Spreading the opportunities and means to access the outdoors has been at the heart of the BMC's mission since it was formed in 1944. The evidence suggests minority ethnicities are significantly under-represented in the outdoors. Just 2% of respondents in our 2007 Equity Survey described themselves as non-white, compared to 10% in the population at large, a figure that fits in with the bigger picture; successive surveys by Natural England have found BME groups to access the outdoors much less than their white counterparts. Just 1% of visitors to National Parks are estimated to be from BME backgrounds. There are a host of other factors at play which can thwart people’s opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, such as deprivation, which is – by contrast – disproportionately higher among BME communities. Where there has been improvement, it is attributable in no small part to the efforts of organisations like MOSAIC and others who have attempted to identify the barriers that clearly do exist and have worked to overcome them, whether they are religious, cultural, social or economic. We want to contribute to these efforts as the outdoors should not simply be for the use and benefit of Middle England.