The team in Wigan are working hard to plan a twenty-year long landscape recovery scheme that will connect and improve green spaces across the borough, providing a better place for people and nature.  As part of this work, my fellow trainee Jessica Fung and I planned and delivered a six-week programme of simple outdoor activities for families – our Greenheart Summer Club.
Summer Clubbin’ in Wigan
Julia Dixon, Wigan Greenheart Landscape Recovery Scheme Trainee, reflects on the success of Greenheart Summer Club. Families enjoyed fun-filled activities and discovering new green places this summer.
Nature Bingo activity sheets
The Greenheart Summer Club started as an initial idea which we sent to our partners and interested parties, including Wigan Council and Forestry England. Our aim was to highlight a sample of the sites within our scheme to the public and really get to know these spaces and how they impact the people using them. The sites we chose were Three Sisters Country Park, Wigan Flashes, Low Hall, Kirkless, Viridor Wood, and Bickershaw Country Park.
Members of Lempen Puppet Theatre performing the cycle of the seasons
It was my first time organizing something of this scale. I’ve led small group activities in the past while I was a volunteer with Dirtworks and these served as the basis for a lot of the events we did like leaf bashing and pond dipping. I also wanted to do something I’d never done before. I enjoy being creative, so I designed a nature bingo card for our first event at Three Sisters. It was so popular we brought it along to all the remaining events which culminated in a wildlife connectivity festival, complete with a puppet show, at Bickershaw.
Crafting a 'woodland eye' decoration from wool and sticks
I had a great time connecting with the local community. It was a nice surprise to see familiar faces attending more than one event. Some of the families I spoke to said they wouldn’t have visited our smaller sites, such as Kirkless, had it not been for the Summer Club. It was satisfying to know that we had achieved our goal to raise awareness of Wigan and Leigh’s secret greenheart. We got a lot of positive feedback from our participant survey, which will help future event planning during the implementation phase of the scheme.
Pond dipping group activity at the water's edge
Another huge highlight was working in close quarters with Forestry England on Viridor Wood. They planned to have a BioBlitz on the same day as our leaf bashing event, so we pooled our efforts and combined the two. This has opened so many doors for future collaboration.
As expected, there were ups and downs throughout. Some days were exhausting. A few times we really underestimated just how far we had to carry our heavy gazebo! On one occasion we were running behind schedule and had a ten-minute walk from the car park to our event site, so for the sake of setting up on time I decided it to take only what was necessary. Everything worked out for the best in the end!
While it was an intimidating challenge, with careful planning, together with a little bit of improvisation, the summer club was an all-round success!
Julia Dixon