We live in a neighbourhood that for many years has been marginalised – which not only affect’s the decisions made about people’s lives, but also the environment we live, play and work in.
PORTLAND PALISSY WARE
Just as our neighbours include the wildlife we share space with, our heritage too goes far beyond the industry that has always surrounded our neighbourhood. It includes the trees planted here, buddleia growing from cracks and insects and birds that come and go from empty sites that now stand proud as urban woodlands.
The local area where The Portland Inn Project is based neighbours a large scale industrial site, which omits noise, light pollution and some air pollutants. This is mitigated by the large brownfield next door, some sections of which have been developing for more than twenty years. The city council have recently given initial planning permission for over 300 homes to be built on the site, which will have a significant impact to the ecology but will provide useful housing locally.
Through this we have become aware of the need to begin to map and track local ecologies, in order to understand any loss of biodiversity that may occur, and to work with the housing developer to build opportunities for nature within the development plans and through the work we do to improve our neighbourhood.
We see the Portland Palissy project as a creative way of mapping and tracking our local biodiversity, supporting community members to first get involved in a number of methods to capture levels of nature (data) and then develop a method to make that data visible – through the creation of Portland Palissy Nature Audit plaques. This has been a brilliant way to involve families in identifying local plants and insects and is also a workshop session we have facilitated in neighbourhoods across the world! Please get in touch if you are interested.