The English countryside still feels like a white middle-class club. We can – and will – change this | Dan Guthrie

It remains a shocking fact that 92% of land in England is privately owned. And last month’s surprise high court victory by Alexander Darwall, which resulted in the end of wild camping on Dartmoor without landowners’ permission, could lead to even more landowners restricting access to the countryside. The thousands who turned out to protest as the case progressed shows that access to green spaces is a problem that affects the vast majority of us.

But we also have to make sure that people from all backgrounds can feel comfortable in these natural public spaces. A tiny portion of England is open to the public, and many people feel excluded or alienated from even that sliver.

Where I live in Stroud, Gloucestershire, I feel privileged to have a gorgeous view of the valleys out of my bedroom window, stretching as far as the eye can see. It’s a postcard-perfect sea of green that looks just as beautiful in summer sunshine as it does on a frosty winter’s morning. But, as a person of colour living in a rural area, many of the fields I can see feel off limits to me. A government review in 2019 found that I’m not alone in thinking this – many Black, Asian and ethnically diverse people reportedly view the countryside as an “an exclusive, mainly white, mainly middle‑class club”. This is despite the 1942 Scott report, which clearly stated that there must be “facility of access for all” in rural areas.

‘I wanted to help make a change in the area my family has called home for generations.’ Upper High Street in Stroud, Gloucestershire. Photograph: Greg Balfour Evans/Alamy

In an attempt to challenge this perception of the countryside as an exclusively white area, the Independent Cinema Office and the LUX arts agency have commissioned a programme called Right of Way, to show alongside archival shorts exploring the history of the national trails. My film, black strangers, follows my attempts to search for an 18th-century namesake of mine, the mononymous “Daniel”, who was buried in nearby Nympsfield on 31 December 1719 and was described on records held in Gloucestershire Archives as being, simply, “a black stranger”.

I made the film in the aftermath of my involvement with a council-led consultation in Stroud that, among other things, asked for people’s opinions of an object in the town called the Blackboy Clock. Stroud’s consultation drew media attention from outlets across the political spectrum, and ignited a culture war debate.

This naturally dredged up the same tired arguments again and again, with comments such as “go back to where you came from” and “stop stirring up trouble around here” reinforcing this outdated concept that people of colour don’t belong in rural areas. But the official survey found that 79% of people thought the clock should be removed, with the words “uncomfortable”, “ashamed” and “angry” occurring most frequently when asked to describe it.

I got involved with the consultation because the town means a lot to me, and I knew that I wanted to help make a change in the area my family has called home for generations. My maternal grandparents moved from Jamaica to Stroud as part of the Windrush movement, my mother’s generation grew up in the area in the 60s and 70s, and I moved to the town when I was three in the early 2000s. One of my earliest memories is going on a primary school field trip up to the local common for ice-creams on what was probably the hottest day of the year, traipsing along footpaths and over bridges along the way. At no point then did I feel out of place.

As I got older I began to question my surroundings, in the way that children do. But it was only when the consultation hit the headlines and the reactionaries started to rear their heads online that I properly doubted whether I belonged in the landscape I found myself living in. Luckily, finding Daniel in the archives squashed these concerns. He reminded me that people of colour have always existed in rural spaces, and always will.

One of the threads that unites the commissions in the Right of Way series is a search for kinship in the outdoors, whether that be in friends and family, fellow ravers or sadly departed forebears. Ufuoma Essi and Arjuna Neuman have made films exploring the poetry of Jamaican activist Una Marson, and the history of free parties, respectively. As filmmakers we can draw people’s attention to issues, and hopefully start some conversations running alongside the vital on-the-ground work that groups like Flock Together and Black Girls Hike are doing in reclaiming rural areas and making them a welcoming place for people of colour.

All of this action from all sides is key to changing the wider public’s notions of who is entitled to call the countryside their home; the answer, of course, is everyone.

• Dan Guthrie is an artist and film-maker, film programmer and writer. Right of Way is touring UK cinemas until September

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.