Widgit recipes for eating outdoors

We created the initiative ‘Food Tastes Better Outdoors’ to inspire people with learning disabilities to get more interested in the food they eat and to enjoy the outdoors. It is part of our focus on learning disability, using the outdoors to bring learning and health benefits. Students from special schools worked with us, creating their own recipes, exploring healthy eating options and testing ideas for low-cost, easily accessible outings and instructions for putting together healthy food to take along. It proved a great way of helping students develop their communication skills, build their confidence, be creative and work on something where they could see clear results from their input.

The result is a series of free downloadable activity packs. These use Widgit pictorial symbols with text (Widgit is a symbol-based language developed for people with learning disabilities and the main symbol set used in UK special schools). They are designed to accompany food preparation, cooking and outdoor eating.