Experience Foraging: Connecting with Nature and Each Other Through Foraging Field Courses in Kent, England

Foraging field courses, run by wild food experts, have become a popular way to learn about wild edible species in urban societies. These courses are facilitating greater access to nature by members of the general public and can unsettle conservation’s accepted wisdoms of people’s appropriate interactions with nature where foodie fashion is concerned. This chapter explores the experiences and motivations of a particular group of urban consumers motivated by novel foods and nature experiences. Through an ethnography of foraging field courses, the chapter suggests that these courses align with ‘new experiences of nature’, enhancing human-nature connections as well as facilitating human-to-human connections through this shared experience. The wider relational values evident in participants’ narratives open up new spaces for considering what connection to nature looks like in all its diversity and can contribute to more inclusive conservation planning.