Community Stewardship in Wales
Welsh has a word for the deep sense of belonging to a place: cynefin. It runs through the way farmers, volunteers, charities and public bodies are working together for nature across the country.
At RSPB Lake Vyrnwy, local stewardship is producing benefits for nature and for people. On the Lugg, Radnorshire Wildlife Trust’s Wilder Lugg project is showing how farms and rivers can thrive together. In Blaenau Gwent, Area Statements are bringing partners around one table to help nature recover.
These places are living experiments in collaboration. A research ‘sprint’ led by the University of Oxford’s Agile Initiative with Natural Resources Wales set out to learn from them. The results show the positive feedbacks that ripple out from nature recovery efforts in local communities.
It gives people ownership of our land. We start to feel like we are part of place. It gives you a pride in that place and it gives you an impetus to look after it.
Case study films rooted in place
This film series was made to show what a report can’t fully convey: what transformation feels like to the people doing it. Rather than explaining the academic detail, the series complements it: first-hand accounts of why the work matters, in the voices of those doing it, so the findings travel beyond the report’s readership.
Working with the Agile Initiative, RSPB, Radnorshire Wildlife Trust and Natural Resources Wales, we helped identify and develop the strongest case studies. Individual stories have a clear sense of being rooted in place, emphasising the localism at the heart of this nature recovery work. As part of a suite of films optimised for social reach, a set of short interview clips lets partners share the key messages directly.
