Who:The Nature and Us team at Natural Resources Wales: Nature and Us (Natur a Niin Welsh) involved the people of Wales in a national conversation about the natural environment, to develop a shared vision for the year 2050. This informed Natural Resources Wales’ strategy and operational priorities, and had an impact on other environmental and statutory services across Wales.
The brief:I have worked with this team at several stages of the project. For this final phase, the original brief was to design and run some workshops and events to connect with other stakeholder organisations around the Vision for Wales 2050, and establish some joint strategic partnerships.
However, as the work got under way, we realised that for several reasons the workshops weren’t the right approach, and we pivoted to focus on building collaborative relationships around the Vision for Wales 2050, sharing our learning, and developing a legacy toolkit for stakeholder relationships building.
What I did: I worked with the team in an advisory and support role, tracking our thinking as it developed in a Miro digital whiteboard, identifying priority actions and areas, and highlighting the learnings. I sumarised the findings into a toolkit (initially for internal Natural Resources Wales use, then shared with partners and stakeholders) for building collaboration on the nature and climate emergencies, by using the Nature and Us Vision for Wales 2050.
I enjoyed being able to have the flexibility to pivot away from the original brief (from workshops to collaborative development), and be responsive to what we were finding. It was very easy working with the team who were open and receptive. They seemed to enjoy having the time and space to think, while I held the threads of our conversations and thinking, and mapped the information and learnings as we went – essentially acting as a learning partner. The sum of our thinking collated on the Miro digital whiteboard is what I transferred to the toolkit resource.
What they said: “I’ve worked with you on a few different projects. It’s always been a successful relationship, delivering the outputs we needed to a high standard. But what you really excel in has been your support of our team to help us articulate what matters clearly, to focus our work and design our engagement and communication in a more inclusive and effective way than we could have done ourselves. Your probing questions, honest and constructive feedback and clear presentations that captured our discussions and your observations, are what has really made the difference in our work. The impact of this will be felt for some time to come.” ~ Dr. Serinde Gentry, Nature and Us Programme manager, Natural Resources Wales
Image credit: Nature and Us