her replicable model will reach other communities for their children, their families, their communities, and their histories. If people will follow her example, that is something that should give hope to us all.”

In addition to her work leading the BLISS Meadows project, Wells also inspires her colleagues at the hospital where she works as a pediatric nurse as well as the children and families who receive her care and medical treatment.

Beyond her city and region, Wells is a sought after speaker at gatherings and conferences, including the Keynote at the 2020 SHIFT Conference and a recent feature segment on the Kelly Clarkson Show. Wells is a member and frequent contributor to the lively discourse on the Nature Connection Network listserv, a growing community of nature-based schools and programs across North America.

After accepting her award from author and Children & Nature Network co-founder Richard Louv, Wells described the importance of convenings like the Inside-Out International Conference, which brings together children and nature advocates from around the world. “This work is not easy and I am so grateful that there are conferences like this, and spaces like this,” Atiya said. She went on to describe how she found support and resources at the 2019 Inside-Out Conference in Oakland California, just as she was beginning to launch BLISS Meadows.

The Richard Louv Prize was created by the Children & Nature Network to recognize innovative strategies for creating regular access to the benefits of nature everywhere children live, learn and play. The prize recognizes the visionary leadership and contributions of its co-founder and Chair Emeritus, Richard Louv. In 2022, its inaugural year, over 125 nominations were received. Nominees were evaluated on the innovation, reach, and potential for scale of their work, and Wells was selected as the result of a rigorous review process. In honor of the Children & Nature Network’s 15th anniversary year, Wells will receive a $15,000 cash prize.

Grenfell summarized Wells’ contributions aptly: “Through our country’s legacies of enslavement, disenfranchisement, and ongoing violence directed towards Black, Indigenous, and all People of Color and Peoples of Culture over the past hundreds of years on this continent, we have started to lose track of the deep roots of safety and the wild explosions of beauty that come from ALL people being in connection with our ancestral ties to land, skills, and REAL community. Tia has issued an invitation, laid out a table, and opened the doors to a garden where the memories that live in people’s bones can grow again from their own deep roots of relationship with Place.”

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