Who: The Bumblebee Conservation Trust
The brief: Engaging with under-represented communities along the Carmarthenshire coastline, around bumblebee species and habitat conservation. This was a subset of the 2-year “Connecting the Carmarthenshire Coast” project.
What I did: Along with my project partner Eva Trier, we proposed and delivered a 5-month project that included stakeholder mapping, stakeholder interviews (gathering information about activities in the region from statutory organisations and other environmental NGOs), and community engagement events in partnership with local third sector organisations (like the Llanelli Railway Goods Shed and Links Mental Health). Our aim was to build confidence and capacity with community engagement in the local team, and start to build relationships with local partners and communities that they could continue developing.
What they said: “The report is so useful, it’s feeding into the new project proposal for the follow-on phase. It’s valuable to have contacts in the area in the relationships you’ve made, and we will be keeping in contact with them for the next phase of work.We’ve also shared your report in the Bumblebee Conservation Trust across the UK: the findings are feeding into other areas as well, around working with communities. We really liked your proposal and we’re pleased that we appointed you, everything you produced including the report is brilliant and exactly what we wanted. Absolute pleasure working with you.”
Five months on… We finished our work (including the reporting) in October 2024, and in March 2025 we attended the end of project event at the WWT Llanelli Wetland Centre, to deliver a short presentation about our community engagement work as part of a day of reflection on the project and its next steps. (The audience included project partners and stakeholders, as well as community-based organisations and community members.)
- We heard how one of the community events we delivered, hosted by Links mental health charity, was followed by a visit to the National Botanical Gardens, and a deepening interest in bumblebees by Links volunteers and members. They are keen to go on “bumblebee walks”, a key species monitoring practice – but with limited capacity in local eNGOs to support many activities, one of the Links volunteers is therefore looking to do some online training modules offered by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. A lovely example of the engagement journey from the initial discovery conversation, to a deepening interest leading to sustainable involvement.
- The information boards and workshop materials are going to be displayed at one of the community venues, and made available as a shared community resource.
- It was also lovely to see how the local team have grown in skills and confidence, and built really solid relationships with community partners, that continue to develop grassroots bumblebee awareness and support.
Photo by Katie Sutton, Bumblebee Conservation Trust