Communities
Landscape Connections
Nature
Heritage
Events and Activities
Volunteer
Community
Explore
Local Highlights
Landscape Partnership Scheme
Connecting Communities through Action
River Valley Connections
Transforming the Landscape
We have delivered a series of projects that work with community groups, schools and families to encourage participation and learning. We understand the value of being active and being outdoors and the benefits this gives to mental health and wellbeing.
We worked with communities across the Trent Valley landscape to encourage people to get involved with our projects through volunteering and participation.
We supported great community initiatives that meet our objectives through a Community Grants scheme.
Our Community Engagement Officer worked directly with volunteers, diverse community groups, and local authorities across the scheme area to ensure a network of community groups and residents who have an interest in protecting and enhancing this unique and wonderful landscape.
Project Lead: Support Staffordshire
This project engaged with a broad-range of people to provide them with support and resources to be able to identify and record species. We worked with the Field Studies Council to produce a bespoke self-guided identification pack and we have an active group of ‘Wildlife Recording Volunteers’ to help us understand the biodiversity of the landscape.
We also engaged with specialist groups to deliver training, talks and workshops which generated more species records, which were submitted to iRecord, Staffordshire Ecological Records (SER) and Derbyshire Biological Records Centre (DBRC) to increase the quality and quantity of biological records in the Trent Valley.
We worked with hard-to-reach groups across the Trent Valley Landscape to help reconnect them with nature. It is well documented that this type of connection has a positive effect on mental health and wellbeing. A number of individuals each year were connected to their local and wider landscapes through our close working with community providers. Participants had the opportunity to understand the river, wetlands and heritage of the area through a programme using ‘forest school’ type methods, including community gardening, guided walks and bushcraft activities.
Project Lead: Derbyshire Wildlife Trust
Wildchild is about learning through play – bringing children and families closer to nature. Informal education activities have helped children and their families to better understand the Trent Valley and their local environment.
Wildchild is guiding the decision-makers of the future. By engaging with families, we have the opportunity, not only to influence the next generation, but increase the use of natural open spaces for recreation, learning and valuing.
Alongside our child-based activities we also offered taster and training days for parents to provide support and ideas for family days out throughout the project area.
Project Lead: Staffordshire Wildlife Trust
Through the delivery of a training programme to groups of young adults each year, we provided young conservationists with skills and knowledge relating to natural heritage and heritage management. Targeted at young people, particularly those outside of full-time employment and training, the opportunity included work experience with organisations within our partnership and diverse skills training through the set-up and delivery of our various projects.
Working with specialists in oral history and storytelling along with local young people, we gathered people’s recollections and thoughts about the past, present and future of the Trent Valley.
Brereton Volunteering Youth Group, Vysions Youth Service, Willington Scouts and Winshill Youth Club worked with artists and sound recordists Rebecca Lee and Jo Wheeler from Youth Landscapers to creatively explore the river Trent where they live and gather recollections, thoughts and stories about the past, present and future of the Trent Valley.
We involved more than 40 people who live or work near the river or who are part of local community group and visited lots of places along the river too including Burton Washlands, Newton Park, the Wolseley Centre in Rugeley, the Trent and Mersey Canal and Willington Wetlands. Our Tales of the River Bank videos are on our YouTube channel.
