Blue spaces, bright futures
Wild beach training for Blue Mentors with Sussex Wildlife Trust
Our course is about inviting people to look at the marine environment in a new way and by doing so they connect with it, start to understand it and love it, and ultimately want to protect it.Mike Murphy, Wilder Learning Officer, Sussex Wildlife Trust
Photography: Kai Hilton
Our ground-breaking Blue Influencers Scheme, which engages young people in their blue spaces – coasts, rivers, and estuaries – has been lent a helping hand by Sussex Wildlife Trust.
Ten ‘Blue Mentors’, who help deliver The Blue Influencers Scheme, spent two days on the Wildlife Trust’s wild beach training course at Eastbourne, learning skills which they can then pass on to young people engaging in youth social action projects.
Mike Murphy and Natasha Sharma, Wilder Learning Officers with Sussex Wildlife Trust, said the Blue Mentors’ training in Eastbourne was well-received, with delegates excited to take what they had learnt back to their own organisations.
We came at this from two angles - how do you engage young people in an environment that they are not familiar with and maybe not comfortable in, and how do we introduce new people to a coastal environment that, to begin with, might not look that interesting.
Activities included collecting and curating items on the beach, learning about and understanding tides, and ending each day with a litter pick, all of which helped participants become more ocean connected.
Natasha said: “The fact that they will be able to translate their experience to their blue space – in the case of rivers, they might include mudlarking – was fantastic for us.”
This course was co-created by Sussex Wildlife Trust and Lancashire Wildlife Trust to make wild beach training accessible to Blue Mentors from the North and South of the country. In September, Blue Mentors based in the north of England will join in wild beach training, run by Lancashire Wildlife Trust.
Kate, The Ernest Cook Trust’s interim project officer for The Blue Influencer Scheme, added:
I found the training immensely powerful in forging connections amongst the group as well as with the coastal environment. Mike and Natasha were engaging and inspiring and since the training, I have already witnessed Blue Mentors sharing and adapting specific elements of what they learned to support fellow Blue Mentors (who are yet to do the training) in their roles.
The £2.25 million Blue Influencers Scheme is being co-funded by The Ernest Cook Trust and the #iwill Fund, and is running for three years. Its ambition is to engage more than 4,000 young people as ‘Blue Influencers’, as well as over 15,000 community volunteers across England.
The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to £66 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities. The Ernest Cook Trust is acting as a match funder and awarding grants on behalf of the #iwill Fund.
Find out more about our Blue Influencers Scheme here:
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