Wales Is Building a New Future for Naturism

Something significant is happening within naturism.

It isn’t being driven by a single organisation, a central committee or an attempt to make every naturist community look and behave the same.

In many respects, it is happening precisely because of the opposite.

Independent naturism is demonstrating a compelling model for the future of naturism across Britain and Ireland.

We can see it particularly clearly here in Wales.

NudieDudies is creating social opportunities in South Wales. SaunaCwtch is developing regular naturist sauna experiences. North Wales Naturist Ramblers brings people together through walking and shared exploration. Follies Retreat provides another environment in which naturism and community can develop.

Alongside them are weekly naturist mindfulness and meditation sessions, social gatherings, camps and an increasingly varied programme of opportunities throughout Wales.

Our connections now extend across the Irish Sea too, with locations in County Sligo and Dublin becoming part of a growing relationship between naturists in Wales and Ireland.

Individually, these developments are encouraging.

Collectively, I think they tell us something much more interesting about the direction naturism can take.

Independence doesn’t have to mean isolation

There is an understandable temptation when communities grow to centralise them.

Create one structure. One identity. One way of doing things.

Yet communities rarely develop like that naturally.

People form relationships around geography, shared interests, particular venues and different ways of experiencing naturism. Someone who loves hiking may have little interest in meditation. Someone who enjoys a sauna may never want to spend a week camping. Others simply want somewhere comfortable to sit, drink tea and enjoy the company of people they have come to know.

None of those experiences is more authentically naturist than another.

What matters is that people can find their place within the wider community.

That is where independent naturism becomes particularly interesting.

NudieDudies doesn’t need to stop being NudieDudies. SaunaCwtch doesn’t need to become Naturism Wales. North Wales Naturist Ramblers can retain its own identity. Follies Retreat can continue developing something distinctive of its own.

Independence allows communities to respond to the people they actually serve.

But independence needn’t mean separation.

Different identities. Shared principles. Connected communities.

Belonging cannot be measured by membership alone

We understandably talk about membership numbers, event attendance and geographical reach when discussing growth.

They are useful measures.

But they tell us surprisingly little about whether a community is actually working.

Someone can possess a membership card and still feel completely alone.

Belonging is created through relationships.

It happens when somebody remembers your name.

When someone notices you haven’t been around recently.

When the nervous newcomer doesn’t spend their first hour standing alone.

When somebody sends a message afterwards saying, “It was lovely meeting you.”

When friendships formed at an event continue long after everybody has gone home.

That final point is particularly important as our communities become geographically wider.

Through Naturism Wales, members can now communicate in real time through chat, voice and video without having to exchange personal telephone numbers simply to maintain contact.

Someone in North Wales can talk to somebody in South Wales. A friendship formed with someone from Ireland doesn’t have to disappear when the ferry leaves. A person sitting alone on a dark winter evening can still participate in the community from their living room.

Technology cannot manufacture friendship.

But used properly, it can give friendship somewhere to grow.

The evidence for connection is compelling

The importance of belonging extends considerably beyond naturism.

In 2025, the World Health Organisation’s Commission on Social Connection reported that around one in six people worldwide experiences loneliness. The WHO estimates that loneliness was associated with more than 871,000 deaths annually between 2014 and 2019 — around 100 every hour.

Long before that report, Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues published a major meta-analysis in PLOS Medicine involving 148 studies and 308,849 participants. Across the studies examined, stronger social relationships were associated with a 50% increased likelihood of survival.

Those statistics deserve some perspective. They do not mean that joining a naturist community is a medical treatment for loneliness.

They demonstrate something broader and much more important: human connection matters.

That gives community organisations of every kind a responsibility to think beyond simply organising things for people to attend.

We should also be creating conditions in which relationships can develop.

Growth brings responsibility

There is another reason I believe the independent model can be powerful.

Independence gives communities freedom.

But freedom should always be accompanied by responsibility.

Naturism requires an unusual degree of trust. People are entitled to expect dignity, privacy, appropriate boundaries and environments in which safeguarding is taken seriously.

As naturism grows, therefore, our standards must grow with it.

For me, success cannot simply be measured by asking:

How many people attended?

We should also be asking:

Was their dignity protected?

Were they treated with respect?

Did they encounter acceptance rather than judgement?

Did somebody show them kindness?

Did they leave knowing that they mattered?

Those are considerably more demanding measures of success.

They are also far more meaningful.

Good safeguarding doesn’t restrict the freedom naturism represents. It creates the conditions in which that freedom can be enjoyed with confidence.

When expectations are understood, boundaries are respected and people know that inappropriate behaviour will be addressed, something rather wonderful happens.

People relax.

Bodies stop being the interesting thing in the room.

Conversation takes over.

Friendships begin.

Naturism becomes wonderfully ordinary.

Welsh in character, wider in welcome

I am enormously proud that Naturism Wales has its roots in Wales.

Our landscape, communities, language, culture and particular sense of place matter to us.

But being proudly Welsh has never required us to become inward-looking.

The developing relationships between Wales and Ireland, including County Sligo and Dublin, demonstrate that identity and openness can comfortably coexist.

The same applies across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

A person doesn’t need a Welsh postcode to share our values.

And perhaps that is one of the most exciting possibilities created by independent naturism.

We can build communities deeply rooted in their own places while remaining connected to people far beyond them.

There doesn’t have to be a contradiction between the two.

Every person matters

Ultimately, I think the future of naturism will be determined less by organisational structures than by the culture we create around people.

Dignity and respect.

Acceptance and kindness.

Safeguarding.

Community.

And the simple conviction that every person matters.

Independent communities can innovate. They can collaborate. They can learn from one another. They can retain their identities while supporting each other’s success.

Most importantly, they can give people choice.

Because a strong naturist community isn’t one in which everybody carries the same membership card or stands beneath the same banner.

It is one in which everybody can find somewhere they belong.

From North Wales to South Wales, from Dublin to County Sligo, from rambling and saunas to mindfulness, camps, social evenings and conversations taking place between living rooms hundreds of miles apart, that network is beginning to take shape.

Independent, certainly.

But never alone.

And if we continue building it upon dignity, respect, acceptance, kindness and genuine human connection, I think we have every reason to be optimistic about where naturism in Britain and Ireland goes next.

So what could independent naturist communities achieve if, instead of competing for people, we concentrated on connecting them?