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£60,000 green spaces grant will help improve mental health in Lancashire

Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust has been awarded £60,000 of funding to support its Growing Good Health in Lancashire project.

The partnership funding application, submitted in conjunction with Lancashire Wildlife Trust, was one of 21 succesful bids, out of a total of 3,000. The funding which will support the two-year project, was granted by the Greener Communities Fund, managed by NHS Charities Together in partnership with Starbucks and Hubbub.

Growing Good Health in Lancashire will bring together decades of skills and experience within both the Foundation Trust and Lancashire Wildlife Trust to build a programme of work that delivers excellence for both people and nature. The project will focus on further development of the Grow Your Own service on the community space within the grounds of guild park Goosnargh Whittingham, and improvement works at the Chai Centre – a community centre - in Burnley.

A smiling woman with brown hair

Rebecca Witcombe, Senior Nature and Wellbeing Officer

Rebecca who will be running the sessions from the Chai Centre has lived in Burnley for many years.

"I'm really excited about bringing our Nature and Wellbeing activities to the Chai Centre in the heart of the Burnley, It's a place I visited regularly when I first started working for the Wildlife Trust 16 years ago and it's been close to my heart ever since.  It will be wonderful to work here and create some growing spaces in the gardens and support people to carry out actions for nature. Connecting with nature is such valuable wellbeing tool."

Lancashire Wildlife Trust, through their award winning Nature and Wellbeing programme will take learning from people with lived experience within Guild Park, to develop a community-based nature programme which supports step-down from clinical services, and local green social prescribing, to develop successful growing spaces at The Chai Centre in Burnley. The focus will be on revenue works with some accompanying capital works including the development of increased food growing beds, a mini orchard, community composting and an outdoor classroom.

A community centre garden

The Chai Centre, Burnley

With wider engagement, it’s anticipated that 2,000 people will benefit from the project. This will include 60 service users per year accessing greenspace opportunities at Guild Park, 64 people will being referred in to three month nature and wellbeing groups at The Chai centre, and there’ll be four collaborative seasonal coproduction days per year between Guild Park and the Chai Centre, supporting species recording and monitoring, seed collection and sowing, habitat box creation, harvesting and cooking.

An open day is being held on Thursday 25th May from 10-2pm to celebrate the new project. There'll be some activities happening as well as a chance to meet the Nature and Wellbeing team and have your say on what nature activities you'd like to see happening.

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