Re-establishing our connection with the open water
The Outdoor Swimming Society was established in 2006 to pioneer outdoor swimming in rivers, lakes, lido and seas. It started with a simple mission, to give permission to swim wild. This is a permission which was never withdrawn, merely forgotten. The team behind the OSS is a small family of creators, adventurers, explorers, writers, thinkers and photographers, driven by a shared interest in outdoor swimming.
As outdoor swimming grew in popularity over the years our mission evolved to become share the swim love, bringing outdoor swimming into the mainstream, introducing it to more people and normalising it within popular culture.
Jess Rose
“When we began… we really had to work to convince people swimming outdoors wasn’t dirty, dangerous and illegal. Lots of people’s grandmothers still did it – but it wasn’t an active movement”
– Kate Rew, OSS Founder and Creative Director
In 2006 the OSS had 300 members. In 2022, our website had 1.3million unique visitors and our membership today is over 187k. Our activities, networks and information is accessed by members from at least 25 countries around the world.
Over those years we have enhanced access to open water, provided resources to the community, formed networks (local, national and international) and held popular events, all to contribute to the art, science and culture of outdoor swimming.
Jess Rose
Find the others
We curate numerous platforms where members connect with one-another: The Outdoor Swimming Society website, a Facebook page, a Facebook group, Instagram, Twitter, wildswim.com (a free crowdsourced worldwide swim map) and our free virtual monthly magazine, Elsewhere. In 2019 we also started Zeno’s Swim Club, a virtual winter swimming club #thestoics.
In addition to this we provide a network for administrators of local outdoor swimming groups, recognising that for many of us a local and often creatively named group provided us with a warm welcome and an introduction to outdoor swimming.
Access for all
Our inland access group provides support, resources and a network to those interested in improving swimming access for inland waters.
Tell the story
Through Elsewhere, our social media channels and the content from our contributors to the website, we aim to tell the story of outdoor swimming. As originators first and foremost, in our 15th year we are now connectors and celebrators too: here to shine a full moon beam on the innovations and storytellers within our community. Our aim is to keep things fresh and interesting; to share what we learn and enjoy and give a platform to stories, ideas and people within the community, which are amusing, inspiring or need to be heard.
Support our community
As well as telling the story, we aim to provide the tools to enjoy outdoor swimming safely. Our Survive resources give advice from expert contributors on different open water environments, cold water safety and much more.
Jess Rose
“The International Anti-Governing Body of Outdoor Swimming”
The OSS prides itself on originality, a kind heart and free spirit. Staying true to our renegade and maverick roots, we have chosen to remain a volunteer run society that does not charge for membership. We offer a place to belong, and remain free to lead from the front, to set our own agenda and to do what we find inspiring and fun. Our philosophy extends across all wild waters, as we champion free swimming, that the outdoors should be able to be enjoyed both free of charge and free from prohibitive regulation.
OSS members share a belief and an attitude, not a demographic. We embrace outdoor swimming’s ability to slip us out of recognisable reality and into something better. We embrace swimming’s ability to enlarge and celebrate the beauty of every day and enhance the landscape and people we meet within it. Described variously as ‘the most magic club in the world’ and ‘the friendliest place on the internet’, we enable people to ‘find the others’ – people they enjoy as much as they enjoy swimming.
Here for everyone
Our members practise all types of swimming: winter, wild, social, competitive, adventure, endurance, recreational, lido and skinny dipping, and swim everywhere it is possible to swim: river, lake, lido, sea, loch, tarn, reservoir, waterfall and wadi. We are drawn from all ages and backgrounds and from all over the world: while predominantly UK based, we have strong cohorts in America, Australia, Europe and contributors from Iran to Mongolia.
John Anderson
Key aims
Every outdoor swimmer is an advocate for their environment, and access to it
While not a campaigning organisation, we aim to serve our ever-growing community of swimmers with the information, resources, network and inspiration that will give momentum to the many causes that protect the natural right to swim freely outdoors, sustainably and without hindrance.
Finisterre
Recent years have been pivotal for outdoor swimming as it has entered the mainstream. We’d like to think that those two mission statements, to give permission and to share the swim love, have been successful. As the outdoor swimming community continues to grow, we see ourselves as continuing to provide a community for swimmers, but we also aim to continue to tell the story of outdoor swimming, to preserve its soul. As it grows in popularity we want to help the community hold on to the things that made us fall in love with outdoor swimming in the first place – the magic, the wilderness, the connection with nature, the adventure, that maverick spirit. So we’ll continue to help you find the others, tell the stories and make the memories.
We hope you enjoy what we’ve made, and that our community gives you a space and network that accessorises your swimming better than any new purchase. Please see our Members page for more on how to join and the Team page for some of the people who make us what we are.
May you make good friends, have good adventures and be gifted with good insights.
OSS Team, June 2021