Working with Action For Conservation, Avon Wildlife Trust have recruited the Youth Leadership Group to work alongside the local communities surrounding Grow Wilder to co-design a future vision for the site. The aim is for the restoration of the site to bring benefits to nature and increase biodiversity, but to also create a space for the community and future young people to use and feel the benefits of being outside. The site has lots of potential and our Youth Leadership Group are the key to unlocking it.

The first phase of restoring the brownfield site involves learning from the land’s past and its present, before planning and designing its future. Guided by Holly and Jacob from Action For Conservation, alongside myself, the Youth Leadership Group’s first meeting started with an exploration of the site’s past uses, delving into the role it played in communities throughout the medieval period.

The site would once have been a haven for nature, having been in, or on the edge of, a large forest known as the ‘Kingswood’ which is visible in old maps. This may have been home to wildlife such as wild boar, beavers, and even wolves, prior to them being hunted to extinction.

We connected to people who would have used the land in the medieval era by practicing old crafts, such as willow weaving to make crowns – linking to the Norman conquest of 1066. We explored the site and the livestock which currently call it home; three goats and a group of chickens, belonging to Street Goat, a community project connecting families to animals and increasing their understanding of food production.

It was a brilliant day to kick off this three-year project, meet the fantastic young people that will be young leaders for the site and was a really exciting way to start connecting with the landscape over which the Youth Leadership Group will have control into the future. Decisions that are made over the site’s future – what changes are made to bring wildlife back, or provide space for communities will lie with these young people.

Over future meetings, they will work with expert ecologists, farmers and local community members to learn about what the site is currently used for, and then to create new, multigenerational visions for nature restoration. They will then turn these into reality by restoring lost habitats alongside local people as part of wider community restoration days.

This is an incredibly rewarding project to be part of, and is quite a new approach to involving young people for Avon Wildlife Trust – by giving the power of decision-making to young people, and empowering them with the knowledge and confidence to make choices and taken action for nature is absolutely key to tackling the climate crisis. I can’t wait to see what our site looks like by the time they’ve finished!

This is an incredibly rewarding project to be part of, and is quite a new approach to involving young people for Avon Wildlife Trust – by giving the power of decision-making to young people, and empowering them with the knowledge and confidence to make choices and taken action for nature is absolutely key to tackling the climate crisis. I can’t wait to see what our site looks like by the time they’ve finished!

As part of the project, nature restoration will continue at Penpont, the UK’s largest intergenerational nature project which has been operating since 2019 on a 500-acre farm in Wales, and a third Youth Leadership Group has been started at Heartwood, a 160-acre farm in Derbyshire, aiming to bring food growing and offer therapeutic opportunities to the surrounding communities.

This project has been made possible thanks to National Lottery players. Action for Conservation, Avon Wildlife Trust and Heartwood have received over £870,000 from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK.