ROOTED
Since 2021, Sara has led Blagdon Hill’s (Somerset)community habitat restoration project called ‘Greener & Wilder Blagdon Hill’.
Thanks to funding from The Somerset Community Foundation, her local parish council and voluntary donations, she has been able to organise ‘ROOTED’, a programme of community wildflower and wildlife identification sessions, accompanied by community painting workshops.
The events have been immensely valuable in terms of building social cohesion and greater awareness of nature and the environment. There is a social enterprise dimension to ‘ROOTED’, creating greetings cards and tea towels from participants paintings, which are sold to raise funds for further community activity.
Community ‘ROOTED’ events, include exploring the wildlife in and around the pond, the mammals in the hedges and wildlife areas, pollinators and bat surveying, all followed by art workshops, which are highly valued by participants, especially those with substantial caring responsibilities and limited mobility. In 2025, the village pub offered provide the venue for the painting workshops and a pop-up community art exhibition to share the data monitoring, celebrate the community creative outcomes and provide an opportunity for further community consultation.
The exhibitions in 2024 & 2025 have inspire further creative and environmental community-led activity across more Somerset and Blackdown Hills communities. Sara has shared ‘ROOTED’ activity at Somerset Wildlife Trust’s ‘Wilder Communities’ conference in 2023 & 2024. Taunton Deane County Council has consulted with Sara about strategies for developing this type of initiative in other communities.
‘ROOTED’ activity and outcomes are promoted, and shared through a community Facebook Group, which also forms the main resource for creating ecological monitoring and community art case-studies.
