Wild working
Where will you work today? Need a creativity boost? Craving fresh air and fresher ideas? Bored of your Zoom background? When the answers are yes and you need inspiring spaces to take your work outdoors, you might want to head to Wild Working. How did the idea for the app emerge, and what personal experiences convinced the makers that we need this change of scenery? We’ve asked Ellen O’Hara and Leon Davies if there was a moment they realized Wild Working should be more than an idea. And that Wild Working should become a real platform?
Back in 2016, we left London for the Derbyshire countryside, seeking more balance and breathing space. As we settled into rural life, we discovered that even though we were surrounded by nature, most of our days were still spent behind screens. We began asking ourselves: How could we weave more outdoor time into our workdays? That question became the seed for Wild Working. Leon fitted out a van as a mobile office so we could work from anywhere, and we began heading out into the Peak District, saving our favourite locations as we went.
Images: Wild WorkingThe turning point came when we noticed a growing movement of people working remotely outdoors after the pandemic. We met them at campsites, on walks, and even overheard them in cafés and car parks. By this time, we’d made a simple alpha prototype for ourselves so we could record more details about the places we’d discovered. We started to wonder if we were onto something and did some research into outdoor working trends—which is when we came across your amazing work at Nature Desks! We explored what motivates people to work outdoors and what prevents them from doing so. That’s when the idea of Wild Working really came to life. Then last year (2024), we spotted a funding opportunity with Innovate UK and won a small grant to build and test a beta prototype.
You’ve probably explored countless outdoor work spots while developing the app. If you had to pick your top three favorite Wild Working locations, which ones inspire you most and why?
We have! Because we’re both self-employed, we’ve had a few workations in Spain and Wales over the last two years, but many of our favourite places are closer to home. If we had to pick, they would be: Parking spot on Hollin Bank Road, Peak District – This was an early discovery when we had the van. It has breathtaking views of Stanage Edge, and heading out to spots like this really gave us the sense of freedom we were yearning for.
Trinity Farm Organics, Nottinghamshire – This biodynamic farm, shop, café, and plant nursery in the quiet village of Cossall is one of our regular food shop stops. The café backs onto a beautiful grassed area with plenty of seating—picnic tables and chairs perfect for a spot of laptop work. Oak-shaded bench, Big Wood, Allestree Park, Derby – We’re lucky to have this amazing park within a short walk of our house. This handsome green bench is a favourite. Protected by a mighty oak, it’s shaded all day and offers a lovely view out into the northeast corner of the park—a perfect spot for low-fi work like sketching or note-taking.
How does the app work? Can any outdoor office fan contribute by sharing their own favorite gems?
Yes, absolutely! Wild Working is a web app designed for mobile use, and we’re still in beta mode. You can get involved by visiting www.wild-working.com and signing up for free. At the moment, you can only add locations while you’re in location! So next time you’re working outdoors, you can log in and add your spot. Listings are organised by location type and rated by three key criteria: Beauty, Tranquillity, and Connectivity. You can add images, a description, accessibility details, facilities, and more. You can also choose to keep locations private or share them publicly. For the best experience, we recommend adding Wild Working to your home screen. That way, you can access it just like a regular app—anytime, anywhere. Whether it’s a park bench, a quiet beach, or that one shady tree with great 5G, we’d love to hear about it.
You chose to soft-launch Wild Working during Outdoor Office Day in June 2025. What was the significance of tying your app’s debut to this global celebration of working outdoors?
Outdoor Office Day has been a massive inspiration to us, so tying our beta launch to this global celebration felt like the perfect alignment of purpose. The day embodies everything Wild Working stands for—reconnecting people with nature, challenging traditional ideas of the office, and celebrating creativity in the outdoors. By launching during Outdoor Office Day, we wanted to be part of a shared, collective voice, one that’s growing louder each year as more people and organisations recognise the benefits of working outside. We spent the day at our local National Trust property Kedleston Park and discovered so many inspiring spots there. We’ve made so many brilliant connections through the OOD network, and that sense of shared purpose is incredibly powerful. Wild Working is one piece of a larger puzzle, and we’re proud to play our part in amplifying that collective message.
While Wild Working was designed primarily for the UK, you also showcased all the locations where Outdoor Office Day events were held. Do you have a dream to make wild working a global movement?
Absolutely. The UK is where the idea began, but the concept of Wild Working has global potential. Wherever people work, the benefits of getting outdoors and connecting with nature is universal. Showcasing international Outdoor Office Day locations helped us start reaching a wider audience and connect with more pioneers in different countries who are exploring similar ideas.The app is built around a world map and has the potential for language localisation and translation, so we can support a truly global community as it grows. Our goal is to make it easier for anyone, anywhere, to find and share inspiring outdoor places to work.
If you imagine the future of Wild Working 5–10 years from now, what role do you hope the platform will play in reshaping how people think about work, place, and creativity?
Our original focus was to inspire more creative freelancers like us to get out wild working because of the huge wellbeing and creativity benefits that outdoor work brings. Now we want to inspire as many people as possible to give themselves permission to try it. Creativity and wellbeing thrive in nature. Our best ideas find us when we’re outside. Wild Working aims to make that connection more accessible, natural, and part of how we live and work every day. We also hope to show employers that taking your work outside isn’t just good for people, it’s good for business. Who doesn’t want happier, healthier, more creative employees? Autonomy and freedom in where and how we work are really important to us. Ultimately, we want to be part of this bigger conversation and help realise a cultural shift that redefines what work can look and feel like.
Finally, Wild Working is about more than an app, it’s about community. How do you envision working together with others to grow Wild Working and bring more people into the practice of outdoor work worldwide?
Wild Working is a passion project, and we have big ambitions that we can only achieve in collaboration. Community is everything to us. This has never been about building an app in isolation, but growing a movement together. We’re planning to expand our Host Listings to include more rural co-working spaces, retreat centres, farms, and campsites. Places that share our ethos and want to welcome people to work in nature.
There’s a growing movement of groups and networks in the outdoor work space, and we’ll continue to promote what others are doing. Eventually, we’d love to serve these communities through the app, helping them organise meetups, promote events, and share experiences. We also see huge potential for collaboration with businesses. We’d love to share a Wild Working Toolkit that helps employers support their teams to take work outside, with practical guidance, inspiration, and resources to make outdoor working part of everyday culture. In future versions of the app, we’re planning to include features like a filter to show staff where the nearest urban green spaces are for outdoor working breaks or meetings.
Most importantly for now, we’d love to reach as many individual wild working enthusiasts to help us populate the map with as many inspiring locations as we can. Ultimately, we want Wild Working to be a platform where individuals, businesses, and hosts all come together to enable new ways of working, rooted in connection, creativity, and the natural world. So if this sounds like you, do get in touch!
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