Our 'Celebration Day' Highlights
We welcomed over 300 visitors at the Dean Heritage Centre during our ‘Celebration Day’ Sunday 19th September.
It was fantastic to see so many people, also celebrating with us all as part of 'Heritage Open days'.
Visitors on the day told us:
“Huge number of projects to see, very enthusiastic project
leaders and volunteers. I now have a greater understanding of our Forest heritage”
“We liked the buzz of the event and enjoyed the variety and
interactivity of the events. We also liked the new gallery display for Foresters’
Forest – very informative and inspiring”
“Lots of fascinating information from passionate and knowledgeable
people. We’re quite captivated and have decided to extend our stay in the
Forest of Dean for a second week”
“Something for everyone, very interesting. We’ll get out and
visit more places as a result”
We look back, in photos and words:
Wyldwood Arts were busy inviting children and parents to
join in with arts & crafts and community banner making, whilst Heritage Crafts sessions, including wood working and willow weaving,
were run by The Rewild Project in the paddock.
Visitors met the Freeminers to learn about our coal mining past and the Future for Freemining, alongside excellent ‘look and learn’ with Paul Rutter explaining the Forest’s wonderful Ancient & Notable Trees.
Our ‘Stronghold for Nature’ teams were outside with informative gazebo displays explaining how much they have achieved with nature activities for children, conservation grazing, reptile protection, ponds creation and meadow conservation with Dean Meadows Group, Worcester Walk Community Project and Pillowell Rec community team.
Our App developers were on hand to explain the apps and
their walking trails you can download and explore – see Hidden Heritage Apps and Geoheritage of the Dean
Dave Green, of our Geology of the Forest project,
enthusiastically shared his geology knowledge and brought the most amazing
range of rock samples for everyone to see and touch.
These children enjoyed reading 'The Story of the Forest', our children's history booked launched this year with Forest of Dean Local History Society, who were there with the book's author Andy Seed.
Our Voices from the Forest, Reading the Forest & Forest
Oral Histories teams were busy sharing audio recordings about our history,
culture and literature of the Forest.
The ‘Love Your Forest’ Trashconverter was on site, teaching
us how to keep our Forest clean and providing handy recycling tips.
Foresters' Forest Exhibition - Gallery 4 (upstairs)
We took over gallery 4 at the Dean Heritage Centre with our Foresters’
Forest exhibition.
If you missed seeing it during our Celebration Day, the colourful
exhibition can be viewed until end December!
Our massive thanks go to all our 20 projects who joined us to celebrate – their displays looked amazing, and we appreciate the effort that went into producing them. It helped make the day such a success.
We also
thank the Dean Heritage Centre team for
helping us host such a fantastic day – and to Dean Radio for joining us to record
live interviews!
Pictured left: Chris McFarling (Foresters' Forest Chairman), Janet Marrott (Heritage Open Days Organiser), Sue Middleton (Foresters' Forest Programme Manager), Mark George (Dean Heritage Centre Manager).
Group photo above: Foresters’ Forest project teams