Creating a Community of River Enthusiasts – Love Your River Irk
Groundwork and The Mersey Rivers Trust have been engaging with local people along the River Irk since 2021. Our goal has been to bring together like-minded people who care about the River Irk, it’s environment, heritage and neighbouring communities. We also wanted to help diversify river users, introducing those who hadn’t had much access to their local blue spaces.
People we’ve engaged with the river
Since the start of the programme, we’ve engaged with over 700 local people, 7 schools, and worked in partnership with a variety of local organisations such as Manchester Youthzone, Number 93, St Georges Community Centre and Manchester Young Lives.
Community connection with the river
Our team implemented 3 styles of engagement in order to support the development of a River Irk community:
Outreach
This included hosting family fun days, nature walks and poetry workshops with PhD student, Joe Shute, encouraging memories of the Irk, its history and how we envision it in the future.
Community action
We hosted litter picking sessions, as well as invasive species control, green skills training, and engaged with local schools to educate young people about their local river.
Monitoring
We engaged local people in water quality testing, kick sampling, flow rate testing and historical research to understand the river’s history.
What’s next?
From our engagement over the past 3 years, we now have a core group of around 8 volunteers who regularly attend clean ups and community action days. This group have inspirations to engage more community members.
We plan to continue supporting these volunteers to recruit further people, particularly those in the diverse local community who are often excluded from environmental work, with a goal to improve the overall upkeep and monitoring of their local blue and green spaces.
Improving Lower Crumpsall Recreation Grounds
We’re currently in the process of securing funding for the improvement of Lower Crumpsall Recreation Grounds, helping to enhance the green space and surrounding wetlands for both local people and nature.
Over the coming months, our team will be developing ideas with residents to re-wild this area of Crumpsall, improving it for nature to be more resilient for climate change, flooding and connecting people through activities, events, green skills and new jobs.
