Engaging people was at the heart of the Scheme and most of its projects to celebrate the area’s heritage. A programme of general public engagement events was held from online webinars to annual landscape forums; volunteers were recruited, trained and engaged; projects delivered with local primary and secondary schools, and other training events held; art, including sound sculptures, land art, theatre and music was imaginatively used to engage a board cross-section of people.

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Project lead: Nicola Estill, Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership Delivery Team, Friends of the Lake District

Engaging people was one of our four key objectives, so it was integral to all that we did. There was a focus on working with volunteers, schools and through the arts, but there was also a more general programme of activity open to anyone who wanted to be involved.

We held an annual landscape forum at three village locations (Orton, Ravenstonedale and Maulds Meaburn) and one online; a programme of heritage and specialist guided walks; and a series of 25 webinars, available to view as recordings too and watched by more than 4,000 people. All gave people the chance to learn more about the projects and the area’s heritage and to meet each other. The programme culminated in a major celebration event at Shap Wells in September 2023, attracting more than 100 people with talks, walks and other activities.

Recordings of our webinars can be found here:

Westmorland Dales Heritage Talks

Volunteering was critical to the delivery of many of our projects and over 1,750 volunteer days were contributed as part of the Scheme. Volunteers were particularly engaged in most of the cultural heritage projects, from assisting with the first excavation of the sow kiln at Pendragon Castle to the survey of small-scale heritage features in the villages. Training was provided to assist both project delivery and skill development, and a series of volunteer get-togethers were held to celebrate and share their achievements. As many of these projects were outside, they were a very safe way of re-engaging people after the worst of COVID-19.

Schools were a focus of much of our engagement activity, with nearly 2,600 pupil engagement sessions held. This included events in the school and school grounds, such as the land art projects in the autumn of 2020, and events outside of schools, from involvement with the Wilding Theatre at Orton to geology trips to Knott. Young people were also engaged through the John Muir Award with Kirkby Stephen Scouts and through summer fun days at Jubilee Park. There were learning opportunities for adults, too, from wool spinning and weaving to hedge-laying and drystone walling. 733 participants gained from these training sessions.

Thanks to COVID-19 and other challenges, the arts engagement programme was delivered very differently from what we had envisaged. It started in the development phase with our dark skies project with schools and continued through the Scheme with projects such as the Brass, Drums, and Trains project, culminating with the Singing Drumlin event in October 2023 at Bowber Head, which attracted over 450 people.

Links to films produced linking arts and schools can be found here:

A Soundtrack for the Steam Age

Dark Skies Winter Celebration

Sound Explorer Project

Land Art

Kirkby Stephen Grammar School Voices