National Trust - Derwent Wear and Coast - Gibside

The National Trust Logo

Tell us about your organisation:

The National Trust is Europe’s largest conservation charity. Our aims are to Restore Nature, Inspire Millions and End Unequal Access. The Derwent, Wear and Coast portfolio covers the sites of Gibside, Souter Lighthouse, Crook Hall & Gardens, Washington Old Hall, Penshaw Monument as well as the East Durham Coast.  

We work with our local communities which include school and youth groups, as well as a diverse range of organisations who are embedded within our communities. We offer volunteering opportunities for young people and people who may not think volunteering is for them. Our aim is to build healthy community connections and create spaces where everyone feels seen, heard and valued within our green spaces.

We also currently work with multi-faith groups, groups who are using nature as part of their healing process (drug and alcohol abuse), groups who are in the social justice system, isolated older people and people with dementia.  We are a brave space open to all of our courageous communities. 

Tell us why being a Haref Ally is important for you and your organisation:

Being a Haref Ally is very important to us. The focus of the Derwent Wear and Coast properties is to end unequal access to nature and green spaces. We recognise there is a growing inequity to access to green spaces, both physically and mentally, and we want to work with the Haref communities to open up our spaces. However, and more importantly, we need to listen and learn from our communities on how our spaces can be used by them. We would like to co-design all our programmes from volunteering, to events, with people. We are moving towards ‘Of (people), by (people) for all (people). We would benefit from the excellent training offered by Haref Allies for all our staff and volunteers.

Tell us about anything that you or your organisation has done to improve how you work with ethnically marginalised communities:

We are pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone to reach more communities -  for example we are having our meetings out in different community spaces. We recently connected with Jaswinder, who offered the Gurdwara for a series of meetings. This highlighted what a radical welcome looks like and we experienced how marginalised groups might feel when they visit our sites.  

We have also given Haref a Community Pass. This will allow ethnically marginalised groups to visit our sites free of charge. In addition, we have distributed our Acorn Passes to members of ethnically marginalised families to visit us free of charge. 

We have recently joined the Haref allies network, and have started to attend meetings, to listen. We work with lots of organisations who also work with ethnically marginalised groups, such as Bensham Grove, and ICOS in Sunderland to name a couple.

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