East Norfolk College's Wilding Plan
Green Schools Revolution: Wilding Schools has the pleasure of working with East Norfolk Sixth Form College in Great Yarmouth over the last few months, during which they have moved through the project smoothly from online onboarding meetings to in-person Wilding Plan sessions.
East Norfolk Sixth Form College is in Gorleston-on-Sea, an area of Great Yarmouth. The college ranges in ages from 16-19 and all students enrolled in the college can study a range of qualifications from A Levels to T Levels. The college has a range of environmental subjects in offer and we at SOS-UK have had the delight of collaborating with environmental scientists in college’s first and second years to run our Green Schools Revolution: Wilding Schools project. As part of their project, they were required to complete a mapping exercise of their school grounds, this image goes to show the size of the school and the availability of space the school has to complete Wilding activities.
The journey so far
East Norfolk College is at the point in their journey where they can begin to start implementing some Wilding Changes. They are keen to develop a green wall on a large area of school fencing and to build some swift boxes to attract swifts to their school grounds.
All these ideas came from a Wilding Plan session which was facilitated in February with the support of Norfolk Wildlife Trust. During this session, the students were informed about key local species that needed help, and the work that Norfolk Wildlife Trust do in the local area. This included a local urban nature strategy in Sweet Briar Marshes, local to the college, and how wilding work at the school can be tied into their local priorities.
The map provided by Norfolk Wildlife Trust showed the college which local area priorities the school could tie into their implemented changes. They have coastal and floodplain grazing marsh in the local area and deciduous woodland and orchard fragments amongst other features.
Next steps
Not only did the Wilding Plan session allow for students to be taught about local wildlife priorities but also suggested which local species they could support: in Great Yarmouth these included swifts, hedgehogs, bats and toads.
As a result of this session, the college students decided to focus on insects to support all other species. They have completed their Wilding Plan and hopefully within the next few months they will start to purchase some equipment, so we begin to see some grounds changes to support the goal of wilding 30% of their land!