Walking Lunch

What would your working lunch consist of? A sandwich and a bag of crisps at your desk? A bar of chocolate as you dash between meetings? Or even a cheeky pint in the pub around the corner?

Two students from Kingston Upon Thames University have come up with a plan which, they hope, will put an end to all that. Racheal Ball Risk and Jenny Rice are the brains behind the project called ‘Walking Lunch’.Their aim was to get office workers to take some exercise in their lunch hour, but it’s been designed as a fun activity which everyone in the workplace can get involved in.

Their idea has generated great success, and the girls have already won a prestigious Design Directions Award from the Royal Society of Arts. They will eventually hope to send their project pack out to workplaces throughout the UK.

Rachel, from Guildford in Surrey, and Jenny, from Okehampton in Devon first trialled the idea at the offices of a property management company. The concept is simple: a giant map detailing the area around the office is given to workers. Each time, they can choose somewhere within the map area to walk to. Directions are included in the pack and if walkers decide to take a picture of their destination, they will be able to print out stickers to put up on the map. As well as this, they will receive their own pedometer so to inform themselves as to exactly how far they walked each week.

‘Staff really liked the idea of getting to know more about their neighbourhood,’ Rachael said. ‘They said that developing their local knowledge would be useful in their work, as well as good for their health.’

The RSA competition addressed ways that workers could keep fit in an era when more and more people are working in deskbound office jobs.  Entrants were set the task of designing an activity which would encourage teamwork among staff and the ‘Walking Lunch’ idea was deemed the best as it showed a real potential for a successful new enterprise.

‘It was completely different to anything we’d done up to that point in our careers,’ Rachael said. ‘We were up against Product Design students and social designers so we were absolutely stunned when we found out that we’d won.’

To test this scheme, I decided to vary my usual routine of fried chicken for lunch and instead explore the area around our office.  Starting from Merton Abbey Mills, I wandered down the path along the Wandle River through the parkland all the way to Morden Hall Park, which happened to be the historical homeland of Lord Nelson. I didn’t use a map of any kind, but the idea of varying your lunch routine has its obvious healthy benefits, you get to walk around and in my case, enjoy the sights of the river and the park. Take a look at the photographs of my journey down the Wandle on the Time and Leisure Facebook album.

The two girls have not rested on their laurels since their success and have already exhibited a newer and more improved design of the ‘Walking Lunch’ at the Kingston University’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture’s Degree Show in June.  Whatever happens, Rachael and Jenny now know that their idea, however a very simple one, could make a big difference to people’s lives.