Education, Access and Recreation

Everyone’s Evenlode

The river is an incredible place for all! The education, access and recreation element of the partnership is being delivered by the Everyone’s Evenlode team from Cotswolds National Landscape. They are enabling children, young people and members of the community to access, explore and enjoy their local river and its surroundings.

River Schools

The rivers in the Evenlode catchment provide a unique, diverse and accessible outdoor classroom for teaching a range of curriculum subjects to all Key Stages, especially geography and science. There are many locations on the River Evenlode accessible by public footpath for Primary Schools to visit the rivers to learn about geographical features in their local area. Many of our school education sessions are held at Combe Mill, which is an ideal environment for students to learn about rivers, and the surrounding floodplain meadow and woodlands that connect this rich habitat.

We started delivering to schools in 2022. In three years, approximately 3,000 children and young people have taken part in our outdoor education sessions and river-based projects!

If you’d like to find out more about what we offer schools, please email evenlode@cotswolds-nl.org.uk

Generating change through outreach

Getting people into nature is vital to healing ecosystems. When we immerse ourselves and become intimate with nature, we will be motivated to protect it. It is with this in mind that we have created a diverse and dynamic outreach programme including online resources, in person events, and an online webinar series to educate, inspire, and empower people towards positive change for our rivers.

Access and inclusion for all!

The Everyone’s Evenlode team has endeavoured to be more welcoming and inclusive by creating bespoke events for less represented groups to come into the countryside to support their mental health and wellbeing. This has resulted in amazing outreach, enriched the programme, and the enhanced the wellbeing of the wider community.

Collaborating with partners like Blenheim Palace has allowed us to bring children aged 8-12 years from Black2Nature charity into the Cotswolds from inner city Bristol for a fun filled nature day event. The children learned about water quality issues, the 3Ps (Poo, Pee, Paper), willow weaving, pond dipping, campfire cooking, wild bees and ancient trees. We hope that through experiences like this we may inspire the next generation of conservation professionals.

Over the summer we organised two visits to Blenheim Palace for guests from Refugee Resource. The first event was embraced with great enthusiasm with lots of photos being taken through the nature tour and a lovely shared meal. The second day was in July, with the children enjoying splashing in the water park while another group did a guided walk with the Cotswold Wardens. Events like this really are extraordinary and great examples of how everyone benefits from being in nature.

Message in a bottle

Our ‘Message in a Bottle’ campaign encouraged people to write to the government about our rivers, past, present, and future. After two years of postcard creation, it was our honour to deliver hundreds of cards to Minister Emma Hardy, Under-Secretary for Water Flooding at the DEFRA offices in London. We paraded through the streets with children from Rushmore Primary School Eco Committee who represented the next generation and hopes of change.

‘Voices of the River’

Our ‘Voices of the River’ webinar series invites water experts and activists to present on river related issues to help the public better understand the depth of the challenges our polluted rivers face and extend a ‘call to action’ for people to support river restoration in their catchment communities.

Episodes are the first and third Tuesdays each month with upcoming episodes announced on our social media pages. Past episodes are available to watch on our YouTube channel.

View episodes

Cotswold Photography Competiton

Our recent Cotswold Photography Competition was another unique approach to encourage people out into their local environment, reflect on what they were seeing, and photograph river related scenery. We had lots of great photos submitted and our special guest judges are delighted to share the winning results!

View the winning photos