The essence of the project was to engage more people in learning about the River Eden catchment, to facilitate their participation in its conservation and to encourage people to care about its future.
Cherish Eden was a £2.5 million National Lottery Heritage Lottery Fund project delivered over five years between 2013 and 2018. The essence of the project was to engage more people in learning about the River Eden catchment, to facilitate their participation in its conservation, and to encourage people to care about its future. It has achieved this by offering a varied programme of events and activities, education for schools and families, volunteering opportunities and skills training, and by nurturing community engagement.
The thread running through all of the Cherish Eden activities was that people learnt about the river environment and heritage in a way that encouraged more personal responsibility for its future.
Over four years, 12 young people heeded the call to become Eden Apprentices, learning valuable conservation management, life and employment skills as well as gaining a recognised qualification that looks good on their CV.
Eden Rivers Wonder World exhibition and the related activities that led to it formed a significant part of the final year of the Cherish Eden project, working in partnership with Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery. It was the culmination of the project and reached a large audience of over 14,000 adults and children.
The Eden Rivers Wonder World Exhibition was displayed at Tullie House over the summer of 2018 and there was a programme of related drop-in activities and events for families before and during the exhibition period. Schools and youth groups were engaged in activities leading up to and during the exhibition and three schools, in particular, helped to create the Litter Monster.
In the immediate aftermath of Storm Desmond in December 2015, our apprentices worked tirelessly to help communities recover (cleaning up, helping flooded householders clear their houses, removing fallen trees and more). The rest of the Cherish Eden team wanted to do their bit to help with the recovery and hatched a plan to commission artists to work alongside them with flooded communities in Appleby and Carlisle on ambitious creative projects that would help participants to process and start to recover from their ordeal.
Two hugely popular pieces came out of that work: Inside Out felt trail and Marble Run: River.
The Inside Out felt trail was created at seven artist-led workshops held in Appleby in 2016 with 400 people engaged to create 8 felt sculptures to make ‘Inside Out’. A pop-up river sculpture trail open to the public.
Marble Run: River was a beautiful and playful kinetic sculpture created by artists Charlie Whinney and Nick Greenall in 2016 in collaboration with youth groups in Carlisle as a response to Storm Desmond.
Young people were encouraged to dust off their camera (phones), learn some photography skills and capture the Eden in all its glory. Over the five years, we worked with young people from Carlisle Youth Zone, Nacro, Shap Youth Club and scores of Brownies, Guides, Cubs and Scouts from all over the catchment.
A highlight was Project Rainbow, created by 150 young people for the 'Eden Rivers Wonder World' exhibition, it revealed Eden’s wildflowers in all the colours of the rainbow.
Schools were at the heart of Cherish Eden and our learning programmes provided children with plenty of hands-on learning about rivers and inspiring, we hope, a life-long love of rivers.
Employing less traditional methods to get the healthy rivers message across – including film making, Litter Monster creating, book illustrating, and storytelling - along with a splash of social action and river dipping in their local river, students learnt about Eden’s native species as well as ticking off elements of the geography, numeracy and literacy parts of the curriculum.
The volunteering programme achieved its aims of improving river conservation skills and bringing wider benefits, including improving employability skills and health and wellbeing.
Cherish Eden maintained a steady number of over 60 regular volunteers working on a range of different activities.
Our volunteering programme is still going strong – if you’ve got some time on your hands, why not sign up today!
Mary joined us on the Access to Eden project via its ‘Skills for a greener future’ programme; helping young people take their first steps into an environmental career.
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In this BLOG, we follow the progress with our Volunteer and Community Outreach Coordinator, volunteers and community groups embarking on this adventure with us.
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We have completed a major river restoration and natural flood management (NFM) partnership project at Cumbria Wildlife Trust’s Bowber Head Farm Nature Reserve.
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