A new trainee...

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to watch our film about the All Our Stories project at Fallin Bing. So far we have had over 600 views on YouTube which is fantastic. If you haven't watched the film yet please catch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzLifCIzscU 

Harry Woolner has now started with us and is continuing the work that paul Gunn did at Fallin last year. I have asked Harry to write a short piece about his interests and what he will be doing this year. read on to find out more:

Hello, I am Harry and I’ve just started out as a trainee with Buglife as part of TCV’s Natural Communities traineeship. I have moved to Stirling from the heart of Kent where I grew up amongst fruit orchards, on the boundary between the chalky North Downs and the clay based Weald. The most striking thing for me since my move has been, therefore, the vistas of the rocky mountainous outcrops that loom over Stirling to the north and east.

Harry at the garden at Balallan House, Stirling

I am going to help organise the Fallin Bing final celebration event towards the end of March alongside Ami, another Natural Communities trainee, working with Butterfly Conservation. The hope is that we will be able to have a day where residents of Fallin can share stories, form the past to the future, about the Bing, in order to help strengthen local connections with site. We hope to engage both adult residents as well as children from the primary school.

For my part, I come to this project as a newbie and outsider. I have a passion for insects, particularly bees, and wildflowers. I recently completed an MSc in Ethnobotany in which I learned about scientific approaches to the plant world, as well as indigenous and folk perspectives. My learning and work was broad; touching on the worldview of the Ese’eja in Peru who perceive forest plants as powerful spirits that must be negotiated with caution, to the Palawan of the Philippines who say that bees come from an Upper Celestial Plane and will only come to our world if treated appropriately, to the Botanists of Kew who see the plant world through the beauty of flower parts. I then went on to carry out a research project which assessed residents’, gardeners’ and beekeepers’ knowledge of bee plants and bee declines in Canterbury, Kent.

Harry is really interested in bees and is looking forward to learning more about insects this year.

My background has therefore led me to have a great interest in local knowledge. I am really keen, therefore, to learn how Fallin residents and children approach the plants and insects on the Bing, and what they know about the area and the landscape that is their home.

Having seen all the great work that local residents, Buglife and TCV have done at the site last year, I am looking forward to help bring the project to a close in celebratory style. I hope that we can inspire the children of the primary school to continue to enjoy, engage with, and learn from the history and nature found at the Bing.