Time is flying over in Cumbernauld and it is hard to believe that I am already halfway through my placement with the Scottish Wildlife Trust. My placement has been far more diverse than I would have imagined, so I thought I would do a quick rundown of the top things done / learnt so far:
Kids really do love being outside
Over the summer, with the help of previous trainee turned full time community engagement officer Tracy, I’ve designed and delivered 3 out of 4 Wildlife Watch taster sessions to local children in one of the Wildlife Trust’s reserves. These have grown from 3 children to 13 in the course of 3 weeks, proving the demand for activities for kids outdoors. I’m hoping to continue these sessions for the rest of the year, but with a volunteer leader recruited from the families of the interested kids to begin a self-managing Wildlife Watch kid’s group. Fingers crossed…
Getting set up for the Wildlife Watch taster sessions
The value of nature …
Or at least in terms of the ecosystem services it provides. Of course being outside is great for making you feel good and socialising, but there are also ways of quantifying it to communicate its value to others who perhaps haven’t thought about it before. My favourite example – the whiskey distillery: clean running water filtered naturally through peat for a smoky taste, barley grown for the mash-tun, oak for the barrels to allow it to age, etc – these all come from nature.
Town planning doesn’t need to be just about roads …
Green infrastructure looks at the benefits of working nature into developments, be this street trees, green roofs or walls or swales to manage water runoff. Cumbernauld has a community growth area for which we’ve been writing a best practice guide, suggesting ways of minimising the development’s impact on nature and maximising the benefits to the new residents and surrounding reserves.
Project management …
Is a many headed beast. After being seriously allergic to Excel, I’m starting to realise it really can be a project manager’s best friend; who knew spreadsheets could be such fun!
The project management timeline begins to shape up
Community engagement starts with a conversation
There are so many different ways that you can start engaging with a community. Each group you approach has their own expectations, needs and desires; getting to know these is sometimes more tricky than you might have first imagined. Having a conversation is a good way to start out, but so far I haven’t cracked the best way of helping the groups turn this into action – if there is one! That’s what this whole placement is about, however, so I’m going to continue developing in this area.
There’s always another event you can go to
Particularly in Cumbernauld which has a year-round calendar of community gala days. I’ve spent a lot of my weekends this summer getting out to these events and raising the profile of the Cumbernauld Living Landscape.
This year’s set up for Cumbernauld Gala day
It’s amazing who you meet outside
Working in an urbanised area, it seems that it’s very easy for local people to switch off from nature and greenspace. When I’m out and about in reserves, I always seem to bump into at least one person interested in wildlife. Linking these people into the Cumbernauld Living Landscape has strengthened the profile of the ecological network in the town and will hopefully allow for new and fruitful partnerships to develop.
That’s all for now. I’m spending the next few months developing my personal project, offering health and wellbeing sessions outdoors for local people. I’ll let you know how that goes.