So thank you everybody for for coming back. And our last session of the day is nature and biodiversity. So really pleased to welcome of Carly Harper from City of Trees to speak with us about all the great work they're doing, partly the Woodland Creation Accelerator Fund that Carly runs. - That's a great picture of me. But it was took just after. So that's why it looks like that. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you so much for staying for what is known as the graveyard shift. When you presenting, everybody's a little bit tired and a little bit warm and kind of everybody's um, uh, what's the word? Concentration is going. That's it. So thank you so much. Right. I'm going to talk to you today a little bit about City of Trees. Does anybody know about us? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Good, good. And could see that some people either just zoned out, or don't know about us. Even better. That means you are new recruits for me, and I'm going to be able to go away and say I recruit 300 people in Stockport. Okay, so who are we? Well, we are a charity based in Greater Manchester, and our sole aim is to get trees in the ground and that can be in the form of street trees, trees and parks. Woodland creation, which is my favourite thing, and also trees in schools and lots of other places. And we've got this mission to make Greater Manchester greener, more climate resilient, great place to live. And in Stockport feel like you've got a lot of that already. You've got a lot of green, haven't you? But think you could do more? And I'm going to tell you about the ways that you can do more with the City of Trees. So first of all, who do we work with? Well, we work with everybody. We indiscriminately will work with you if you tell me you've got a piece of land, I'm coming knocking on your door and saying. Can I have a look at it, please? You land. But we do work with the universities, local authorities, obviously, and social housing providers. Are there any social housing providers in the room right now? Yeah. Think there was. Oh, right at the back. Very quiet. Keeping a low profile. Doesn't want me to come and knock on the door tonight. Okay. So yeah, lots of social housing providers, private landowners, farmers, businesses. If you've got a little piece of land, we can work with you, we can help you and we can help you through a number of different ways. So firstly I'm going to talk about Woodland Creation Accelerate Fund, which is my project. Now. That's a bond that's running until March 2025. And what it does is it reduces the barriers to tree planting. So there'll be lots of people in this room who thinks, I've looked upon a tree and could just stick one in the ground anywhere. And when I started with City of Trees, I thought we could just stick trees in the ground anywhere. It turns out you actually can't do that. There's a number of different things that we need to look at, and often we're very constrained in where we can put them. We might not want to disrupt major gas pipes or electrical wires. That would make us very unpopular. We also have to think about the impact that it'll have on the environment. So my team and I've got three fantastic projects, officers do all of that work on your behalf for free. We also come out to your site and we'll come and survey it. We'll do. We'll do soil surveys to make sure we can recommend the best species of tree available to you. There you go. Yeah. So we'll we'll come and survey the soil, and then we're able to recognise a great species for you. We'll be able to do planting designs for you. So often local authorities especially tell us. Well look, we don't have the capacity to find out where we can plan. We don't have the capacity to pull together planting plans. That's fine. No problem. Woodland Creation Accelerator Fund will fix that for you. And then we can also do other things like advise you on the best routes to funding, apply on your behalf for that funding and if need be, also help you deliver those trees through planted them for you. Why doesn't it love me? Well, one is. Co-operative. There we go. Okay, so that's one way. And that's like our major landowners really, isn't it? And then for our private landowners and all of those people who are kind of in that list at the beginning, but then we also have trees for learning now. Is there anybody here from a school left? Just one did. Okay. We can help you. We can plant trees for free with your in school. We can come out. We can do a learning day with your pupils. If you've got a nursery, if you've got any kind of education setting, then City of Trees can help. And we've got a dedicated team that can come along and help you do that so we can meet you. Curriculum. We can develop forest school ideas. We can create screening. We're going to improve the air quality around your school, because as much as we'd like everybody to walk to school, as was referenced earlier, people can be lazy or time short, and so driving is the way it is. We can also look at free fruit trees for your school as well. So lots of opportunities. I'm sorry. It's me, isn't it? You've got this to come. Okay, so trees for learning is another one and something that think a lot of people might be interested in here today is our citizen forester work. So our citizen forester is where you, as a regular person living in Stockport, can get involved and actually do something to impact climate change in a very meaningful and direct way. And that's by coming along and planting trees in the ground. So my team go out, they find all these fantastic pieces of land, all these brilliant landowners who are happy to have trees planted. But then we've actually got got to get them in the ground. And we do that in a, in a myriad of different ways. But one of them is through our Citizen Forester program. So you can sign up, you can go on our website, City of Trees, org UK, and you can go to the events page and find out where events are happening. Register and come along. We will provide everything. All you need to provide is you and maybe a pack lunch for yourself and a hot flask and some decent shoes because it does get boggy in some of the fields that we plant in. And then everything else we will provide you with the trees, the woodchip in the spades, everything else, and we will teach you how to plant. We're not just going to say off you go off your pot in this field. We're going to do all of that for you. And what we're really asking is that people really think about joining us and doing that, because we're all here for a reason, right? So why don't we all do something really direct to contribute to that reason? Now we are planting in Reddish Vale and Penny Lane, which is not far from here. Right. So nice and timely. You can go on our website, City of Trees to all the UK forward slash events and find out a little bit more about that. I think the next slide in the final slide don't know. Oh, it is, and it's quite far away from everybody. But basically this is a way for you to get in touch with us. So if you don't want to plant trees on your land, or you don't have any land as a business to plant trees on, you can support us corporately. If you're an individual, you can volunteer with us. As I just said on Citizen Forester, you can fundraise on our behalf. And we have some fantastic people that do that across Greater Manchester. And at the very least, you can just sign up to our newsletter and find out about what's happening across Greater Manchester with City of Trees and the work that we're doing to improve the climate for everybody, especially our citizens in Greater Manchester. So that was everything. Thank you. But one more thing. I'm so sorry. Okay, last thing. My comms lead would kill me if I didn't ask you to all be in a selfie with me. So if everybody agrees, I'm going to turn around real quick and just take a big snap, if that's all right. And all you have to do is shout trees at the end of it, okay? All right. - So much, Carly. Thank you for that. I'm really pleased to welcome up Emma Stubbs, who is Assistant Director of Neighbourhoods at Stockport Council. She's going to speak about the council's natural environment -objectives. -Okay. So when they asked me if I wanted to swap with City of Trees in the order of running. I'm now wishing I had because obviously that was fantastic. But we do share some of the work that we do. So as I said, I'm Emma Stubbs, Assistant Director of Neighbourhoods. Um, and I am lucky to be involved in our approach to nature recovery. And I'm also in that's where the wrong word. Uh, lucky to be involved in the oversight of our parks and our green spaces, of which we have many in Stockport that are absolutely beautiful. And so, obviously, you can see there will be a delivery of our projects has helped to restore, improve and enhance existing habitats benefiting people and wildlife. And we do have a local nature recovery group that was set up via a motion class, support the Climate and Ecology Bill in Stockport Council, and there's an officer advisory group which my teams are involved in to support that. So under this nature. recovery approach, we do a lot of creating woodlands. We work in conjunction with City of Trees and since April we have created 12 new sorry. Since 2020, we have created 12 new woodlands that's exceeded the targets we set ourselves, and it significantly increased the woodland canopy. And you can imagine the benefits from a climate action point of view, or about supporting birds, wildlife. It's about storing carbon and producing oxygen. It's about absorbing rainfall, which is obviously something we really need at the moment and reducing flooding. And in addition to that, we also planted 1857 individual trees last year, and this year we've already planted over 1000. So I'm really proud of that. Think we're doing really well. We can do more. Um, but that's a really good achievement. In addition, we've also created seven community orchards, and I feel like that's a really good way of allowing people to get involved. So we also run an Orchard Mentor scheme for people that want to help support that from the communities. And we are training people to prune and do maintenance, and they will then train volunteers to get involved, which I think is a really exciting project. And so seven mentors were trained this year, and they'll now go on to cascade that learning into their community. We train people as well to safely manage equipment, to make sure that people don't leave chainsaws running on the ground and things like that. Um, because that would be a bit of a nightmare. Um, and we also run a task days for tasks for volunteer leaders to be able to support the communities further. In terms of medal creation. Again, really exciting. We've created four new medals in the borough. So, um, that is something that creates a whole new set of benefits in terms of our climate action. Now, um, key drivers. So it's about habitats halting the decline of biodiversity and trying to enhance the habitat for our British species. They provide nectar sources for our pollinators bees, hoverflies, butterflies, as well as supporting small mammals, which then support the birds of prey, which, depending on which way you look at it, is is a good thing. And again, storing carbon and oxygen and slowing the rate of climate change. So again, a really important piece of work. Um, so you know. Now, as I mentioned, I'm also involved in our parks and green space and they are such a great place for health and recreation as well as the climate benefits and that kind of being a haven for wildlife and nature and social habitats. And just wanted to talk to you a little bit today about a really exciting new park that we're developing right in the heart of Stockport. It's going to be a sanctuary for people to go and sit and absorb the fantastic biodiversity that the park is going to support, and it's actually being built on the top of the new interchange development. So that's something that we're really proud of at Stockport Council. And in terms of the benefits of the climate, we've really thought about how we can create something different here. So we have a scheme as part of that park to make sure that it can be. Plants are watered through a natural way through the water permeable membrane, and we have trees that are there for planting, for colour, but also for fruit. And we've got different types of blossom and they create different islands of habitats for birds and insects in the environment. And the trees as well obviously mitigate urban heat through the shade and evaporating and cooling that they can provide, and the impact on mental health that we all know that the green spaces can have is absolutely vast. And that's why we wanted to create this space in the centre of the town. But it's actually part of a wider development, that park. And we've tried to link it all up and some things that are really excited about in terms of we've got a River Mersey landscaping scheme and that includes native trees, ornamental planting and a net source of pollinators and provide shelters for birds and small mammals. And I've been absolutely astounded to find out about the wealth of biodiversity that we have along the river Mersey. So we are putting in black boxes which will be added to the banks of the Mersey down next to the park, and that will allow for roosting habitat for paper trails and daubing some bats, I believe that's pronounced, and we will use insect bricks and bird boxes to promote wildlife on site, and we'll be having trails for children to follow to try and educate people about the importance of pollinators. We've got bird boxes catering to a variety of species, including red list starter, red list starling and nesting facilities for sand martins and kingfishers, which we have on the river will be integrated into the bank. And the most exciting thing for me because I really love them. My favourite animal. We have otters in the River Mersey, which in some way feels that at least we've got a clean enough river for the mammals to be able to live, but we really want to preserve that habitat for them, and that will be part of our our ambitions for the park and preserving the, the wildlife and the way that we can. So that's the end of my presentation. Just wanted to say thank you so much. Don't have a call to action other than to say, please do piggyback on the city of trees because it benefits our borough so, so well, and we work closely with them and other trusts to make sure that we can preserve our borough in as best the way we can for. - Thanks so much, Emma. The Podium Park is so exciting, it's such a key project that's happening in the borough. And really, really part of that visible change in the town centre that we're really, really excited about. Really pleased to welcome up and Emma Handby, who's Head of Resident Services at the council. And she's going to talk about the work that we're doing around green libraries. - Yeah, I didn't know there was going to be a mugshot. So apologies for that and we'll go on to the next one. So yes, I'm I'm head of Resident Services at Stockport Council and look after loads of different services at the council. I'm here today particularly to talk about libraries. Most of the services are look after a customer faces. We've got a really big outreach in terms of who we speak to in Stockport. And it did just want to tell you a little bit, for a start, a presentation about why I'm here, why why Stockport Libraries, why Emma Handby? Because there's a bit of a personal journey I've been on that hopefully will resonate with some of you. So I'm from a typical family, you know, I'm a mum of two boys. I've got a husband, we've got two dogs, and we watch Planet Earth on a Sunday night. I don't know if any of you watched that, I'm quite moved by some of the campaigns on there. And so were my children like really, really moved by some of the campaigns on there. So started thinking, how can I help? How can I help with this? I've done the climate action now and carbon literacy training. I know that there's loads of stuff that the council are doing and people like yourselves are doing out there in Stockport. Um, but sort of what can I do? So, um, I am responsible for a lot of different customer facing services and the council and thought, I need to do more, I can do more. So heard about a conference in London and it was a Green Libraries conference so off trudged down to London one day. And not all conferences are great, this one is clearly, but it was brilliant. Came back with so many ideas and it all started from there. So that's the sort of preamble to why why we've got to where we have. So when everyone here thinks about climate action, has anybody really thought about the role of libraries before? Yes? No? Mark? That's good. Good. That's my boss. And what we should do. Because ultimately, you know, libraries are the masters of re-use: and reduce. Reuse and recycle. Library books are the best recycled material we have. Or one of them, because we just read them time and time again. It's a really, really positive but very simple story about libraries. Just very quickly. So you know about the library service in Stockport. We have to have one as a council. It's the law and government legislation tells every council in the country we have to have a library service. We've got quite a big library service in Stockport. We've got 16 buildings across the whole borough. And just to point out, we do so much more than just books. We've got ebooks and audio books. We've got loads of computers, free Wi-Fi, warm spaces, loads of free activities. And with regards to the Change Action Now agenda, we are actually leading the way in the whole of Greater Manchester. Stockport is with regards to libraries and and being green. So and I'll come on to that. So. Not keeping up with my paperwork with the slides, which is going to throw me off course. But anyway, so this quote here, I think I love this quote because it really says what, what I'm here doing. And it says what I do in a tin with with regards to Climate Action Now it's all about raising awareness with our communities and residents. And this quote here, if you read that, that explains that really well. I think libraries are really ideally positioned to work with council colleagues, the voluntary sector, private companies, residents generally, everybody in this room. So if you're not involved with libraries, please get involved with libraries, is my plea. The next slide is quite a busy slide and you won't be able to see it, but wanted to point out a few bits on this slide to you. But I've not got a roving mike, so is there one? It's just some key slides that I want to show. So this bit here. Didn't realise this. The greenest library building is the one we've already built. So when I started this journey that I've been on thought, oh well, we need to build more sustainable libraries in terms of their materials and put solar panels on them and all the rest will actually, no, that would increase our carbon footprint more. The greenest libraries of the buildings we already have. So that was quite a shock. And there's another one. And. If you saw the original recycling centre. I've already talked about books and how amazing you are with that respect. And there's another couple bits more. So this one here. We have the power, and that's around the outreach that our library service has and the amount of visitors we have each year. And then the final bit just wanted to point out was this one here. Why can't be my side. It's a little bit blurred, but and it's just generally about educating communities and how libraries can do that. But it's a really interesting slide and there's loads of positive stuff on there to have a look at right quick few facts. We out of time? So. So. And one new book, so a newly printed book is about a kilogram of carbon dioxide. Um, and we loan on average each year ish is a bit different, 450,000 books a year that are reused and reused. So that means those those books aren't new each time. So we are really contributing to saving the planet. We have massive outreach in Stockport. In the last year we had over half a million visits into our libraries. Some of those are repeat customers, yes, but the outreach outreach is tremendous, and it just makes you think if each one of those visitors made one change, if we could educate them about climate action now and they can make one change, how powerful would that be? Just hold that thought. Nothing I'm going to talk about in the next few slides is going to change the world immediately. It's all about educating our communities. And and it does do just that. But every little thing that I'm going to talk about, definitely making a change and hope you'll see. So it's not moving on. Thanks, Liz. So at the some of you might have been involved in this, there was a Schools Climate Assembly youth debate in March and 78 Stockport schools and college representatives voted to have more community gardens in the borough so people can plant and pick fruit and vegetables, reducing the carbon footprint of food. And so in response to that, we've created a Green Libraries group with the Climate Action Now team, and we're developing something called the Bookworms Gardening Club. So the Bookworms Project builds on the success and learning from Cheadle Hulme library, who set up their own community garden. We've got a before, a during and after picture there. Hopefully you can see those quite clearly. And and it was really championed by just one of our library officers, Judy, who's one of the librarians there at Cheadle Hulme library. She got the community, local school groups involved with the planting people donated plants and their time, and local businesses donated money. We bought a bench and created a seating area. And and over the next year, it's my aim really, for every single library in the borough to get growing in a way that's right for each library setting, it might be pots or beds or a simple habitat like a big hotel, but every little bit counts and we want to work with you and local communities to make that happen. We had an event, we kicked off this week with an event at Bredbury Library where school children, residents, local businesses and community groups inputted ideas and shared their knowledge. There's some great photos here from the event, and you'll see the ideas that they had down there in terms of imagining a community garden for Bredbury and really great ideas, ponds and raised beds and all sorts. So we will be working with City of Trees and we will be working with Seeding the Change to do all this. We've got some great partners already, but if you want to get involved in these projects, please speak to your local library or come and speak to me or come and speak to, we've got a couple of libraries colleagues in the room. Could you put your hands up? Sorry to put you on the spot. Come and find us and speak to us. And we'd love. We'd love you to be involved. Last couple of slides. We've also got a new approach to our books. So. This time last year, if a book was tatty in our stock, we got thousands and thousands of books. We'd replace it immediately if it was worn. But instead of keeping them in stock, we're going to add these stickers. "Well-loved", "I'm not perfect, but I'm saving the world" and "Rescued reads, pre-loved pages, saving trees" and adding these stickers is again, just about raising awareness of Climate Action Now and helping to spread the word. And every time somebody loads this book, hopefully they'll see that message and it'll make them think. We've also got a Design the Future library card competition. So this is live now. Please get involved. If you've got children, get them to enter the competition. We we're getting rid of our plastic library cards. And we are going to have biodegradable library cards in circulation. And the winning design will be on the front of that library card that all residents of Stockport will use. And clearly, if we've got biodegradable cards and there's less recycling needed because they're not plastic, not single use plastic, which means there's less litter, which means there's great biodiversity in Stockport. -And. -Another example of some of the events and activities we're having, and we want to do more of this. We've been doing quite a lot of events around spreading the word and raising awareness. These are some photos from some community events that happened over the summer. We have had back box building campaigns, which is going to be even bigger last year. This is a mobile beehive that we bought into our libraries. The children were amazed. And also Brookhouse building. And lastly, I'm going to finish off by telling you a little bit about what's next. We know we can do more with our buildings, our library buildings. So we're working with our colleagues to look at that. We know we can do more with our vehicles. We are we are really trying to map out our library delivery routes and looking at the prospect of using electric vehicles as well, because we've got diesel vans at the moment. We really want to change that, and we want to increase the number of nature and climate themed events we hold at our library. So please, please get involved and and just carry on with a lot of what we've been doing already that I've talked about today. So my final message come along to your local library, get involved, or maybe give consideration in your own services or businesses to doing some of the same, whether that's events or creating green spaces. Hopefully it's giving you a little bit of inspiration about what is possible. Thank you. Thank you so much Emma. Thank you. Next up to speak is Charlee Fitzgerald. Charlee's from our public health team at the council. But lots of people know Charlee. She's been pivotal. Pivotal in developing a new cross-sector food plan and is now looking at how we can build a food partnership in Stockport. Charlee. -Hi everybody. Thank you for the introduction there. Feel like I've met lots of you because food is only one part of my role. I do lots and lots of other things. So yes, please bear with me. So, um, about a year ago, some of my colleagues in the public health team, we started looking at, you know, what are we doing around food in Stockport and what have we done previously, and can we build on that? So this is where this works come from. Food systems. All my goodness, they are complicated. These are the influencers, the dimensions, the activities, all the things that happen when we're talking about farm to fork. It's how our food is made, it's produced, then it is packaged and then it's distributed how it gets to us. And then it's like the food waste and how we reuse that thing. So yes, as we can see, this is very complicated. And we wanted to look at okay, there's just there are going to be things that we cannot influence here on a local level in Stockport. So we want to be realistic with the work that we are doing. And so we looked at what we had done previously around our food bought food work and what we could do within Stockport. So we started out doing some workshops and we started with them. What's already going on, who is already working in the area, what do we want to see? What are our priorities and how can we do it and how can we measure it? So in the middle there, we looked at what would be the components or the dimensions of a Stockport food system. And we came up with policies. So the policies that influence our food, our local food economy, health and wellbeing community, and this is the social side of food, the food that brings us together, food and communities, the environment very much why we're here today and education. So food and education also food and education about food. And then around that we looked at what were the previous priorities. And this was work from 2013 and 2015 called Feeding Stockport. So don't know if people have been around long enough. They might have heard about this work before. And we had an amazing food team in the public health team, and they were really on board with this, engaging with partners. And unfortunately, due to funding cuts from sustainable food places, from the council and from other sectors, that food team's no longer available. So again, coming back to these priorities, what do we want to do around food? What do we want to change. So some of these are community food growing. That's you know we've had amazing examples of that today. The other one sustainable supply chains health and wellbeing and effective partnerships. So within that we asked people what's the vision? If we create a partnership, what would we all be working towards? And that would be to empower all the Stockport residents to access a diverse range of affordable, healthy and nutritious food at culturally appropriate food there. So. So who have we engaged with every time I speak to someone? Or have you spoken to insert person here? So we've engaged with lots of community organisations including Age UK, Life Leisure, Seeding The Change, who are here today, the Stockport Food Network, the Green Network. We have engaged with lots of departments in the council, so that includes public health planning, adult social care, social value communities, neighbourhoods as well as the NHS including school nursing, children, healthy way, even a paediatrician and the catering manager Stepping Hill Hospital and. We have such amazing opportunities in Stockport for food. So you know, we've got Woodbank, Community Hub and Woodbank Park, Redling Community Allotment, which are doing amazing things and really going above and beyond as an allotment. We've got Town of Culture this year. We are. We have a whole section on Stockport Taste which is celebrating the food culture within Stockport. It's amazing food businesses and and those community networks. And what we want to do is build on top of that and be able to connect these people more. So. That's right. Yeah. So, um, a lot of what I've been asked is like, why do we want to set up a partnership and found this video and thought it was such a this would just explain it a lot better. And I just want you to pay attention to the part in the video is about five minutes. So after this I'm not going to talk very much there. It talks about the hub and spoke model, which is often what we do with networks. So we have one person in the middle or one organisation in the middle, and they're expected to send out the information, receive all the information, facilitate all of these connections. But we want to try and move away from that model. You shouldn't need the person in the middle to help you facilitate -connections. -People, organisations and plants share one interesting thing in common. They flourish in diversity and connectedness of their ecosystem. That's like tree stumps kept alive through the nutrients provided by their connections to other trees. Our networks provide vital support to us individually and help with the crisis we face collectively. Networks are about survival and resilience. Working with others is also what gives us hope and gets our imagination going about what the world could be. By coming together, we find the potential to create a different future. A strong network becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The ecological word for this is synergy. This word captures the idea that in the multitude of relationships between diverse kinds of life, we experience the real power of nature. The more skills, experiences, and worldviews we bring together, the more resilient, adaptable, and joyful we can be in our communities. But how do we manage that? The reality is that in many places, people and organisations are isolated. They feel like they have to tackle immense challenges on their own. Often in communities when people do connect, it's with 1 or 2 others, which leaves many places fragmented. Different organisations or groups don't connect, and people often struggle to connect with each other even within the same organisation. This is also the case with people working on different aspects of the food system. Big picture can be missed along with the opportunity to work together to make a real difference. People can't collaborate, share experiences of what worked and didn't work. They compete for resources and funding duplicate efforts. Yet many will still fall through the cracks altogether, feeling that they have no support and no capacity to try to create change. So how can we do better? There are a couple of models. A common network pattern looks like a hub with spokes. One organisation, often a large charity or a local council, will have the time and resources to develop connections to many different people and groups. This kind of network has a lot of strengths. It makes it easy to communicate with people. Get a quick picture of what is needed and coordinate action. The hub and spoke network can make a lot happen in a very short time. But is this the best? If you're thinking about long term? It centralises all the knowledge and power in the network. Everything relies on just one person or organisation. How do they choose who is included and prioritise decisions? Even with the best will in the world and overworked heart can become a barrier and a gatekeeper, controlling access to resources and relationships. It's hard for network members to meaningfully take on responsibility or leadership, which in turn often cements the feeling that the centre have to manage everything. There's also the question of synergy where does the energy and passion come from that leads to inspiration? What happens when the centre loses its funding? Or the person holding all those relationships falls ill or decides to move on? You're potentially behind where you started. What is the network we need to build if we want to make lasting change? We're aiming for a dense web of connections between and within organisations, individuals and organisations that develop the relationships they need to easily reach out to each other directly to collaborate. Innovate and share knowledge, experience and tips on problem solving. Ideally, this network also maintains lots of connections to organisations and people outside the core to allow the network as a whole to benefit from their expertise and to contribute to achieving change at a bigger scale. So how do we go about building this network? In some ways it's quite simple. As you build relationships with others, you learn more about their interests and their challenges. Who's working on the same things? Who could help them? Then you bring them together, even if this doesn't come naturally with a little effort, joining the dots is something we can all do. Because each line is a relationship. Building relationships is the same as supporting a strong network. It takes respect, care, time for other people and time for trust to develop. Working together towards a common goal, sharing experiences and expertise. Being curious and open to learning new things or seeing issues in a new light. There are a few simple checks you can do to assess the health of your network. Does your network reflect the diversity of your community? If not, reach out and find out more about the communities who are missing the issues they face and how you might work together. Are you moving towards a more connected and resilient network pattern? You can bring people together with food, stories or shared challenges to start building more connections between groups. The members feel ownership over the network. Think about all that needs doing and how you can support others to take on a more meaningful role. Supporting healthy networks is something that anyone can do, and there are a lot of resources to help. We've found that networks are not only crucial to help achieve what you want to do, but a network will support you to do bigger and better things that you could ever have imagined. Be brave, build connections, and let's work to make -the world better together. -And here, and I hope that that video was useful and. Hope that you can apply that to any network that you're working in, you know, here. You've got lots of networks here in Stockport. And it's what we want with the food partnership is to try and move away from this. We have one person in the middle who's coordinating it and they send out the information. But we really want to start facilitating more relationships, relationships, connections, building on ideas. People don't need to wait until a partnership meeting before they can talk to someone. They can go out and do that. So what are the next steps for what we're doing? And on Tuesday the 14th November here between 10 and 12, we are going to have a partnership event. Anybody working in food or would like to work in food is welcome to come along, and we're going to continue to try and support these relationships. As said, connecting people outside of that hub and spoke model and bringing together those different parts of the food system. So really, again, looking at those ideas of community food growing and a great idea we've got is a growing and green space group that is coming up. And that's about bringing all food growers together and trying to encourage them to apply for funding and share resources. And I'm going to make an application to the National Lottery Fund to see if we can create a a food coordinator post that would not sit within the council. We really do need something that's not sitting in council, that's sitting out there in communities and with businesses, and we are going to reapply to become a sustainable food place. If you want to be involved, get in touch with me or come along to the event on the 14th. Thank you. - Thanks, Charlee, and I'm really pleased to welcome our last speakers of the day who are Seeding the Change and saving the change of a fantastic local, nature focussed group who are leading wellbeing sessions around food growing. Welcome Gemma, Aimee and Huku to the stage. - So firstly, really relieved to see that there was no awful fuss over. About that we were doing so. Thank you very much for having us today to speak about our project. Um, I'm Aimee, this is Gemma, and we've got Huku who's been a volunteer with us for nearly six months now, who's been central to some of the work that we've been doing at the allotment in Shaw Heath Community Garden. So he'll be in a lot of pictures, so trying to make it not too written word so here are a few pictures of some of the projects we've been involved in. So we set up early last year, um, William Jevons, a mental health nurse, and we both have children at the same school, so we both enjoy gardening. So we started volunteering at our children's school garden and soon realised kind of how beneficial it was to our health, but to the children's health and actually how much we enjoyed it and how if we could use do projects similar to that outside of um, the school and bring like our own kind of work include our own kind of clinical work into it, it would be a really beneficial kind of project. So it was for the health benefits, but it was also I'm very passionate, as is Gemma, about kind of more, um, sustainable approach to healthcare. Um, as a GP, I've become the green lead, the Heaton's PCN and also the Greater Manchester Greener Practice, which is basically primary care, primary care clinicians who are working together to kind of reduce carbon footprint, um, across, um, well, across the UK. Um, and a big part of this is looking at more preventable approach to health. And also um, we like do prescribing. So kind of gardening fits really well into all of this. So and alongside that was obviously the environmental benefits and improving biodiversity. And also what's been amazing is all the links that we've just made by doing that really positive, um, really some really inspiring stories. Some particularly in general practice, I've found it quite hard sometimes feel like I'm working alone, and it's a bit of a challenge to make people want to change, but attending events like this has just really kind of galvanised us and give us the energy to move things forward. So what are the health benefits? Um, so if any of you are gardeners or nature nature lovers, you probably already know how you feel when you are in green space. So there is something called biophilia. So we have an innate human instinct to spend time in nature. It's in our DNA. So we are meant to be in nature and our body responds to that so instantly. Our courses all levels reduce. Our stress hormone. Serotonin increases. If you get your hands dirty, there's bacteria in there that improves your returning levels. So it's well it's evidence based. And there's been numerous studies across the world kind of um. You know, proving the benefits about being in gardening and being in nature. So one study shows that, you know, if you increase your access to green space by 10%, it actually equates to being five years younger. So rather than get Botox or whatever, get out in the garden. Um, and we know that, um, living in green space also is associated with less income related health inequality, but unfortunately, a lot of our more deprived, the deprived areas and people on low income have poorer access to green space. They already have more physical and mental health problems. So if we can improve, access to green space will instantly hopefully improve some of the problems. And so the direct physical and mental health benefits from being in nature and gardening are things like reduce hypertension, reduce cardiovascular risk, reduce diabetes, obesity, inactivity is a major problem. Um, whilst it also reduces cognitive decline and reduces risk of Covid cancer. There's just so many positives. And I just think if we if the pharmaceutical companies could put a price on it, they would be literally that's all they would do. So I'm just trying to, um. Well, we're all passionate here, but just think green space and gardening and nature so much that we could benefit from improving our access across. So let's just replicate some of them things that I've just said about wellbeing and how it improves, um, mental health. So it improves mood. Self-esteem gives people a sense of purpose. So a lot of patients that I see, some people definitely benefit from antidepressants, but think a lot of people lack that routine. They lack a sense of community and that sense of purpose and gardening and being in nature kind of gives that, that, um, and in turn, if we can encourage kind of green social prescribing across Stockport, across the UK, it actually reduces appointments by up to a third. And alongside that is the healthcare costs associated with that. The why? Why Stockport and why? What's that? You know, how does this relate to kind of our goals. So as you can see here, mental health, physical health, they have a massive financial burden um to the UK. So mental health costs up to 5% of the GDP. And physical inactivity alone is associated with 1 in 6 deaths. So and if you can see from there our Stockport stats, you know over two thirds of our population are actually overweight or obese. And mental health is rising, especially after Covid. Um, and it's estimated that a third of population are within 15 minutes of green space, which is recommended for, um, you know, the health benefits. So and how that relates to kind of climate action now is actually the NHS has a large carbon footprint. So 5% of the UK's carbon emissions come from the NHS and 25% of that is from medication. So if we can reduce kind of medication burden then um, obviously it will have that direct impact upon carbon emissions. But also, you know, greening obviously takes carbon out of the equation as well. So it's kind of a win win. And the other thing is unfortunately pharmaceuticals, they do have a direct impact upon our ecosystems. So if we can reduce the prescribing by again by green or blue prescribing then we'll reduce that problem as well. Gemma's just going to talk a little bit about some of our projects. And then Huku will take it from there. - So we are as Liz introduced us Seeding The Change came about because we incorporated incorporate it as a CIC just it was the best way for us to move forward, to be able to get involved with more, um, communities in Stockport. So, um. We approached the council who recommended to us. Oh thank you. We approached the council who recommended to us Web Lane Allotments in Offerton, who have been fantastic in supporting us. They're really open minded, the really forward thinking, getting away from sort of old school release of allotments and ways of working to pushing forward. Open it up to everybody. So we now have two social prescribing sessions on a. Monday at Webb. Lane Allotments in on a Monday morning we have a session up to eight participants, um, for people seeking asylum and people with refugee status. And then. in the afternoon. we have for. eight participants with low level mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and and. social isolation. So they're really. affected. people can self-refer to those or healthcare professionals we've had Stockport Homes have sent referrals through get, the Council have sent referrals through. So you know. it's really. widespread, which is really positive to see. That's where we met Huku. And um, one of our other projects. on a Thursday is, um, we secured funding last year from. Greater Manchester Environment Fund. It's the green Space Fund, um, to install a community garden in Shaw Heath. Shaw Heath's a lot of, um, terraced housing. They do have outside space, but a lot of it's concrete. It's not a lot of people with sort of grassed gardens and green space outside. The community gardens attached to the community centre at Kimberly Street. And it's it was just totally overgrown and derelict. So we have community sessions there every Thursday morning for a couple of hours where members of the community. can come along. It's open to anybody and we're regenerating that with the community. We do different events. So we've just had an event actually, where we've done pumpkin picking in the garden and just getting the local residents involved, getting different groups that use the community centre involved. And that's been really varied. There's like even a clog dancing group there that want to get involved in the garden, you know, and um, just to make sure it's sustainable is one looked after in the future? Getting those groups involved in local residents has been really important. Um, another community that we're working with again on the Green Spaces Fund is Victoria Park, which is really close to our allotments that we're playing. Um, there's two high rise flats and some low rise maisonettes as well. The higher sites don't have any outside space at all to each flat. They're just windows straight to outside. The low rise do have very small concrete balconies. So we've been working with those communities to help them bring green space into their homes. So we've done events with people to grow produce on the windowsills while we give it all out. And so we've done planting up. We had, when was it, Easter and last Christmas. We've done all sorts of events, so we've had over a hundred families come in, children planting wildflower seeds, children taking things home, adults getting fully involved, taking all sorts home, which has been really positive. You can see some of the comments that we've had from different communities and. Yeah, it's a bit. Sorry. Yeah. For Greenstock, we went along to Greenstock obviously Liz we're we're part of the Green Network and it was such a fantastic event. Hopefully it's going to be a yearly now going forward. Um, but we went along. We were talking to people about all sorts of things biodiversity, health and wellbeing, all these different things, and also showing people small space gardening because there was quite a few people that we spoke to that don't have a very small balcony. And, you know, we had some really positive feedback. There was one lady who came in particular or sticks in my mind. She said, you know, I think cost of living crisis crucified me, she said. I'm a single parent. And I live with my three year old daughter and don't have any money but really want her. I've got a tiny concrete outdoor balcony. And so she, she made. a bath out of her old baby bath. And you know, we were able to give her some other stuff to go forward with it. And she just made that out of that. And, you know, so there was some really positive