Department: Communications and Engagement
Reporting to: VisitWoods Project Manager
Salary: £19,000-£24,000
Location: Natural England Offices, Peterborough. Flexibility to work partly from home may be possible
Contract: Fixed term: Autumn 2010 - Spring 2012 (18 month contract)
Hours: 8.30am-5pm. Full-time. Some weekend and evening working may be required, and travel and some overnight stays are to be expected
Closing Date: Sunday 12 September 2010
Interview Date: Thursday 30 September 2010, Woodland Trust Offices (Grantham)
Job purpose
To promote health walks in woodland in order to achieve a wider appreciation of trees, woods and forests.
Aim
To work with Natural England’s Walking for Health team to increase the number of people (especially families & children, older people and people with disabilities) walking in woodland by developing Walking for Health walks in woodland locations and promoting new and existing woodland walks.
Job tasks and responsibilities
- Understand both the Woodland Trust’s VisitWoods project and Natural England’s Walking for Health programme and identify how to work in achieving mutual benefit (defined as more (new and existing) Walking for Health walkers, walking in woodland)
- To raise awareness of VisitWoods and trees and woods amongst Walking for Health participants, resulting in a measurable change in awareness and woodland visits.
- Develop and promote a new range of opportunities for Walking for Health in woodland under the banner of a ‘Year of Woodland Walks’ (February 2011 – February 2012)
- Lead the development and delivery of the ‘Year of Woodland Walks’ as a high profile component within both the VisitWoods communications campaign and within the Walking for Health communications programme, working closely with the VisitWoods Project Manager, the Woodland Trust Communications Team and the Walking for Health Communications Team.
- To understand the needs and motivations of the target audiences of VisitWoods and how they fit within the existing Walking for Health programme and where, if necessary, any adjustments need to be implemented.
- Use baseline data from the Walking for Health database to target most appropriate locations to develop new Health Walks in woodland
- Work with the existing Walking for Health programme, VisitWoods partners and Woodland Trust volunteers (including Woodland Web Guides) to develop new Health Walks in appropriate locations
- Promote best practice in developing new woodland walks to all Walking for Health regional teams
- Encourage and facilitate volunteers from existing Woodland Trust members and volunteers to be trained as walk leaders and to lead walks for Walking for Health
- To encourage all participants (whether a walk leader or walker) to record their experiences of woodland walking on the VisitWoods website.
- Liaise with the WfH Natural Progression Manager to encourage regular walkers to move on to be physically active in woodland management activities and other environmental volunteering opportunities through direct promotion of these roles.
- To regularly monitor and evaluate in order to fully understand the impact of the project activity being undertaken, as part of the VisitWoods Monitoring and Evaluation plan.
- To capture and record case stories around people’s health and the woodland environment
- In liaison with your line manager, draw up a programme of personal development which addresses targets and performance measures.
The Person
Graduate calibre with enthusiasm for outdoor learning and excellent project management skills. The ability to quickly assess an area, identify and develop opportunities and inspire a wide range of people with your enthusiasm and your creative flair.
Due to the amount of travelling which may be required for this role, it is essential that the post holder hold a valid UK driving licence and preferably has access to a car. However, in line with the policies of both the Woodland Trust and Natural England, the post-holder will be expected to use public transport as a first choice wherever practicable. Please note the post holder will be required to go through the appropriate security checking process prior to commencing the role.
Skills/experience
- Project management skills including the ability to plan, implement and monitor all aspects of a major project, including managing budgets.
- Experience of running a high profile communications campaign.
- Ability to quickly and effectively assimilate information for new areas of work and develop appropriate approaches.
- Excellent written and spoken communication skills.
- Capable of working alone, as part of a partner organisation, as part of a team and cross-departmentally within the Trust UK.
- Confident in representing the Trust and Walking for Health in a professional and positive manner, promoting our corporate objectives.
- IT literate, able to use Microsoft Office
- Self-motivation to drive projects forward and adopt a thorough, determined and pragmatic approach.
- Able to build relationships and gain commitment at all levels, both internally and externally
- Creative flair for developing practical, engaging, sustainable ideas that will inspire staff, volunteers and supporters/clients.
- Ability to work under pressure and manage demanding personal workloads with deadlines and on-going developments.
- Knowledge and experience of involving communities.
- Ability to readily identify limits of own expertise and knowledge, seeking advice, support and information from others as appropriate.
- Good understanding of trees and woods.
- Willingness to travel and occasionally work unsociable hours.
Background
The Woodland Trust (the Trust, WT) is the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity dedicated to preventing no further loss of ancient woodland, restoring and improving biodiversity, increasing native woodland cover, as well as enhancing people’s awareness and enjoyment of woods. The WT owns and manages 1,264 sites that cover over 20,000 hectares.
Walking for Health
Natural England’s Walking for Health (WfH) programme is part of its commitment to promote access to the countryside and open spaces and to encourage open air recreation. WfH aims to get more people walking regularly in their own communities, for the benefit of their health, especially those who take little or no exercise and live in areas of poor health and social exclusion.
WfH is the largest programme in the UK promoting physical activity to sedentary people in urban and rural areas. Launched in 2000, it is already helping over 30,000 regular walkers on over 580 walk schemes in their local natural environment. A new partnership between Natural England and the Department of Health will enable 130,000 people to walk regularly to benefit their health. For more information visit www.wfh.naturalengland.org.uk
The VisitWoods project
A Woodland Trust partnership project, with the Forestry Commission and other partners, promoting woodland for health, recreation and enjoyment, in particular aimed at children and young people, older people and the disabled, backed up by the first comprehensive online resource of open* woodland in the UK (*woods open to public visitors).Visit Woods is funded through Natural England’s Access to Nature Programme, part of the Big Lottery Fund Changing Spaces Programme.
We want more people to visit woods, regularly!
- There are 288,000 hectares of woodland in the England that can be accessed by the public. 10 percent of the population has two hectare accessible wood within 500 metres of where they live and 55 percent of the population a 20 hectare wood within four kilometres of where they live (Woods for People 2004).
- This translates into nearly one million children in England having access to a woodland within walking distance
- The vast majority of this woodland is free (of charge); enjoying woodland requires no equipment, training or facilitation
- Woodland can accommodate multiple interests and activities for a wide-range of audiences;
- Woodland offers great potential for people to appreciate and engage with one of the richest wildlife habitats in the UK, thus promoting understanding and appreciation of the biodiversity of our wooded landscape (as outlined as a priority in the UK BAP);
- It is widely researched that access to and enjoyment of trees and woodland offer significant health benefits; (see Natural Thinking, a report by Dr William Bird, investigating the links between the natural environment, biodiversity and mental health, amongst others)
Aims of the VisitWoods project
- Overcome the key barriers of lack of information and inspiration that prevent more people visiting woodland regularly. To particularly include families with children, older people and people with disabilities.
- Launch and facilitate a sustainable communications campaign, with a number of key partners to raise the profile of the wealth of UK woodland where visitors are welcome, highlighting its potential as a great place to visit.
- Create the first comprehensive online gateway to all the woods in the UK where visitors are welcome. Give people the information they need, in one place, to enable them to exercise, enjoy nature, spend time with friends and family, relax, learn, heal, and play in woods.
- Highlight the VisitWoods website as the gateway to a woodland experience, in the communications campaign.
- Volunteer involvement in gathering and presenting information on woods to visit and in engaging new visitors, led by a large, well-trained and supported volunteer force of Woodland Ambassadors.
- Target an area of the country where pockets of social and economic deprivation exist, and the amount of accessible woodland is high, in order to try and create a sustainable communications model, resulting in increased use of woodland locally, by tailoring our communications, content and resources
- Target specific priority audiences through engaging directly with a representative organisation, looking to leave a sustainable legacy of increased awareness, confidence, inspiration and use of woodland amongst our supporter base.
- Develop key partnerships to enable meaningful involvement of those representing parts of society who traditionally have limited access to nature in the shaping of our communications and the creation of shared information resources.
- To facilitate dynamic, interactive user-generated content (UGC) as a means of creating a relevant, credible, living resource.
Partnership background
We want to involve our audience as much as possible in the shaping of VisitWoods. We are proposing two forms of partnership working in order to get meaningful information on the barriers to visiting woodland, to enable us to pilot ideas and activities, introduce a new audience to the wonders of woodland, and develop a lasting legacy, both with individuals and with more confident and informed partner organisations.
Through developing the VisitWoods partnership we have become aware of the many programmes run by the partners which have the potential to be enhanced by access to information and inspiration related to woodland. Placing an officer within a partner organisation would be a very effective way of helping them to achieve their objectives and embed new learning and approaches into their organizations. This would result in long-term skills and capacity building. It will also enable us to gain significant hands-on experience which we can use, from developing the contribution of the sector as a whole, to increasing access to woodland for this audience.
Our proposal is to have two 18 month placements of which this is one. This will allow for a full year of working taking in all the seasonal opportunities, with time at either end of the placement to research and assimilate the opportunities that woodland, and those who own and manage it, currently have for that audience, and then to draw together and disseminate the best practice and learning achieved at the end of the year. The final months of the placement would also involve sharing this knowledge with other partners involved with VisitWoods. The second partnership officer will work in a similar 18 month role, but with Action for Children.
Finally, we will be placing an Outreach Officer with the Limestone Partnership Project in East Durham to identify and address barriers that currently prevent local people, particularly children, older people and people with disabilities from using their local woods. It is expected that all three posts will work closely together.
To Apply
Email CV and covering letter to recruitment@woodlandtrust.org.uk to reach us by the closing date. For further guidance, see the Jobs section on the Woodland Trust’s website. Please assume that if you have not heard from the Woodland Trust within one month of the closing date of the advertisement that you have not been successful in your application. If you have any enquiries concerning VisitWoods, please contact Gail Graham, VisitWoods Project Manager on 08452 935652; if you have any enquiries concerning Walking for Health, please contact Daniel Kemp (Natural England) on 0300 060 0342.
VisitWoods is a partnership project, led by the Woodland Trust and funded through Natural England's Access to Nature programme, part of the Big Lottery Fund Changing Spaces Programme.
