Our project The Great Collaboration – Local Actions for a Healthy Planet started here in Herefordshire in 2019 to bring together communities on their path to a low carbon and sustainable future. Discussions, sharing of information, working together, and peer-to-peer support formed the core of this work, whether the community initiative was being taken by a parish council, by a local group, or both. From 2020 to the end of 2023, The Great Collaboration was focused on the Great Collaboration Toolkit, funded by the MCS Charitable Foundation.
The Great Collaboration now has a new national home, supporting a much wider range of communities across the UK. There’s a great team behind the website, and free weekly online sessions bring together really good speakers from across the UK to discuss a wide range of subjects. There are already over 80!! Click on the tab below to find out more. The team can be contacted at hello@greatcollaboration.uk, or via HGN.
Meanwhile the Great Collaboration Herefordshire, which has been facilitating gatherings, sharing learning, arranging peer to peer sessions and providing local networking and partnership opportunities, has been taking a bit of a break. But watch this space!
As part of the development of the Great Collaboration, the team is running free weekly sessions every Wednesday from midday to discuss a wide range of climate action topics.
Recordings and presentations from all past sessions can be found here. These have included:
And much more.
To join future sessions, please follow this link, and the Great Collaboration team looks forward to welcoming you.
In 2019 and early 2020 Herefordshire Green Network conducted a series of workshops across the county to hear what support councils needed to help their communities achieve zero carbon outcomes. Nearly half the councils participated across all levels: county, town and parish. Workshops focused on achieving zero carbon in four key areas: transport, energy generation, energy saving in buildings and land use.
At the same time, Fownhope and several other parishes declared a climate emergency, setting up community action groups or climate groups and starting the support or generating interest within their communities.
At the workshops councils stated they needed: ideas and information, guidance on how to gather data and consult their communities and case studies.
HGN were successful in applying for funding from the MCS Foundation to set up a web-based toolkit and pilot a community-based response in Fownhope Parish, with an outreach worker supporting any other parish councils wishing to participate. The long-term plan was that this model would be used to support and encourage other parishes across the UK to join The Great Collaboration.
The aim was to offer easy-to-access information, make it open source, support individuals to commit to making informed lifestyle changes and provide parishes with anonymised data which could help them focus on community actions which needed additional support. For HGN this was a hugely ambitious project.
The first version of the Great Collaboration website and toolkit was created by HGN (mostly volunteers) in partnership local charity Caplor Horizons, with input from Fownhope Parish Council and the Centre for Alternative Technology, and support from NALC and HALC. In 2022 the new version, hosted for HGN by The DMLab, was launched – a version that would allow the site easily to be transferred to an organisation able to deploy it nationally.
In September 2023 HGN transferred the web-based toolkit over to a new organisation, Place-based Initiatives Ltd (PBI), which is supported by the Society of Local Council Clerks and National Association of Council Clerks, to expand the provision across the UK as planned. Read about the PBI team here. Currently they’re running regular online sessions for councillors on relevant topics and have a lot of expertise to support local councils in their climate work, much of which will be integrated into the Great Collaboration website. We’re delighted that it’s in good hands and set to grow.
For further reading, click here or for more information on any of the subjects below, please click the titles.
Our strength is in our network so joining means that you can share skills and experience with those who live and work near to you, link with those further away who share your interests, and help HGN to set up the tailored support and specialist events that you want.
Herefordshire Green Network is an alliance of local green, environmental and Transition Town groups, organisations and businesses.
Email: admin@hgnetwork.org
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