A landscape for everyone

How can we make upland rural areas, like the North Pennines, more welcoming and accessible to a greater diversity of people?
Who does and who doesn’t get the opportunity to visit and connect with the North Pennines, and why?
Would you like to be part of a community action research group working together to address these questions and influence meaningful action?

We, the North Pennines AONB team, are looking for people to join our new community action research group that will run from November 2021 to April 2022. Action research is simply research combined with action. In action research, everyone is already a researcher – gathering information as we go about our life, making sense of it, and taking action based on what we know. In an action research group, we are co-researchers together, each bringing and learning different things, exploring how our different lived experiences inform how we connect with the landscape of the North Pennines. We want this to be a diverse group of people so we can all work together to share and understand each other’s experiences, explore the ways in which we relate to one another, and ultimately move towards actions that will enable everyone to access and enjoy the AONB.

We have some initial assumptions about people who live, work and visit here, based on the limited information we have:
• Farmers in the North Pennines come from diverse backgrounds; some having farmed for many generations and others recently arrived and new to farming.
• The North Pennines is mainly visited and inhabited by white people, from varied backgrounds.
• LGBTQ+ visibility and representation in the North Pennines is very low.
• There is little interaction of people from different cultural backgrounds
• The lack of public transport means people without cars can’t visit.
• Our staff team is mainly white and middle class.

To what extent are these assumptions valid? What else don’t we know? Who is already visiting or connecting with the land? Who isn’t visiting and why not? Can they imagine themselves belonging and feeling welcomed and safe there? What support can we put in place to support and strengthen people to connect with the North Pennines?

What is involved? The co-learning group will involve three day-long, in-person (Covid permitting) co-research sessions on 9 November, February (date tbc) and April (date tbc) with two online half-day sessions in January and March. These will be co-facilitated by Paola Rozo and Scarlet Hall. The day long events will be within the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with time for shared lunch and to connect with the place. Travel will be arranged, or expenses reimbursed if needed.

We would like to be able to pay all participants for their time and expertise but don’t have enough resources to offer that to everyone. However, we do have a fair-sized pot of money available to pay participant who need it. We are trusting people to ask for what they need. We can offer between £20-£100 for each day session, and £10-£40 for the online sessions.

How to get involved:

Everyone is welcome. Just tell us why you want to be part of the community action research group. This can be in writing (one page of A4 is plenty) or via Whatsapp video/audio. Please send this to Scarlet, including any requests for payment by Thursday 21 October.
There will be two online Q& A sessions. The first is on 30 September at 4pm and the second is on 4 October at 6pm. Click on the date you wish to attend to register to receive the zoom link.

Please contact Scarlet if you want an informal chat at a different time or have any questions (07564 550231)

A short hello from the facilitators

Paolo Rozo, (us/we/she): I am a Latina born in the highlands of Bolivia and based for the last 8 years in London. I am an independent awareness facilitator committed to collaborating with people -and their surroundings- to become more aware to what they are noticing, to enable transformation whenever it is felt needed and/or to finding other ways in which they can stay in relationship with themselves and others. I am also an artist and doodler.

I am deeply interested in how people experience (un)learning and how we become aware of such processes. I am in service of supporting people’s curiosity and the unfolding of their inner and outer experiences. This can be with themselves, and with their immediate relationships including other people, the land, other living beings, and the wider world. I have learned and worked extensively with a diversity of community-based collectives, groups, and organisations (especially women’s, youth and queer people) as well as indigenous peoples in different places and territories in Latin America and Africa.

Scarlet Hall, (they/she): I am the Project Officer for A Landscape for Everyone. I am also a facilitator, and passionate about making and holding spaces for conversations that we often don’t feel brave or safe enough to have. Since a chance meeting with a Colombian human rights activist in 2005, I have worked alongside communities facing different forms of violence and marginalisation, including refugee communities in the UK, disabled people dealing with the UK benefit system and peasant farming organisations in Colombia. I have learnt about community, power and rank, co-liberation and connecting across difference through these relationships. Before joining the North Pennines AONB team, I worked with majority white environmental organisations to deepen their power to disrupt white supremacy culture, and hosted workshops supporting women with concerns about trans inclusion to understand and transform transphobia.