Projects Archive
The Picket Post
creating an OFF GRID NATURE POSITIVE MEETING SPACE
We created an accessible, off grid and nature positive, relaxing meeting space which can be hired by both corporate and local community groups for meetings and events at the Field of Life.
The building was constructed at the end of World War II as a look-out shelter at RAF Snitterfield when the airfield at the back of the area was commissioned at the end of the second world war.
This project saw our team refurbish the building making it suitable to welcome the local community. We made great steps forward throughout the year to insulate the building and install a new ceiling, paint and decorate, lay a new laminate floor, fully furnish the main room and kitchen area and have running water at the sink in the utility room.
Royal Shakespeare Company Garden - The Dell
Bringing the community together to create and enjoy the garden
We were delighted to partner with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to create a garden at The Dell, Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Whilst working creatively together, we aimed to make The Dell a space that's welcoming and tranquil that brings local community groups together. Many community groups got involved in the creation of the garden through planting and construction, as well as engaging in a series of workshops to produce ephemeral art pieces for the garden with artist Faye Claridge.
Our main focus was to make the green space accessible, inclusive and enjoyable for all, to improve wellbeing and increase the biodiversity of the area by diversifying the range of habitats and vegetation structures at the site.
The garden opened on Shakespeare’s birthday where people could visit, enjoy the space, listen to live music and enjoy drop-in activities throughout the day where we distributed veg seeds to take home and grow, created a bug hotel to provide a habitat for insects and went on a wildlife tour to help charter the biodiversity of the area.
Gardening Club in Warwickshire
horticultual therapy at our local Nursing homes
Thanks to funding from McCarthy Stone Foundation, we could improve the health and wellbeing of up to 50 local residents aged 60+ by delivering weekly outdoor volunteering and gardening opportunities by creating and maintaining public access green spaces in Warwickshire.
Our aims was to reduce isolation and loneliness, boost wellbeing and create green spaces that can be enjoyed by the whole community.
We worked with older people who lived locally and those who lived at the various retirement and care homes in the Stratford-upon-Avon area.
By working in mixed groups, we facilitated an exchange of knowledge and experience across the generations and encouraged an enthusiasm and love for the local environment. The gardens grew a mix of vegetables, wild flowers, fruit and herbs and all inspired by the works of William Shakespeare.
Welcombe Hills School
Coaching, connecting & inspiring young people
We were delighted to deliver a new community project for 15 individuals with mild to moderate learning difficulties from Welcombe Hills School in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
The project was in partnership with ThinkForward and is part of their wider MoveForward programme supported by the DFN Foundation.
It involved 11 week-by-week sessions of horticultural and environmental activities and learning designed to improve their soft skills, communication, teamwork, independence and self-confidence.
Another aim of the project was to connect the group more to Stratford by strengthening their town links, to encourage further volunteering or work opportunities as they transition into work from school.
We began by outlining each individual’s personal goals and continue to support them in achieving these goals throughout the programme. Each session was in different locations of Stratford-Upon-Avon and activities ranged from gardening, biodiversity auditing, apple picking, tree planting, litter picking/recycling, sustainability action planning and many more.
Follow our week-by-week blog series to see the progress and success of the project:
Week 1 - Stratford Sports Club
Week 2 - The Dell
Week 3 - Mary Arden’s Farm
Week 4 - Stratford Hospital Gardens
Week 5 - The Hideaway
Week 6/7/8/9 - The Kitchen Garden
Week 10 - The Hideaway Tree Planting
Week 11 - Review
Warwickshire Living Walls
Creating greener spaces in urban environments
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Our ‘Warwickshire Living Walls’ project saw us design and install 100 linear metres of living walls at hospitals and public access sites across Warwickshire. Supported by the Green Shoots fund from Warwickshire County Council.
What are Living Walls?
Living walls are vertical systems of growing plants which can cover large surfaces of structures and buildings. Forest of Hearts living walls are modular and allow for a variety of plants to be put into panels before being transported to sites for installation.
They provide a wealth of environmental benefits, especially if they contain a diverse array of plant species, such as cooling and insulating buildings, improving urban biodiversity, shielding building façades from weather damage, and reducing air pollution.
Aims of the project
Create greener spaces in urban environments.
Improve air purification with species rich plants that absorb Particulate Matter and Nitrogen Dioxide to reduce harmful effects of traffic pollution in the atmosphere.
Contribute to tackling global warming by reducing urban temperatures.
Boost biodiversity by offering vital nesting space, shelter and food for bees, butterflies and other insects.
Create opportunities in design, installation and maintenance for our Green Therapy group and volunteers.
Improve sense of wellbeing by creating sustainable vertical gardens for the public to enjoy.
Help local community spaces thrive.
WHERE ARE our LIVING WALLS?
Our living walls are located at Stratford hospital, Leamington Rehabilitation hospital, Stratford Sports Club and The Hideaway.
Grow Your Own
Helping our local community grow their own veg
Thanks to funding from Stratford Town Trust, we could offer 100 of our Grow Your Own Veg Boxes to NHS Staff, hospital patients and residents of Stratford-Upon-Avon.
This initiative was designed to give people the opportunity to grow their own veg in their gardens or public locations, in a bid to improve the health and wellbeing of the local community.
The boxes provide recipients with seeds to grow runner beans, peas, courgette, spinach, kale, chard and edible flowers as well as an information booklet including details about sowing the seeds and harvesting.
We ran a similar ‘Sow and Grow’ project in the summer of 2020 with our Green Therapy Group where each member grew their own veg plot and we held a virtual garden show displaying their results, so it’s rewarding to offer this on a larger scale.
As well as health and wellbeing being at the heart of the project, other benefits include, boosting biodiversity, the building of skills and gardening knowledge and learning to be more environmental and sustainable.
We conducted 2 surveys during the project, one initial survey to gage their veg growing expectations and a second survey to evaluate their veg growing experience. Results from the first survey showed that 37% of participants hadn’t grown their own veg before, so this was a new and exciting experience for them and for many it gave them a new hobby, passion and diet.
In the evaluation survey, it revealed 93% of participants believed growing their own veg improved their wellbeing and when asked why? the standout keywords and phrases were centred around “improving mental health”, “Having something to focus on”, “a sense of pride and achievement”, “a sense of calm”, “fun” and “enjoyable”. Their explanations were filled with such positivity and when asked to give a satisfaction rating out of 10, the average score was 9.4/10 which confirms the success of the project from the local community members involved.
Building Digital Skills
Helping local unemployed individuals develop Digital skills
Forest of Hearts benefitted from the ESF funded ‘Building Digital Skills’ programme run by Longden.
We offered the FREE programme to those in the local community who were unemployed, looking for work and wanting to sharpen up their digital skills to improve your employability prospects.
The programme ran between 30/11/2020 until 22/03/2021 and covered topics including: Setting Goals, Choosing Social Media Platforms, Social Media Strategy, Content Creation, Video creation, SEO & Keywords, Using Analytics, Email Campaigns, Digital Inclusion and LinkedIn CV Building.
A group session was run via Zoom every Monday with 1-to-1 tutorials on a Wednesday and the learning materials and projects were made available 24/7 on the learning platform Talent LMS.
The programme of online learning and work-based volunteering included 12 participants who built digital marketing skills, increased confidence and improved employment prospects. Success stories from the programme included an individual who took their learning from the course forward and got a job running the social media for a heritage company. Other participants had post programme successes of becoming a social media admin for a local hospital radio station, using digital skills to promote their graphic design work and another used the programme to gain confidence to get into full time employment at a local wellbeing café.
Coaching for Wellbeing
Helping individuals gain a qualification in coaching for health
Our 12 week ‘Coaching For Wellbeing’ programme was aimed at unemployed individuals within the local community to develop skills and knowledge to support those who wish to improve their health and wellbeing.
The programme was designed to bring out the best in people and helped improve participants listening, questioning and other communication skills with practical coaching tools and techniques. Each person on the course gained the ILM Level 3 Award in Effective Coaching by creating a reflective portfolio to capture their learning and the impact on those they coached.
The programme involved:
Zoom workshops
Online learning activities
One to one coaching
Group coaching
Boosting Biodiversity with Barn Owls
Project to provide nesting boxes for barn owls
In the first week of May we erected a barn owl box in a mature oak tree at our 5-acre Field of Life as part of a project to build biodiversity with Barn Owls, shortly after planting trees to start the creation of Barn Owl Wood . This particular tree was chosen as it was isolated, in a well establish hedgerow and was a tree with a thick trunk. We placed the nest box at 3 metres above ground level that overlooked open habitat, in the hope it would attract one of our feathered friends of the countryside.
During a routine visit from members of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to survey owls by checking owl boxes in the area, we made an amazing discovery. We found a hen owl (female owl) with her 6 barn own chicks and 1 egg.
A month later they visited again to check the health of our Barn Owl chicks and ring them. Each of the chicks were carefully extracted from the nest box by the trained, skilled ringers and given a unique metal ring bearing a number which can identify where the bird is from and how old it is. The visit was also to determine the sex of the birds and it was confirmed that we have an all-female brood of 6 healthy Barn Owl chicks.
We are so pleased to provide a safe habitat for these wonderful creatures and to boost the biodiversity of the landscape.
We give thanks to Roger, John and Ros from BTO for their knowledge and expertise and Arden Farm Wildlife Network and Zoe Bell as without the funding from Tesco Bags of Help, which was secured by Ian Jelley and Warwickshire Wildlife Trust we wouldn't have been able to make this possible.
Sow and Grow at Home Challenge
Education, creativity, Gardening and exercise to improve wellbeing during lockdown
As The Sow and Grow At Home Challenge has come to an end, we look back on a fun filled 16 weeks full of education, creativity, exercise, health, well-being and friendship. The project started with 11 participants who week by week were given a number of tasks and activities to complete and share with the rest of the group and their team leaders.
Week 1 saw all members given a starter pack of seeds, herbs and plants in order to grow their own show garden which they would showcase for the judges on week 12. Throughout the weeks members were given learning materials and participated in a number of quizzes. They learned about plants, different types of soil, foods that were healthy for us, trees and the importance of changing the way we live to save the environment.
They also got very arty and creative by making bee hotels, drawing and painting pictures and making posters to give thanks to the NHS and to promote growing your own fruit and veg. New skills were learned in regards to gardening and horticulture which saw them plan, tend to, maintain and water their very own veg patches and flower beds.
Lots of tasks were aimed at improving well-being from making kindness rocks, keeping a gratitude diary and simply having the opportunity to chat to people and make new friendships.
Health & Exercise was also on the agenda with many of the group taking up walking on a regular basis, learning dance routines and participating in virtual exercise classes which were provided via video chat.
With the project being run from home we had to set everybody up with the right technology and channels to be able to communicate with each other and with that, lots of multi media skills were gained from participating in zoom calls and phone calls and group messaging on WhatsApp.
When it was safe and abiding by social distance measures, we moved the sessions outdoors. The group did gardening, watering, weeding, digging and planting in the Kitchen Garden and Garden of Well-being. We also got the opportunity to paddle our way along the River Avon in a Bell boating activity day, which was thoroughly enjoyable.
So we give thanks to those who helped facilitate the Sow and Grow programme, the members who made it a success and to Groundwork for making it all possible.