It has been a busy 9 months for Opening the Ark, since starting the project in November 2021 we have already managed to engage with over 500 people and counting. Our project is all about inviting the local community into their burial grounds to enthuse and engage them with biodiversity to be found there. We have done this through our ‘Love Your Burial Ground’ community events, running school sessions, activity days, walks and talks.
Churchyards are havens for wildlife, most have been protected from chemicals and development which has resulted in our oldest trees, rarest lichens and most importantly our richest wildflower meadows being located in churchyards and cemeteries. So far we have organised 7 ‘Love Your Burial Ground’ community events located in churchyards around the Shropshire hills AONB these have been Bromfield, Hope Bagot, Clun, Clungunford, Norbury, Bishop’s Castle and Buildwas. It has been great seeing children as well as adults coming into the churchyard enjoying nature and learning about why churchyards are so important for wildlife. At these events we had a number of experts come along such as Rob Rowe come and talk about wildflowers and folklore, Bea Kerry running bug hunts and insect identification, Sam Devine-Turner talking about Dormice, their ecology and looking at nibbled hazelnuts, and Tom Hayek who set up a moth trap the night before at the site ran moth ID and recording sessions where in Clungunford he recorded an amazing 118 different species. We also ran environmental art activities where we created wild clay tiles, bird boxes out of plant pots and making seed bombs. We have had such lovely feedback from these events and a great turn out, especially at Bromfield which was our busiest with 60 people coming along.
So far we have done sessions with 3 schools; Mary Webb secondary school, Minsterley primary school and Bitterley primary school where we have done various outdoor nature related sessions which has involved activities like Bug hunts, making plant pot bird boxes for the churchyard and school grounds, meeting a slow worm, and making seed bombs which they took home to put in their gardens. We are looking forward to more sessions with more schools in the autumn and winter term.
Throughout the summer we have run a number of activity days these have included ‘Mini-Beast Mayhem’ along with SpArC in Bishop’s Castle where we ran a bug hunting activity. We joined Tim Kaye who is running a project called Hidden Herefordshire at Wigmore churchyard and helped run an exploring and recording activity session, this was a really nice turn out, we had 18 people come along and we recorded everything we could find in the churchyard, this included plants, birds, insects, fungi, we even found a Slow Worm. We have also ran a session with Messy church in Bishop’s Castle with 8 children where we did a range of practical hands on nature related activities which included a bug hunt where we came across a Lesser Emperor Dragonfly, we made mini beasts out of clay, and we also made bird boxes and bird feeders which they could take home.
We organised two Bat walks led by expert Phil Playford who is part of the Shropshire Bat Group. We had one at Clun churchyard with an amazing 28 people and the other at Wigmore churchyard with 18 people, we chose these locations because there has been a good record of Bats present in these churchyards. These walks were really interesting and it was fascinating to learn about these elusive mammals, we also got to learn how to use bat detectors and how to identify different bat species. We will be planning more specialist walks in the next coming months so keep an eye on our Opening the Ark calendar on our website and on our Facebook page
