This year was the final year of the 3-year Living Heritage of the River Don project and what a year it has been. I’ve picked out some of the highlights to share with you.
River Guardians
We’ve worked with 19 fantastic school, education and scout groups this year during our LHRD and Brelms Trust project and have taught hundreds of children how to look after their river! Pupils have created miniature aquariums for mayfly larvae, helped stop pollution going down drains, used a microscope and litter-picked by the river.
A huge thank you to our education volunteers who supported our educational visits this year!
Youth Art
We’ve been involved in three really fantastic youth art projects this year!
The first was at mural project in Doncaster, working with artist Chris Swain, where young people learnt street art skills and brightened up a rather grey wall a Crimpsall Sluice.
For our next project we worked alongside street artist Faunagraphic at Holmes Lock, restoring a vandalised wall along the Don Valley Way. The wall features creatures and plants that can be found along our waterways.
For our final project we worked in collaboration with Site Gallery and award-winning artist Eelyn Lee who led art students from the Sheffield College to create a film and exhibition of work about the river Don and Wardsend Cemetry. The River Project: Categories of Life and Death was exhibited for a week at Site Gallery and was accompanied by a special outdoor screening in the Cemetery itself!
Volunteer Days and Clean Ups
We’ve worked with 143 volunteers to remove 1644 plastic bags, 13 trolleys, 58 tyres, 17 traffic cones, 11 bikes, 5 prams and 5 TV’s from the rivers in Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster. We’ve been improving several ‘hotspot’ areas by installing benches, bins and new information boards to teach passers-by about the history and wildlife of the Don.
Thanks to all those that dedicated their time by attending volunteer days, meetings and training. Our volunteers have contributed 1122 hours to improving the river Don and Don Valley Way this year and some of them have even organised their own litter picks! We hope you continue to work with us in 2019 and on our new project.
Well done all!
Moss Valley Project
This project started in December 2017 and was funded by grants from the Don Network and Yorkshire water. The project was ran by our Project Assistant Matt Duffy. During the project we removed obstacles to fish migration, created in-stream habitats and reinstated marshland along the river Moss. You can read more about this project here.
Discovery Days and Community Events
We’ve really enjoyed partnering up with the Canal & Rivers Trust, Shanks, Friends of Wardsend Cemetery, Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust and many other organisations on our community events in 2018.
We hope these events will continue to grow so look out for them in 2019.
Apprenticeship By Anthony Cox
I have been working at DCRT for the last 15 months but my Apprenticeship is now drawing to a close. In the time I have been with the trust I have learnt a lot and loved every second with my role. I have learnt lots of skills that will be useful in my future career and have gained lots of useful qualifications as well. But the best part of working in the DCRT team is that we are all passionate about the river and surrounding environment and we all work hard to try to improve it as much as we can. Working with our amazing volunteers is great to, its good to meet people who give up their time to help improve the world for other people without gaining anything but each others friendship. So in conclusion coming to work for the trust is the best decision I ever made.
| Whats coming next?
Hidden Heritage Secret Streams! We did it! Our funding application for the Hidden Heritage Secret Streams Project has been successful!! Read more about it in the press release here! We can’t wait to get started on the project in the new year! Thank you to the project Funders: |
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