Last year Nene Park Trust was awarded funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to develop our exciting project Nene Park: Your Community Greenspace, a project encompassing new infrastructure, events and community projects that will respond to the growth of the city and region.

During the current research and development phase the team has been busy piloting activities, getting out and about to city-wide events and meeting with communities across Peterborough. We want to find out how regularly people access greenspace and how we can develop the Park to support under-represented groups to access greenspace more regularly. All this information and our conversations will help us develop our project plans further.

If we are successful in moving through to the second phase, the £3 million, 5-year project will have three over-arching aims:

• Empowering and engaging our communities to help conserve the natural heritage of Nene Park.
• Building bridges with the multi-cultural communities of Peterborough to make Ferry Meadows an inclusive community hub.
• Improving physical and mental health and wellbeing through nurturing connections with nature and the outdoors.

To find out more detail about the project go to the Your Community Greenspace project page on the website.

During this current research and development phase of the project, The project team has been working hard to pilot activities that help inform the development of project activity, conservation plan and evaluation plan. 

Our pilot activities have included:

• Partnering with members of the local Sikh community to plant trees in the Park and creating a tree line for visitors to enjoy.
• Partnering with Cross Keys Home’s ‘Inspiring the Next Generation’ team to offer work experience to young people not in employment, education or training.
• Partnering with members of the local Hindu community to deliver an event in the Park celebrating Makara Sankranti – a kite flying event.
• Working with Youth Inspired to raise awareness of the benefits of greenspace and encourage young people to get involved in volunteering.
• Drop-in volunteer taster sessions at Thorpe Meadows.
• Visiting libraries and other community settings across the city.

Unfortunately, due to the coronavirus outbreak and the need for social distancing we are not able to continue carrying out the face-to-face consultation but we would still like to hear from you and hear about your experiences of using your local greenspaces and how you would like to see them change and improve in the future, making them more accessible to all. So our research for the time being is going digital!

Look out for the project highlighted via the Nene Park social media channels using the hashtag #YourCommunityGreenspace. You can also follow the project on Twitter @YourCommunityGS.

Get involved and tell us what you think!

If you are interested in finding out more about the project and would like to be involved, contact Hannah Keeley at [email protected]