Nottingham for Nature
What's it all about?
#NottinghamforNature is a striking and uniquely creative campaign to influence policy and positive change for wildlife in our urban centre. This campaign is aimed at reaching a wide range of audiences, inspiring new opportunities, mobilising community action and influencing decision makers and move towards a Wilder Future.
Following a collaborative approach between Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, political partners and young people across Nottingham City, a suite of campaign materials and a new manifesto for the city have been created. These were launched across the streets of Nottingham as part of a live #NottinghamforNature debate at the Council House in January 2018 and through a range of public events.
This campaign is gaining momentum!
Plans are now underway for Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust to drive positive change for wildlife across the city by encouraging its partners to adopt the manifesto and through inspiring local communities to act on nature’s behalf.
The Manifesto!
This Manifesto was created by Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust's youth team. It aims to inspire positive change for nature in Nottingham, raise awareness and influence political decisions about wildlife and conservation.
How did the campaign happen?
Starting out as a project called ‘Creating a buzz’, Nottingham for Nature began in 2017 with a programme of creative writing and ‘debate about nature’ workshops with young people. Participants were invited to discuss the issues facing wildlife in our city, and how to best command attention through the power of the written word and a creative street campaign.
Young people worked closely with Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust staff and were mentored by creative writers and the Trust’s own Audience Development Manager.
The project engaged young people across Greater Nottingham and worked closely with the Keeping it Wild young Wildlife Champions group, who have led and presented the outcomes of the project at a range of public events to committees and partners.
As part of the campaign young people developed a range of formats to share their campaign across multiple platforms. They looked at street advertising and billboards, poetry spoken word events, creative merchandise (badges, pencils, postcards), festival events and film/media.
Using a range of creative writing techniques, the #NottinghamforNature campaign followed the success of the YOUTHQUAKE and mashed words together to spark attention. Together with dictionary style definitions and haiku poems, the manifesto cleverly becomes its own poem and we were delighted to invite Nottingham’s Young Poet Laureate Georgina Wilding, to read this at our launch event at the Nottingham Council House.
What next?
The Trust’s strategic team are now taking forward an ‘activation plan’ for the manifesto, which will include its launch in September 2018 to coincide with the Nottingham Green Festival. Our cross departmental approach will aim to unite the work of our conservation teams, city partners, youth teams and our communities at this event and make connections with new people.
Our Young Wildlife Champions Group Keeping it Wild have taken on the management of our Woodthorpe Meadow Nature Reserve in the city to directly lead on key elements of the manifesto. Keeping it Wild will also govern the progress of the manifesto over the coming year(s).
What can you do to support our campaign?
There are multiple opportunities to connect with our project and we welcome your support and involvement.
- If you are an individual , wildlife group or a community project in Nottingham and believe what you do supports and/or connects to nature, tell us about your activity and we will connect your project to this page!
- Are you a business? Does your business care for the natural environment? Perhaps you support one element of the manifesto? If you don’t, maybe you could/ should! Please tell us and confirm your support for the manifesto.
- Use our #NottinghamforNature hashtag on your social media and link your social media with Nottingham Wildlife Trust @Nottswildlife. We want to grow our movement and campaign.
- Download our manifesto. Use it and share it. We believe our manifesto speaks to many people and projects and can mobilise and inspire new opportunities on a local and city wide level.
- Ask your local Cllr and MP if they support the #NottinghamforNature manifesto and ask them what they are doing. Find out who your local MP is.
- Join our e-mail newsletter. You will be kept up to date with Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust and future #NottinghamforNature developments.
- Keeping it Wild also came up with 5 GREAT WAYS to act now for nature
