Nextdoor Nature – Connect, Share, Celebrate.

30th August 2023

Jenny Luddington, Community Organising Assistant and Jade Williams, Community Organising Officer share their experiences organising the Connect, Share, Celebrate event in Dover.

Nextdoor Nature is a project in Dover that aims to empower communities to take action for nature where they live and work. The project brings communities together and uses community organising to support people to develop the skills they need to act as environmental champions in their local areas.

Find out more about Nextdoor Nature

What is Community Organising?

Community organising is a new approach for Kent Wildlife Trust and involves bringing people together who are experiencing similar issues or injustices and empowering them to act against these and create a meaningful difference. Community organisers will listen and connect people together who can work together to resulting in louder collective voice that is more likely to be heard. By introducing this way of working, we hope to see a domino effect of people taking action for nature in their local area long-term.

Watch a video from Louisa, the Centre Manager for Riverside Community Centre, talking about Nextdoor Nature and the impacts of community organising.

Tim Horton

Purpose of Connect, Share, Celebrate

The Connect, Share, Celebrate event in July 2023 was an exciting event held with the aim of connecting local communities and organisations together, to share their experiences and celebrate their progress. The invitees were all people who we had worked with on the project in some capacity. The idea was to help to build on the skills, confidence and potential of community groups by seeing other projects as motivation and building new connections with useful contacts.

The day

The event was held at Riverside Community Centre, the site of one of our community garden projects. You can see not only the community garden at the centre, but also the community garden at Dover Technical College, another Nextdoor Nature project. Refreshments were available on the day, as well as a free minibus running to and from Dover Castle to visit the red-billed chough aviary located there. We also premiered a video of some of the intergenerational work done between Riverside Community Centre, Dover Technical College and Music 4 Wellbeing.

Listening Circles

The aim of the event was to connect people and one of the activities that we did to achieve this was to have listening circles. We asked people what their connection to Dover was did they live or work here and had they heard of Nextdoor Nature. Then we asked people to share their positive experiences of Dover. Finally, we asked if they experienced any challenges in Dover and if they had any ideas for making positive changes.

It was heart-warming to hear so much positive feedback from Dover. There was a consensus that Dover has a negative reputation due to high levels of negative media around immigration and traffic issues around the Port of Dover. People commented on how good it was to see individuals and community groups coming together to collaborate.

Some of the issues raised in the listening circles were for more opportunities for young people and for occasions for communities to come together with creative solutions to solve local issues.

The red-billed chough at Dover Castle

The reintroduction of the red-billed chough happening in Dover in Summer 2023 is a great way to get people local to Dover excited about taking action for nature. The red-billed chough has a lot of history in Kent, from beliefs about links to the murder of Sir Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral and featuring on the Canterbury coat of arms which you can see below.

As a result, we felt it important to offer the opportunity to visit the display aviary containing two red-billed choughs at Dover castle free of charge at the Connect, Share, Celebrate event. Not only has the community mentioned barriers to accessing Dover Castle such as cost of entry and transport, but we had consistently heard about community members never visiting the castle before despite living in Dover for a number of years – particularly those from the migrant community.

A volunteer who regularly helps out at the aviary was able to talk to the community about the bird and the benefit of the project to Dover and Kent as a whole. This helped to spread the knowledge about the reintroduction, and we hoped to motivate the community to remain enthusiastic about helping local wildlife, such as this iconic bird.

Our partnerships

After our listening circles and tours to the visit the education aviary at Dover Castle we returned to Riverside for refreshments and to hear from some of the partner organisations in Dover. Joss from Transition Dover talked about the progress they have made making Dover a Transition Town. Transition Dover formed in November 2015 and have worked tirelessly to make Dover greener and more sustainable including initiatives such as community clean up days and their award-winning Repair Café.

Gini from Wild With Wheels a local disability organisation that offers safe and supported access to nature for adults and children with disabilities and impairments facilitating walks across Kent’s Heritage Coast between Dover, Capel Le Ferne, and Folkestone. Gini explained that they are always looking for other suitable accessible routes within the Kent Downs Area Of Natural Beauty for higher needs.

Reflections and learnings

As part of assessing the value of our work within the community, we keep a reflective log of all work completed. This includes reflecting on what went well, and what we could do to improve in the future. This enables us to dynamically assess our approach as community organisers and continue to improve.

What went well

The venue was donated from Riverside Community Centre for free as thank you for all the work we have done, and we’re considered part of the Riverside “family”. Louisa and the Riverside Centre staff provided the catering and this was much more cost effective than using external catering company. Louisa and her team did all the catering and service on the day allowing our community organisers to focus on facilitating the listening exercises and tours.
This event showed exemplary collaborative working from multiple organisations.
The feedback and conversations on the day were really good and the groups shared lots of positives about Dover and were glad to see so much connectivity and collaboration.
We were able to collaborate with the Kent Wildlife Trust Content Creator Tim, who produced some amazing videos to showcase some of the work with Riverside Centre and Dover Technical College.
We were able to form new connections on the day, as well as connecting those we have worked with and celebrating their achievements.

What could we improve

Organising the event had a few challenges due to health issues and often only one of the community organisers was available at any one time due to surgical and sick leave during this quarter, but thankfully we had very good notes to guide each other.
We had some difficulties with the audio/visual equipment so we changed the running order of the day. In the future, we could arrange a technical rehearsal to avoid any difficulties on the day of future events.
It would be great to get more community facilitators for events to assist with listening exercises, particularly for larger groups.
We had wheelchair users on the day who couldn’t access the minibus that we had provided. The community organisers felt that they’d fallen short of the target for inclusion and tried to arrange alternative taxi, but no accessible taxis were available. One of the wheelchair users was able to access the castle in a friend's car and borrow a scooter from Dover Castle. We have another castle tour planned with Wild With Wheels in September 2023, but would like to ensure that accessible transport is included in future events as we are working more with people with disabilities.

What people said about the event

It was amazing to bring together so many of the people that we have worked with over the past year. We had representatives from Kent Wildlife Trust, Wildwood, Riverside, Dover Big Local, Dover Outreach, Wild with Wheels, Transition Dover, English Heritage, Samphire, White Cliffs Countryside Partnership, Sandwich Bay Observatory Group and individuals from the Dover community.

Jenny Luddington, Community Organising Assistant - Kent Wildlife Trust

This event was a great to showcase all the fantastic work happening in Dover. It was a great way for people to see the impact of using the community organising approach and was a great opportunity to see such a range of people from different backgrounds and organisations coming together!

Jade Williams, Community Organising Officer – Kent Wildlife Trust

The Connect Share Celebrate event in July in Dover was brilliant! It was a fab opportunity to hear about, learn from others, and showcase the impact of community organising. By working with people and being led by the communities we work with, together we can build a groundswell of support for nature.

Elysia Barker Davies, Wilder Engagement Manager – Kent Wildlife Trust

End of the week shout out to the amazing Nextdoor Nature team working in Dover. I had the privilege today of attending their Connect.Share.Celebrate event, engagingly run by Jenny (thanks for indulging my old-time memories of working in Dover). And a couple of weeks ago Jade came over to run a chough session with my Cubs/Beavers up on the cliff top, they haven't stopped talking about it since. Listening to the respect for the team was a great end to the week. Thank you!

Paul Hadaway, Director of Conservation & Engagement – Kent Wildlife Trust

Other attendees:

This provided me extra connection within the community. Community is so important.

Never linked with KWT before but enjoyed community events, walks at Drogon's wood and seeing the choughs today. This helped me get back into nature after long illness, finding out what opportunities were available to me.

It is important that we all get involved in. Protecting and encouragement of enjoyment of local natural environment.