Aims
Tewkesbury Nature Reserve (TNR) provides a unique living laboratory for outdoor learning and recreation across its 44 hectare site. The Green Lung project focused on ‘connecting people with nature’ for mutual recovery in this urban floodplain setting and provided an 18-month programme of outdoor learning and outreach running from October 2021 to March 2023.
Urban floodplain nature reserves bring particular challenges with competing interests (nature, farming, recreation, infrastructure, floods), and diverse communities with different drivers, knowledge, skills and values. Acting as unique ‘green lungs’, they have potential to intertwine recovery for nature and humans. This call offered opportunities to step-change delivery of TNR’s Learning and Outreach Strategy; hence the creation of the Green Lung project.
During the project, TNR collaborated with a wide range of local organisations in delivering an 18 month programme of outdoor learning for diverse groups, prioritising young people, and promoting personal health and wellbeing, care of others and environmental stewardship. The project supported two new posts (a full-time Learning and Outreach Officer, and a part-time Volunteer Co-ordinator), three six-month internships and a training programme for volunteers and the wider public. This supported citizen science activities, practical management and creative learning on TNR, including working with schools and colleges and developing a Forest School for young people.
The project aimed to build green skills and employability, and a larger, more diverse group of volunteers on TNR. TNR will share learning from the project with other urban floodplain nature reserves for increased resilience to degradation, the pandemic, and climate change.
Our funders
TNR’s project, “Developing TNR as a ‘green lung’ for community recovery”, was awarded a grant from the Government’s £40 million second round of the Green Recovery Challenge Fund, a multi-million pound boost for green jobs and nature recovery. The fund was developed by Defra and its Arm’s-Length Bodies. It is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England, the Environment Agency and Forestry Commission.
Other funding was secured from the Summerfield Charitable Trust to develop learning resources on TNR. This supported the work delivered within the Green Lung project.
What happens now the project has ended?
Sadly now the project has ended we do not have a Learning & Outreach Officer in post so the number of activities able to be delivered is limited. We are hopeful to secure further funding to be able to continue the valuable work of the Green Lung Project and fund a new post in the near future.
In the meantime, resources from the project can be accessed below, and volunteering opportunities are still available. There are also links to other aspects of the project, including blog posts from our interns in the ‘News updates’ page, and ability to sign up to updates via our events mailing lists on our ‘Events page’ and the Nature Guardians mailing lists on our ‘Nature Guardians’ page.
To find out how to get involved with each of the different elements, please click the links below:
Keep an eye out on our social media pages and website where additional events and activities will be posted and publicised when we have hopefully secured further funding.
