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Ball Mill Quarry Activity planning and interpretation consultancy project Wildgoose Rural Training are looking for a consultant or small team of consultants to join the development phase team and undertake the planning and consultation to create a vibrant and deliverable activity plan and a range of interpretative proposals as part of our £845K stage 2 bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund. This is for an unusual venture – a new publicly accessible wetland nature reserve, new permaculture small holding, and visitor centre, as well as supporting regular users of the extended care farm with both learning and mobility disabilities. Two other care farming organisations operate nearby and a big community of migrant agricultural workers live within 500m. Grimley Primary School is a few hundred meters away too and the newly acquired Lakeside campus of the University of Worcester and all within 6 miles of the centre of the City of Worcester on a bus route. However, having said that, WGRT is not currently a visitor attraction and has only been open once a year to the public on its annual open day – an event aimed mainly at the community that supports the users of the service. Although as part of the development phase, we have now started to gather feedback and evaluative information, this has not been collected routinely in the past. The site is on the glacial terraces of the River Severn, it was settled in the Bronze Age, farmed until the twentieth century before the sand and gravel was extracted. Following partial re-instatement of the land surface, we have 6 acres of formally intensively farmed land for the small holding and 32 acres of habitat in what were the bunded settling areas for water used to wash and grade the sand and gravel. This is now a mixture of open water, reed bed and scrubby woodland. The River Severn is a few hundred meters to the east and so the site lies on an important migratory bird route and has had teams of volunteer bird ringers operating here for about 25 years. The Grimley Brook forms the southern boundary flowing through a patch of remnant ancient woodland. This site is currently not accessible to the public and has no public profile, but it has huge potential – geology, ecology, migrating birds, ice age fossils, bronze age history, industrial archaeology, peace and quiet, therapeutic horticulture, care faming, habitat restoration and biodiversity enhancement. We already engage with a whole range of hard to reach audience groups and have others very close by. The history , biodiversity and use of the site will need to be communicated through a range of interpretation methods, outside in the wetland as well as indoors. The visitor experience is not going to be dependent on high tech interpretative solutions (the client has no IT support on site) but interactivity is key and will need to be robust and accessible to a very wide range of abilities. But we do have imaginative people who love to create things on site. Infrastructure wise, we have ideas for board walks and paths around the reserve, a high level hide that is wheelchair and pushchair accessible, lower level hides, a visitor centre and learning spaces, maybe a bronze age farmstead and a sensory garden and to be able to engage with the development of a permaculture small holding from bare earth to productive abundance. We need the consultants to consult upon, develop and test sustainable activities and interpretative approaches that feed into an Activity Plan and an Interpretation Plan in line with HLF guidance. The development work also needs to include WGRT staff and students so that the process is part of the development journey for the organisation too. We would expect the allocated budget to cover some project team visits to other comparable sites and the build and testing of trial interpretation approaches and techniques. We will need the costs for the interpretation fully costed up and incorporated within the building design but we will be tendering for the build and installation of this element once the stage 2 bid is submitted. We are also advertising for a Development Officer role for the organisation. This person will need to work closely with the consultants, but combining the roles with this consultancy may also provide an opportunity to create a full time role with WGRT. The time scale to get the work done is tight – we want to appoint in early August for an immediate start. Our Ecology consultants will be on site until the end of September and can offer some engagement opportunities (we have a bat survey on Wed 2nd Aug). The mid term review with our HLF monitor and case officer will probably be on 21st November and submission of the completed stage 2 bid will be by the end of February 2018. The project team currently meet on Tuesday mornings in Worcester, next meeting is 25th August. Please see full brief for further information. Kate Andrew, the Project Manager is happy to have an email conversation or chat with interested people. [log in to unmask] 07811 817924 An expression of interest with relevant experience and a cost proposal (including daily rates of key staff and any additional costs) needs to be submitted by close of play on Thursday 3rd August. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + GEM list: Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask] For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=GEM + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +