Links with Nature

Our vision is to help nature recover and ensure a healthy thriving natural environment, rich in wildlife from Tees to Tyne. Alongside this, we are collaborating with communities, encouraging action and involvement and helping people to connect with wildlife. We want to ensure that seeing, hearing and experiencing nature is part of everyone’s daily life. This may be in the garden, back yard, allotment, nearby park, woodland or alongside a local river.

Getting out and going for a walk into nearby woods, wetlands or parks can lead to a more active and a healthier lifestyle. There is increasing evidence that having contact with wildlife and feeling connected to nature helps you to feel better, happier and healthier.  Seeing and experiencing wildlife is innately enjoyable, helping to improve mood, reduce feelings of isolation and improve well-being. There is also evidence that physical health can improve with reduced blood pressure, lower stress levels, improved sleep and slower cognitive decline (ref National Academy of Social Prescribing).

Links with Nature is bringing all this together in one exciting project based in the Coalfields. Over the next two years, the Links with Nature team will be working, in collaboration with Sunderland City Council and Wear Rivers Trust, to revitalise 13 local parks, waterways, woodlands, wetlands, meadows and nature areas. Our aim is to improve conditions for wildlife and ensure that places are more attractive and welcoming for local people to use and enjoy. Throughout the project, we aim to inspire, engage and connect with people who live nearby, by creating opportunities to get involved.

There will be regular activities on the different sites, such as practical volunteering, walks, wildlife monitoring and well-being activities. This exciting two-year project has some key objectives:

• To support nature’s recovery on 13 greenspaces in the Coalfields, 

• To create more attractive and welcoming greenspaces for local people, 

•  To inspire, engage and connect communities with their nearby greenspaces  

• To provide opportunities to maximise the health benefits from experiencing and connecting with nature, through nature-based activities and practical conservation volunteering.

The £2.2 million project began in May, thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Sunderland City Council, North East Community Forest and Northumbrian Water’s Bluespaces Programme.  

If you want to know which greenspaces are included in the project please refer to the map below:  

During the project’s development phase a series of proposal documents were produced, in consultation with local stakeholders, for each of the 13 greenspaces across the Coalfield. The proposal documents set out an ambitious programme to revitalise habitats, create new areas of woodland and wetland, breathe new life into local rivers and ensure spaces are more accessible and welcoming. Work has started to bring these proposals to life.  

Engaging with communities and local groups to encourage greater use and enjoyment of local greenspaces is a vital part of the project. There will be opportunities to access volunteering and activities through green social prescribing, helping to improve health and well-being and bring people together. Residents will be able to join regular activities: trying your hand at practical conservation; spotting and recording local wildlife, and simply enjoying being outdoors in nature, which we can all benefit from.    

If you want to find out more about which greenspaces are included in the Links with Nature project and the proposals for each space, please take a look at the following documents.  

Copt Hill

Elemore Park

Elemore Vale

Flint Mill

Hazard Railway

Herrington Burn

Herrington Country Park

Hetton Bogs

Hetton Lyons

Hetton Park

Kier Hardie Park

Redburn

Success Railway 

In order to deliver Links with Nature, there is a dedicated project team.