Brit Valley Project

Engaging farmers and landowners to take action for nature

Engaging farmers and landowners to take action for nature

To address the dual crises of biodiversity loss and climate change facing our planet, governments across the globe have agreed that at least 30% of land, fresh water and oceans must be protected by 2030. In the UK, local nature recovery strategies are working to restore nature and habitats on a landscape scale, to deliver public goods such as nature, clean air and climate resilience. To be successful, these ambitious plans require farmers, landowners and other stakeholders to collaborate and consider new ways of land management. 

Here’s one example of how we’ve helped facilitate such engagement…

Services:

Communications strategy Message Development

Sectors:

Landscape recovery

Areas of focus:

  • Communication strategy development
  • Stakeholder analysis
  • Message development

Brit Valley Project

The Brit Valley Project is a Landscape Recovery project aiming to deliver transformative change for nature around the River Brit and its tributaries in West Dorset. With over 50 farmer and landowners registering their interest, and funding from DEFRA to develop the project ready for implementation, the project team wanted to support to create a communications strategy to help them navigate who they should be communicating with, and when, to ensure the project’s success.

Objectives

  • Identify the key stakeholders to communicate with who are most influential to the project’s success 
  • Produce a consistent set of messages that resonates with those audiences
  • Create a two-year communications strategy that supports the project’s objectives with the resources available
  • Build trust in and ultimately secure commitment to the project from farmers and landowners

Our approach

  • Workshop facilitation with the Brit Valley team and landowners to understand the challenges and opportunities the team were experiencing, and to identify all the stakeholders that would have an interest in the project. 
  • Subsequent communications plan setting out objectives, primary audiences, messages and activities
  • Guidance to the design team into the content and technical requirements of the project’s branding 
  • Timeline of communications activity for the project team to deliver

The results

Our insight gave the team clarity into the challenges they faced when engaging with farmers and landowners, and confidence in their messaging when talking about the project. The strategy document provided direction on where to focus time and energy, in order to meet its short-term objectives. Since the strategy was created, more land has now been entered into the project and the Brit Valley Project promises to be a flagship example of multi-landowner collaboration for nature restoration.

“

The team from Twig has given us the framework and confidence to engage effectively with our stakeholders. Their background in farming and land management, alongside their expertise in comms, means that their support is well targeted and highly appropriate.

Dr Sam Rose , Director - Brit Valley Project

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