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More than a decade after first finding freedom and friendship in the Yorkshire Dales, Leeds filmmaker Willow Driscoll-Duke has returned to tell the story of the youth project that helped change her life.
For lots of us, journeys into the Dales begin with walking boots, waterproofs and a packed lunch. But Willow Driscoll-Duke’s began with the need for somewhere to breathe.
She was 12 when she first travelled from Leeds to take part in activities run by Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. A quiet child carrying responsibilities beyond those ordinarily expected at that age, she arrived through Barnardo’s Young Carers and Green Futures, the Trust’s programme helping young people overcome barriers to spending time in the countryside.
What she found there wasn't simply fresh air. She found friends, confidence, a widening sense of possibility and, perhaps most importantly, time in which she was just allowed to be young.
More than a decade later, Willow is returning to the programme as a 23-year-old filmmaker. On Wednesday 8 July, her new documentary, Our Generation Is Green, is set to premiere at Settle Victoria Hall.
Written, filmed and edited by Willow, the film follows members of the Green Futures Youth Environment Forum as they consider nature, belonging, mental wellbeing and their generation’s relationship with the environmental crises it's inherited.
It is the story of a quite incredible youth project, but it's also the result of one.
“When I first joined, I was a very quiet kid who just needed a reason to get out of the house and meet people,” Willow says.
“Being part of Green Futures gave me freedom, friends and a completely new way of looking at the environment. Those values have stayed with me, and now I want other young people to hear that from us, not just from adults.”
Those words are essential.
Young people are regularly talked about in discussions concerning climate change, social isolation, excessive screen use and declining mental health. They're rather less frequently given the camera, the microphone and the authority to describe those experiences themselves. Willow’s documentary deliberately reverses that arrangement.
Running for just under an hour, it's conceived as a youth-to-youth conversation rather than a lesson delivered from one generation to another. Willow spent much of last year embedded with the group, filming monthly sessions and recording substantial interviews with young people from Yorkshire and Cumbria.
“So much advice for young people comes from adults,” she says. “We can be stubborn and tune that out.
“I wanted this film to feel like friends talking to friends. It’s honest, funny in places, and real; about why groups like this matter when it can be so hard to step away from devices.”
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There can be a temptation to describe access to nature as though it were a pleasant but non-essential extra: a healthy excursion, perhaps, or a temporary escape from ordinary life, but programmes such as Green Futures suggest something more fundamental.
The Yorkshire Dales might be geographically close to cities including Leeds and Bradford, but proximity doesn't guarantee access. Transport costs, family circumstances, disability, confidence, equipment and a simple sense of whether the countryside is “for people like us” can all determine who's able to experience it.
Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust says Green Futures was created to address some of those inequalities, helping young people connect with nature, undertake conservation work and develop skills, confidence and leadership. Its projects have included practical environmental work, youth forums, summits, grants and routes into countryside employment.
The programme’s Green Guardians strand works particularly with young people who might otherwise struggle to access wild places, including young carers, disabled young people, those with additional educational needs and those experiencing rural or social isolation. Activities can range from navigation and bushcraft to footpath work, habitat restoration and building homes for wildlife. Support with transport and outdoor equipment can also be provided. YDMT just 'get it'.
For Willow, those opportunities included tree planting, habitat surveys, walks, nature-based crafts and youth summits.
“It’s not just about recycling,” she says.
“Through the group I learned about the bigger picture: sustainability, habitats and how the choices we make every day affect the places we love.
“It also gave me space away from my responsibilities at home, and from my phone. That freedom meant everything to me.”
Over time, she moved from participant to member of the youth forum and then to workshop leader, supporting younger people arriving through the same programme.
Her journey didn't end when the activities did.
After studying Film Studies and Production at Bangor University in North Wales, Willow headed home to Yorkshire determined to use the skills she had acquired to record what Green Futures meant to the young people involved.
The documentary is therefore not an outside assessment of the programme’s success. It's been made by somebody whose own life became entwined with it.
Anthea Hanson, Youth and Sustainability Officer at Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, describes Willow’s progress as an example of what can happen when young people are offered consistency rather than a brief intervention.
“Willow’s fantastic journey and story shows what can happen when young people are given time, trust and regular access to nature,” she says.
That word - regular - is important.
A single inspiring afternoon might create a memory. A sustained relationship with a place and a supportive group of people can begin to alter how a young person understands themselves.
Green Futures first launched in 2016 as part of the National Lottery Community Fund-backed Our Bright Future programme. By the end of that initial programme, YDMT reported that 76 per cent of participating young people felt more confident and 81 per cent believed they could make a difference to the environment. Participants delivered hundreds of projects and gained more than 279 qualifications.
The numbers indicate reach and progress. Willow’s film is concerned with the individual human experiences behind them.
She reportedly shot hundreds of hours of material before undertaking the long process of shaping it into a coherent documentary. According to Hanson, the finished work captures both the environmental anxiety felt by many young people and the positive action they are taking in response.
It's intended to be uplifting rather than naïve: a film which recognises the fragility of the Dales landscape while refusing to present the next generation solely as frightened, distracted or disengaged.
“Ultimately, it’s an inspiring, uplifting film that offers hope that the future of the beautiful but fragile landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales is in good hands,” Hanson says.
That hope isn't founded on the idea that young people will somehow repair everything the 'grown-ups' have damaged.
It comes instead from watching them form relationships with places, acquire practical knowledge, support one another and discover that environmental action can be shared rather than carried as an individual burden.
The premiere also raises a broader question about Britain’s celebrated landscapes: Who gets to feel at home in them?
National parks are often presented as open to everybody, and legally they are. But meaningful access involves more than the absence of a gate. It requires transport, information, confidence, welcome and repeated opportunities to keep going back.
Without those things, the countryside can remain distant even when it's visible from the edge of a city or reachable within an hour.
Green Futures is built around the principle that connection with nature shouldn't depend upon a young person’s income, background or home circumstances. It brings participants into the landscape, but also invites them to influence its future.
YDMT describes its pathway as one that begins with experiencing nature before developing environmental skills, leadership and the confidence to shape wider change.
The organisation’s record demonstrates that some participants have gone on to apprenticeships and professional roles in conservation, access and environmental organisations. Others might never pursue a countryside career. The value of the experience need not depend upon doing so.
A young person who gains friends, confidence or a place in which their responsibilities briefly become lighter hasn't received a lesser benefit.
Nor should time away from a phone be interpreted simply as a lecture about screen use.
For Willow, stepping away from a device was bound up with stepping into a different kind of space: one containing practical activity, physical freedom, conversation and other people with whom she could share it.
The answer to digital disconnection might not be to tell young people more sternly to put down their phones. It might be to ensure there's somewhere meaningful for them to go when they do.
There's something particularly powerful about Willow returning to the Dales not as the subject of somebody else’s account, but as the author of her own.
She's no longer simply the young participant whose confidence was nurtured by the programme. She's become the person deciding where the camera is placed, which questions are asked and whose voices are heard.
The documentary has been supported by Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust and the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s Sustainable Development Fund.
Andrea Burden, Sustainable Development Officer at the National Park Authority, says the project was intended to explore what a sustainable future might look like for young people living and working in the National Park.
It also highlights the relationship between the Dales’ landscape, wildlife, communities and environmental challenges.
Yet the most persuasive argument for this work might prove to be Willow herself.
A child who needed a reason to leave the house became a young woman capable of spending a year filming, interviewing and editing a major documentary project. We should all be in awe of that, surely?
She found a place to breathe and returned with a film about why other young people need one too.
At Settle Victoria Hall, the audience will see the Yorkshire Dales through the eyes of a generation frequently discussed but insufficiently listened to.
This time, they're telling the story.
When: Wednesday 8 July 2026, 6pm
Where: Settle Victoria Hall, Kirkgate, Settle, North Yorkshire
Film: Written, filmed and edited by Willow Driscoll-Duke
Presented by: Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust
Supported by: Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s Sustainable Development Fund
