It would be easy, when running a community project largely based outdoors, to feel downhearted when all outdoor activities are postponed. However - team Smithills (staff and volunteers) are a determined bunch! Over the last week, we have been looking at ways to keep our volunteers...
Hello all Welcome Welcome to John Shannon, Darran Hamilton and Diane Berg Oliveira! Hope you enjoy your time volunteering with us. Smithills Volunteer Awards At the SSG meeting we had our very first volunteer awards. We had asked you all to come up with nominations for the awards, and...
Hello all Hope you have had a good week. Updates since last week… Volunteer hours Total hours for the year so far is 4766.75. If you’re interested in each group here’s the totals: Woodland Working Group (task days etc) 1068.25 hours Events Volunteering 458.75 History Group 261.75 Practical Group Leaders 79 Education Volunteering ...
At the centre of the National Lottery Heritage Funded project at Smithills Estate is community work. How do we engage Bolton's communities with the site? Why are some communities not engaging with the site? And how do we open up the wellbeing value of our...
Hello all A brief update this week… Welcome Welcome to Jo Rayner (Woodland Working Group / Events Volunteer) and to Louise Coulman (Woodland Working Group)! Tree planting Thanks to everyone from Smithills who has volunteered to help out with the tree planting weeks! Lantern Parade Thanks to all the volunteers who helped the...
Hello all Staff news As some of you will already know, Andy, our Estate Ranger ,will be leaving us mid-November to move to the Lake District. We will be really sad to see Andy go, he has made a huge contribution to the project in his time...
Hello all A slightly lengthier update – lots of exciting stuff coming up! Tree planting time! First of all… next month is tree planting time! It seems not that long ago that we were all out in the hail planting trees at Walker Fold. We planted over 6000...
Hello all Volunteer hours We have just collated volunteer hours data to the end of July, and the Smithills volunteer team have given a whopping 3353 hours of time to the project over that period! This is really amazing and reflects the diverse activity volunteers are doing...
Hello all Welcome To our newest volunteer… Russ Hedley!!!! (No escape for Russ). Task day The next task day is on Sunday (18th), 9.30am to 12.30pm, and it will be plug planting of wildflowers near to Sugar Loaf. This is in partnership with Lancashire Wildlife Trust, who have supplied...
Hello all Welcome To Siobhan Fearon, who joins the Wildlife Group. Sport on the Square Alex, Pete and Pam braved the hottest day of the year (34.5 degrees!) stood under a gazebo on the Town Hall Square, where they spoke to visitors about the various wellbeing activities we have...