A Green Eden

Sense of Place

Sense of Place Handbook

Find out how to reap the benefits from providing your guests with the authentic Eden experience

 sense of place handbook.pdf

Useful links

CBEN (Cumbria Business Environment Network) - www.cumbriaben.com

Cumbria County Council - www.cumbria.gov.uk

Cumbria Rural Enterprise Agency - www.crea.co.uk

Cumbria Tourism - www.cumbriatourism.org

Eden Tourism – www.visiteden.co.uk

GTBS (Green Tourism Business Scheme) - www.green-business.co.uk

Heart of Eden Development Trust - www.heartofeden.co.uk

North Pennines AONB - www.northpennines.org.uk

Reflections from the Project Manager…

Spring 2012

Green Eden is flying in 2012! Since the start of the year we have welcomed 8 new members on board, bringing our total Nurture Eden membership to 47, which is absolutely fantastic.

My colleague, Helen, and I have been doing the rounds visiting our members to offer responsible tourism advice and discuss developing new low impact tourism products – which really is one of our favourite parts of the job!

As you’ll read below, we’ve held another two really inspiring training events and are just gearing up for what should be another great event on 23^rd March.

We now have a new ‘Nurture Eden’ logo designed and our marketing consultant, Jane Hunt, has been very busy with the Green Eden marketing campaign, including securing some great press coverage for many of our members.

I mentioned in our last newsletter that we’d been working hard to meet deadlines for a couple of funding applications to pull in some additional funding for Green Eden. I’m delighted to announce that our most significant application (to RDPE) has been successful!

This will allow us to focus on some exciting activity around cycle tourism in Penrith and the Eden Valley. This work will be starting in the next few weeks, so watch this space! Alongside this work we’ve also started work on activity with a local food theme - so there should be some interesting developments over the next couple of months which we really hope you’ll get involved with!

And lastly for now….this will sadly be my last ‘Reflections’ article for a while as I’m going to be going on maternity leave in mid-May. But never fear, we’re currently recruiting for an interim project manager to take over from me during my absence and I shall look forward to picking up the reins on my return!

Best wishes to you all in the meantime and may 2012 be a great year for Green Eden and for all our members!

Winter 2011 

Well, it’s been another incredibly busy and exciting 3 months for the Green Eden team. We’ve now got a total of 21 new members since our launch event back in June which is fantastic. We’ve been out to visit 15 of these members so far to offer responsible tourism advice and discuss developing new low impact tourism products - one of my favourite parts of the job! We’ve held two really inspiring training events on sense of place and local food and are just gearing up for another great event in January. We’re also busy promoting our next funding round for practical conservation projects in Eden (see above!).

Since September, we’ve been delighted to have Jane Hunt from Catapult PR on board as our marketing consultant. Jane’s been busy writing press releases and helping to put Eden and our business members in the media spotlight. We’re just in the process of having a ‘Nurture Eden’ logo designed – so watch this space!

As part of our Green Eden monitoring and evaluation, 30 business surveys were undertaken in November by Pathways Consultancy with our Nurture Eden members as well as some non-members. These surveys have provided us with some really useful data about tourism in Eden and lots of great suggestions from participants to help steer the project. The surveys will be repeated in 2012 and 2013. A huge thank you, once again, to all those who took part. 

Over the last few weeks we’ve been working hard to meet deadlines for a couple of funding applications to pull in some additional funding for Green Eden. We never like to miss an opportunity to build on our ambitions for Eden! If successful, this grant aid would allow us to focus on some exciting product development activity around two key areas: local food and cycling. We’ll find out more in January!

So, bring on 2012! …And in the meantime, the Green Eden team would like to wish you all a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Applying for funding in Eden

Are you looking for funding?

If you are running a practical conservation project and are looking for funding, we may be able to help. For a large or long term project we look to find one or more businesses to fundraise for it. We welcome applications from community groups, conservation organisations and charities.

What kinds of projects do we support

The practical conservation projects must demonstrate a clear and positive contribution to the environment - for example by conserving biodiversity, taking measures to tackle climate change, educating communities, raising awareness, carrying out countryside maintenance or green infrastructure projects. They should normally be accessible to members of the public and, where possible, involve and benefit local communities. For example, this might include species or habitat conservation measures, interpretation boards, footpath/cycle path signage, a community group green waste compost project etc. Projects should be suitable for attracting sponsorship through business fundraising.

We're sorry, but unfortunately we are not able to offer support to renewable energy or energy efficiency schemes as funding for this type of project is widely available elsewhere. We are also not able to support academic or research-based projects.

Amounts available

The amount of money available is always dependent on the amount of fundraising which our member businesses have been able to undertake each year. The majority of our business sponsors fundraise a maximum of a few hundred pounds per year for their chosen project. We would normally look to find several business sponsors per project, depending on the funding required. A realistic figure, therefore, would be in the region of £1,000 per year per project. As business support relies on businesses fundraising it will take up to 6 months from finding a business sponsor to money coming in for the project.

Who can apply

Support is open to constituted groups and charitable organisations such as village halls, youth groups or playgroups (your group does not have to be a registered charity), social enterprises and conservation agencies. Support is not open to individuals. Organisations must agree to abide by Nurture Lakeland's Fundraising Agreement.

How to apply

Having read this information, if you think your organisation and project meet our criteria, please contact us to discuss your project on 01539 822622 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with a brief summary of your project (no more than one page). We will then contact you to discuss the project and send you an application form if it is suitable.

Applications are open from now until March 31st 2013.

What happens next

Applications for business sponsorship are considered by a projects panel which meets annually. The panel is made up of the Nurture Lakeland chair and members of partner organisations. The panel will consider the applications and decide which projects to approve for business sponsorship.

More Information