My placement involves working with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh; it is my role to outreach to local communities within Edinburgh in order to engage people with wild plants of the City. The focus will be plants of rocky places as the City has a number of open spaces with crags and cliffs that support specialised and rare plants. The ‘Green Crags Project’ will seek to engage communities not normally involved in conservation and raise awareness of the plant biodiversity on our doorstep.
So far I have been busy researching community groups, this week I have a meeting with the South Asian Male Carer’s Support & Development Officer and also with the Community Development Officer from the Muslim community.
Last week I visited the three rocky crag environments, at Blackford Hill my mentor Max Coleman and I looked like mad explorers scrambling up the steep crags to look for rare plants. We met a fox right up in the crags he was sitting under the gorse bush staring up at us curiously; he then followed us for quite a while.
Visiting the crags sites has involved lots of hill walking and amateur rock climbing. I loved every minute of it but disliked the prickly gorse bushes that kept trying to pierce my hands as I was clinging on for dear life.
Before graduating I produced a short film for The Hampshire Wildlife Trust as part of my final year project. I really enjoyed carrying out conservation tasks and producing worth while media content for a charity. After taking part in conservation volunteering I’d got the bug, I loved working outdoors and kept revisiting and participating in conservation tasks despite the fact that I had finished filming.
After graduating it was my ambition to obtain a career within the media sector and I worked as a media intern for a production company followed by work experience with the BBC. After much thought and competition within the media sector I decided to change to the environmental sector once again producing a second video for The London Wildlife Trust .This was when I decided that being outdoors, learning ,and working with people is what really interests me. I volunteered for the wildlife trusts, The Natural History Museum and BTCV over a period of about 3 years whilst working.
Please see below link for the film I produced for The London Wildlife Trust:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTMSG9YaHDk
Having spent a lot of time working part time and volunteering the pressure was on to get a full time job. I managed to find a full time job as a Receptionist based in London but administration really was not my forte. It was then that I decided to completely change and give up my job work part time in order to study a BTEC Diploma in Environmental conservation with BTCV based at Derbyshire. I found this course to be very inspiring, just appreciating being outdoors and its benefits. I learnt about practical conservation tasks, habitat management and engaging with the public on the sites.
With my media skills, passion for conservation and working with people I felt the best suited role would be community engagement based work within the environmental sector.
After a lot of volunteering and persistence here I am working as a Natural Communities Trainee thanks to BTCV Scotland The Heritage Lottery Fund. I am looking forward to combing my media skills and using my new found knowledge to engage people’s interests in the natural world. The Life of Plants… David Attenborough springs to mind; perhaps he can help me at some point this year by featuring in one of my films?
Please see Sir David Attenborough share his thoughts on the importance of the natural world and the work of BTCV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWo85jXQAD0