Community engagement
Community engagement is central to so many conservation and heritage projects. Funding bodies like the National Lottery Heritage Fund quite rightly prioritise the engagement of local people very highly. We have years of experience of planning and delivering programmes of this kind.
We have planned activity programmes for our successful Lottery bids and then gone on to co-ordinate their delivery. We have organised events from the smallest children’s art session to large-scale festivals with thousands of visitors.
Our portfolio includes activities for disabled people, people on low incomes, young people and elderly people, and we are experienced in reaching out to infrequent users and new audiences. We can also offer all the promotion and facilitation skills needed to make your programme successful.
Volunteering
Alongside a thriving programme of community activities, a successful community project will also depend on local people getting more deeply involved, through regular participation. We are passionate about volunteering! It enriches people’s lives and brings so many benefits – we know this because we’ve been volunteers ourselves! Through the programmes we have planned, we’ve got people involved in practical conservation work, leading guided walks, making films, curating exhibitions, and co-creation of all kinds.
Training
Key to this is support through the right training. We have planned and facilitated training in skills as diverse as water vole ecology and web site updating! The offer of new skills can also encourage new audiences to engage, as well as delivering real life benefits to people. We have also acted as training planner for landowners, and countryside professionals.
Promotion
Even the best community events programme will not succeed if no-one knows about it. We find that as much effort has to go into promoting a project as into the project itself. To reach audiences for countryside and heritage activities, we employ both ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ media to spread the word. Usually a combination of promotional channels is needed to get good levels of engagement, but even with so much technology at our disposal we still recognise the value of reaching key individuals and groups and enlisting their help – never underestimate the power of word of mouth!
CASE STUDY: Our Stour
In brief
Our Stour was a three year, Heritage Lottery funded project focused on engaging local people in learning about, appreciating and improving the rivers of the Kentish Stour catchment.
We developed and planned the project and produced the HLF bid, in partnership with the Kentish Stour Countryside Partnership. The bid was successful and we delivered three of the six main programmes as well as general project co-ordination and promotion. We also provided monitoring and evalation at all stages, including the final evaluation report.
The Stour Catchment
The Kentish Stour is the major river catchment of East Kent. Some of its rivers are chalk streams of global significance. Some flow through areas of international importance for conservation. Most pass through settlements; loved and celebrated in some places, flowing underground and forgotten in others. In an ideal world, all the rivers of the Stour Catchment would be shaped by natural processes, with good water quality and abundant wildlife. In a few places these conditions exist but for the most part, these rivers face many challenges: pollution, low flows due to the demand for water supply, invasive species and the legacy of structures left by old industry.
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT AND HLF BID
Our Stour came into being in recognition of the need to engage local communities in the process of bringing the Stour Catchment’s rivers back into good condition. The East Kent Catchment Improvement Partnership started to develop ideas and we were brought in to work these up into a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
The project began to take shape in the form of six programmes:
River Walks
A programme of guided walks along rivers in the catchment, exploring history and wildlife.
FLOWFILM
A young people’s film-making project where participants learnt skills and used film-making to explore issues surrounding rivers on their doorstep.
LAND MANAGEMENT WORKSHOPS
Events to advise farmers and other land managers on how to protect rivers.
RIVER CONSERVATION TASKS
Local people getting hands on with conservation to make a real difference to river environments.
RIVER WARDENS
Trained River Wardens playing an important role in improving local rivers and recording wildlife.
AQUALAB
A mobile classroom for schools and community groups to use for river-based, educational activities.
We worked together with the Kentish Stour Countryside Partnership on all the major elements of the bid: the activity plan, detailed briefs for the main programmes, plans for engagement and training, carrying out community consultation and gathering evidence of interest and support, drawing up a project management structure and a budget.
The bid was successful and Our Stour was launched with an event at Godmersham Park in September 2017.
Project delivery
We delivered the three year project alongside the Our Stour Officer, a new post created for the project. We were involved to some degree in all aspects of project delivery, but the main areas we worked on are summarised below:
Online presence and promotion
- Created dedicated Our Stour section on the KSCP website.
- Set up and posted regularly to Our Stour Facebook.
- Set up YouTube channel (it now features 38 short films made during the project).
- Produced six editions of the Our Stour News e-newsletter.
SOURCING AND BRIEFING PROVIDERS
We helped to bring a range of specialists into the project to lead activities, including trainers, film-makers, a writer, a vlogger and an animation workshop provider.
DELIVERY OF RIVER WALKS PROGRAMME
This was a varied programme of community events through which participants explored and learnt about the wildlife and heritage of the catchment rivers through film-making and photography .
The programme started with an activity for a charity for young people with learning difficulties, ‘Includes Us 2’, documented by a local film-maker. We then worked with Young Animators Club on a River Wildlife Animation Workshop based at a riverside venue in a deprived ward.
Our most popular event was ‘Whitstable’s Hidden River’ for which Whitstable Museum and participants contributed stills and footage to the film, which reached over 5000 views on YouTube. Based on the success of this simple format of a walk that is filmed, with participants contributing stills and footage, we provided a series of river walks, working with vlogger The Wild Native. All completed films can be seen on the Kentish Stour Countryside Partnership YouTube channel.
DELIVERY OF FLOWFILM PROGRAMME
FlowFilm was a film-making project with strands for both young people and adults. It ran for two years, with people taking part having the opportunity to work alongside a professional film-maker on making short films about rivers, harnessing their creativity and learning skills such as storyboarding, shooting and editing. They learnt how to use professional software in a series of workshops, editing clips shot on phones and tablets and adding sound and titles.
Our film-maker suggested working with a local writer to provide creative writing workshops to produce film content; these activities were called WordFlow. We also ran FlowFilm workshops for adults and many of the people who had come to WordFlow made films based on their own creative writing. All completed films from this programme can be seen on the Kentish Stour Countryside Partnership YouTube channel.
DELIVERY OF LANDOWNER TRAINING PROGRAMME
This was a learning programme for farmers and other land managers. Our aim was to raise awareness of issues and encourage changes in land management to benefit rivers and riverine wildlife. One issue that came to the fore was that of invasive non-native species (INNS) and in the end four out of the six events we delivered were on topics in this area. Events were attended by local farmers and fisheries managers. The most popular event was our final one, which covered water quality, abstraction and the predicted impacts of climate change.
Monitoring and evaluation
We delivered all monitoring and evaluation over the three year life-span of the project, including HLF progress reports and the final evaluation. Our work included:
- Defining quantitative and qualitative targets and indicators
- Recording data on various monitoring spreadsheets
- Designing and implementing feedback questionnaires for various activities
- Recording volunteer activity, ecological data and unsolicited comments and feedback
- Documenting activities photographically
- Formatively evaluating programmes during the project to improve them
- Producing updates and reports
- Carrying out summative interviews with participants
the Nature and heritage consultancy 