Most asked: Laura Warren, Events & Engagement officer
August 3, 2018
Answers to questions about a particular area of work in the National Park – some sent in by you and others that we get asked all the time.
Answering this month is: Laura Warren, Events and Engagement Officer for the South Downs National Park.
Will you come to our event? Why didn’t you come to my event?
We get asked to attend hundreds of events across the National Park every summer, from tiny village fetes to huge festivals and I wish we could go to every one of them. With a small team of staff we have to look carefully every event and make sure we select the ones which will allow us to talk to the widest variety of people.
How many events does the National Park go to every year?
We go to about 60 events every year, including our own. It’s tricky to know the exact number of people we reach but I estimate it’s more than 10,000 a year.
How do you decide which events you go to?
We have an events strategy and during the winter our events group (made up of rangers, educators, volunteers, Members and other staff) will meet up to decide which groups of people will be our priority for the coming year, what messages we want to share with them and what kit we’ll use to achieve this. For example evidence shows that there are groups of people who are less likely know that the National Park exists and others who, even if they did, wouldn’t feel like it’s a place for them.
This year we’ve been trying to reach out to some of these groups which has taken us to some new places such as the Big Church Day out at Wiston and Crawley town centre. We’ll also be attending Boomtown for the second year in a row – well out of my comfort zone but a great place for us speak to hard-to-reach Millennials about why the National Park is important.
How do you decide what kit to take? Why do you have so many family activities?
I’m quite proud of our reputation for bringing engaging and innovative activities along to events. I’m lucky to work with some very creative people – for example our River-opoly giant board game shares stories and issues on biodiversity, invasive species and habitat improvement using cuddly water voles knitted by one of our rangers’ mum.
We’ll always try to tailor the kit to the event so for example when we go to school STEM (science, technology, engineering & mathematics) events we’ll take along astronomy activities ranging from telescopes to our dark night sky giant jigsaw. For our Wild Chalk event in Brighton this year we introduced a giant colouring wall featuring flowers and insects you find on chalk downland.
The main thing is to start a conversation. It’s important to get young people interested in nature and being outdoors from a young age – both for their wellbeing and the future of the National Park. Whilst the kids are playing we also have great conversations with their parents which may vary from planning or access issues to just getting out and enjoying the South Downs.