Naturehood works best when communities work together to create thriving habitats for wildlife. A small, concentrated area of wildlife-friendly space has much more impact than separate spaces split across a community. Getting your neighbours, your street and your whole neighbourhood to act together is the best way to support your local wildlife by:
- creating richer and better-connected habitats for wildlife, transforming landscapes one space at a time by taking action for wildlife
- helping people to connect with their communities and nature, making new friends and helping people access the wellbeing benefits of engaging with nature
- gathering information about the biodiversity of private spaces, to fuel Naturehood’s research into this underexplored area of the UK’s environment.
Manage
your group
Reach out to
your community
Naturehood
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Thank you for becoming a Naturehood Leader. If you would like to look back on the Naturehood leaders agreement, or download it to share with someone in your group, please find the latest version of this document here.
Naturehood quick guides
Whether you are bringing Naturehood to an existing group or starting a new one, there are a few important factors to consider. Here are our quick guides to each:
- Diversity and inclusion – working to make your group as accessible as possible
- Health and safety – looking out for the safety of the participants of your group or event
- Safeguarding – ensuring the wellbeing of children and vulnerable people online and at events
Templates and downloads
We also have an ever-growing set of templates and resources. Please let us know if you would like to request another guide by dropping a message in the Leaders Forum.
Naturehood is all about collective action and getting neighbours to work together to create thriving habitats for wildlife. One of the most important actions you can take is reaching out to your community and encouraging others to take action for wildlife.
Get online
Social media can be a huge help in getting people connected, making plans and spreading the word about your Naturehood. Not every group has to start with an online presence, but having one makes it easier to share and easier to grow your group numbers. To get started, check out this quick guide. If you don’t fancy social media sites, you could set up a Naturehood WhatsApp group instead.
Speak up!
When we speak to people about Naturehood, we describe it as a community wildlife project. It connects people with local nature, helps support them to take meaningful action for wildlife and contributes to research using citizen science.
Some of the best people to talk to about your Naturehood group are family, friends and neighbours as well as local councillors, the greenspace managers of your local authority and other existing groups that support wildlife, such as ‘Friends of..’ groups for local nature parks.
Local media
Local newspapers, newsletters, community noticeboards and local radio are fantastic ways to spread the word and reach more people in your community. Local news outlets are often keen on including stories about initiatives that have a practical element and can involve the whole community.
Getting into newsletters, newspapers and on local radio can be easier than you might think! Here’s a quick guide to the process:
- Firstly, find out if there is a local newsletter, newspaper or radio station, either printed, broadcast or digital. Track down their contact details. These will probably be listed online as well as in the print version of papers.
- Let them know about Naturehood! Focus on the local aspect: what are people doing in your area? It’s also a great opportunity to set out what you want to achieve as a group. This could be specific, such as establishing wildlife flower meadows in every garden in your village, or more general, such as getting people talking about how spaces can be managed to support wildlife.
- For newspapers and letters, ask them the process for submitting content and when their deadline is for the next issue. For radio try and secure a slot in their schedule.
- Make sure you ask questions to help you prepare like: What type of written style and content would they recommend, a blog, article, personal profile or practical tips? Is there any specific preparation the recommend, or topics you should try and include?
- Within your interview or article make sure you always include contact information for your group and either a link for the Naturehood Facebook page or website.
Make sure you tell all your networks online and offline to share the news and get as many people to tune in as possible! And tell us about your slot too by sharing it on the Leaders Forum.
Using the Naturehood logos, and mentioning your group is supported by our national project can help to highlight that your work is led by scientific evidence and is part of a wider effort to support communities and reverse wildlife decline.
Describing Naturehood
When you talk about Naturehood here are a few ways to help describe what we do and why:
Naturehood is a community project from Earthwatch Europe, working to reverse wildlife decline.
Naturehood empowers us to take positive action and connect with our community – we can make the biggest difference to wildlife when we work together.
Naturehood provides step-by-step guides, information and inspiration to help us make spaces of any size wildlife friendly.
We can be part of a UK-wide wildlife monitoring and conservation project by keeping Naturehood up to date with the changes we make in our spaces.
In the UK, our private outdoor spaces make up an area nearly four times the size of all our national nature reserves combined. By following Naturehood’s evidence-based recommendations to provide food, water and shelter for wildlife we can quickly create valuable habitats for a whole range of local species.
Logos, colours and resources
These are the different logos, colours and resources that we use. Please do use them as would help support your work. You can also find our ‘This week for wildlife…’ posts on Facebook.
Creating your own wildlife film is a fun way to help raise awareness for Naturehood and the work you are doing.
A video grabs people’s attention more than text and images. So this can be a wonderful way to share things within your group. A good clip may also be shared more widely, by the people in your group, exposing more people to your group and its work. For some great ideas of topics and formats check out the Naturehood YouTube channel and Facebook videos.
Creating a great video
When you do any filming try and think about things like: What’s in shot? Where the light is coming from? What you want to capture? And don’t be afraid to test these out beforehand.
Clips of cute animals are always a popular choice! Especially if there is a story to go alongside it, like the first bee of the year, the return of greenfinches after an absence or a cheeky hedgehog that you’ve named.
You don’t have to focus on animals though! Some of the most engaging videos are about human connection – that means you sharing your stories and interests. If you’re going for a clip like this then it’s a good to speak a bit slower than normal and with more volume, just please no swearing!
Please be aware that under the Data Protection Act written consent from the parent/guardian or carer for children and young people under the age of 18 must be sought before taking photographs or video. Consideration should be given to the appropriateness of clothing and posture. Images that could be used inappropriately should not be taken or shared. You should also avoid including identifiable data such as names, ages or addresses. Finally, for everyone involved in your video please consider how it represents them and if it will reflect on them positively.