Recipe for a Landscape Partnership Scheme
SBSA kicked off January by leading a Landscape Partnership workshop on the Hoo Peninsula. Delivered with Mike King from Resources for Change, the session helped RSPB gauge the local appetite for a potential Landscape Partnership Scheme called ‘Whose Hoo?’. With almost 40 people attending the day with varying degrees of familiarity with Heritage Lottery Fund schemes, an important task for us was to clearly explain the key ingredients for a successful Landscape Partnership – not easy given the complexity of the grant programme, something we appreciate from first hand experience!
Whilst the application process can seem daunting, there are just three ingredients needed when developing a Landscape Partnership Scheme:
- Place
- Partnership
- Projects
Crafting your narrative around these three ‘P’s in this order will help make your case more compelling.
1. Place
This is to do with explaining your landscape and its significance in relation to natural and cultural factors. How your communities perceive these factors is an important part of this explanation.
When preparing your compelling story for a Landscape Partnership bid, this information constitutes your story material.
2. Partnership
Diversity is key here. Your partnership needs to reflect the broad spectrum of interests within your landscape, ranging from regional, national and local organisations with an interest in the area, through to community groups and individuals. Organisational priorities can change, so ensuring representation from stakeholders with a long term vested interest in the landscape will strengthen the partnership and support longevity.
Your partnership are the authors that will write your compelling story for the landscape.
3. Projects
It is easy to fall into the common trap of ‘project wish lists’ when thinking about Landscape Partnership applications. However, projects should come last. Once you have your story material (place) and your authors (partnership) in place, you will be able to write a shared narrative for your Scheme. This narrative is effectively your vision and it is from this that projects should flow.
Your projects embody individual chapters contributing to the wider story of your landscape.
Don’t forget to relate your projects to the chapters that came before (previous projects) and the chapters yet to be written (project legacy) where possible. After all, your landscape story is not confined to the 3-5 year lifespan of a Landscape Partnership Scheme!
