Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trust

Developing an audience focus and winning HLF support

The Trust manages over 40 nature reserves, with a variety of levels of public access. They had a round one pass from HLF for a project to improve access and facilities at five of their reserves. The Trust was relatively new to engaging with visitors and so we used the audience development plan process to help them build their skills in this area. As a result they realised that they wanted reserve visitors to become a much bigger focus for the whole organisation and to ensure that their engagement staff, who were on temporary, project-funded contracts, had more opportunities to share their knowledge and experience.

We were given a further commission to write a training plan for the whole organisation and kicked it off with an inspiring session for staff, to get them thinking about things from the visitors’ perspective. The work also involved visitor and non-visitor research, consultation with volunteers and substantial help in drafting the HLF Activity Plan. The Trust was successful in winning support from HLF and are now implementing the project.

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What we did -

Visitor Experience , Workshops & Training , Heritage Fund Projects

Sector -

Outdoor and nature reserves

Tags -

Activity Plan; activity planning; audience development; conservation; HLF; nature reserves; research; training; volunteers, organisational change;