The Places that Speak to Us and the Publics We Talk With: Shaping Environmental Histories

REC（研究环境变化）项目：“对我们说话的地方和我们交谈的公众”（PI, Peter Coates，布里斯托尔大学）合作伙伴：Quantock Hills AONB服务（萨默塞特郡布鲁姆菲尔德的Fyne Court）计划活动背景REC项目“对我们说话的地方和我们交谈的公众”的合作伙伴之一是管理Quantock山杰出自然美地区（AONB服务）的团队。此次合作的重点是“掉落的果实：绘制Quantock山正在消失的果园景观”，这是一个为期3个月的工作包，由Marianna Dudley（博士后研究员，其博士工作是由AHRC资助的，目前在布里斯托尔大学获得了9个月的AHRC早期职业奖学金，在Coates的指导下）在2012年春季进行并完成。果园是萨默塞特郡自然、文化和经济景观的重要组成部分。然而，在过去的半个世纪里，与全国趋势一致，果园覆盖率急剧下降（根据自然英格兰2011年的一份报告，自1950年以来，全国范围内的果园覆盖率下降了63%）。虽然萨默塞特果园的研究主要集中在该县的其他地区，但2010年AONB服务的探索性工作表明，果园可能比以前认为的更重要。全面研究的愿望提供了机会，以扩大在规划之前REC/LWEC研究网络期间发起的合作，“地方，全球过程：环境变化的历史”（2011）。(科茨还与AONB服务开发Quantock走皇家地理学会(RGS-IBG)——的第一批走的最近推出了“发现英国”项目:http://www.discoveringbritain.org/walks/region/south-west-england/quantocks.html)达德利的研究(宣传,如该走,AONB服务网站)创建了一个新的组情节的多层地图前,当前和残余果园网站内AONB区和缓冲区。有确凿的经验证据表明，果园对当地经济、社区和生态的重要性（传统果园被英国生物多样性行动计划指定为优先栖息地），为重新种植树木筹集资金的投标将更具影响力。在达德利的项目接近尾声时，后续的教区级阶段的愿望变得清晰起来：使用19世纪早期到中期的什一税记录和地图的数据——在她的项目后期在萨默塞特遗产中心进行了数字化——为每个拥有AONB土地的教区生成微观层面的信息。“掉落的果实，第二阶段”是科茨最近（2012年9月28日）向萨默塞特郡议会管理的Quantock Hills AONB可持续发展基金提交的5,970英镑申请的主题（预计将于2012年11月作出决定；作为该申请的一部分，科茨从布里斯托尔生物科学学院的园艺研究遗产中获得了剩余25%的资金）。这种创新的数字资源将立即为土地使用决策提供信息，为AONB服务和教区委员会提供证据，鼓励在教区一级种植社区果园，甚至恢复社区出版社——这一事件可以加强社区联系，因为越来越多的居民从其他地方搬来。第三阶段，本次申请的主题是20,000英镑的后续基金，将果园项目带入了新的领域。经过与AONB服务部门的广泛讨论，我们计划在2013年10月的那一周举办一场苹果活动，其中包括10月21日的国家苹果日：“在Quantocks的核心”。提议的活动：在量子托克的核心“量子托克的核心”由两个相互交织的部分组成：1。“让你的创造力流淌”——苹果诗歌活动，特别为这个场合委托了诗歌。Ralph Pite教授是浪漫主义和生态文学专家和诗人，他是布里斯托尔大学生态文学学院的主任。以及最近成立（2010年10月10日）的布里斯托尔诗歌研究所（http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2012/8840.html）所长丹尼尔·卡林教授。2. “了解你的果园”——在布鲁姆菲尔德的Fyne Court （AONB服务总部）举办的一个相关的“路演”式活动，模仿了今年早些时候举办的活动，作为AHRC连接社区“了解你的地方，了解你的布里斯托尔”项目的一部分，在这个项目中，科茨是“了解你的动物园”活动的CI和组织者（5月12日）。这将为社区成员提供一个机会，更多地了解当地果园的过去、现在和未来，并贡献果园的回忆和纪念品。我们聘请了当地的活动组织者雷切尔·凯利（Rachel Kelly），她的经验包括组织埃克斯穆尔美食节（Exmoor Food Festival）好几年。由于她还管理着埃克斯穆尔旅游协会，凯利在当地美食界有着丰富的人脉。她还兼职担任10Radio的业务经理，这是萨默塞特郡第一家非营利性社区广播电台（2008年成立）。10Radio总部设在Wiveliscombe，服务于Quantock地区的10个教区（总人口为10万，包括陶顿和惠灵顿的大部分地区）。http://10radio.org/ 10Radio的户外广播车将提供现场调频传输（同时也向2000名注册听众进行在线广播）。我们还将调查其他传播形式。最初的计划任务将是安排与BBC1的国家档案团队（总部设在布里斯托尔的自然历史部门）和BBC广播4台布里斯托尔“诗歌请”的制片人马克·斯莫利的会议。皮特已经咨询了很多诗人，他们都很热情。诗歌朗读会以苹果、苹果汁和苹果酒品尝会作为结束。参与者还将有机会亲自动手压榨苹果（凯利有两个社区压榨机）。整个活动将提供一个肥沃的环境，以征求当地关于果园重要性的意见，以及对其衰落和潜在回报的态度。本次活动的反馈将为AONB服务即将进行的管理计划审查（2015-2020年）提供信息。“在Quantocks的核心”是与AONB服务代理经理Iain Porter，通讯员Georgie Grant和景观规划官Emma-Jane Preece广泛讨论的结果，并得到了他们的全力支持。这些活动是为AONB保护和增强自然美景、保护/增加生物多样性和鼓励社区参与的任务量身定制的，以及即将出台的具体管理计划目标（2015-20），将通过不同的媒体更广泛地传播ahrc资助的果园项目的发现，并提高人们对Quantock果园作为一种多重价值资源的认识。AONB服务还邀请科茨每周在其网站http://www.quantockhills.com/上撰写一篇客座博客，在景观和环境的艺术和人文研究的更广泛背景下，提出苹果、果园、环境价值和基于地点的身份等主题。（他的第一篇博客是为了纪念10月21日的全国苹果日和柯勒律治的生日，最近才发表。）这些博客将在该服务的Facebook页面（3000名好友）和Twitter页面（550名关注者）上进行推广。它们也将刊登在AONB服务的电子通讯中。

REC (Researching Environmental Change) PROJECT: 'The Places That Speak to Us and the Publics We Talk With' (PI, Peter Coates, Bristol University) PARTNER: Quantock Hills AONB Service (Fyne Court, Broomfield, Somerset) BACKGROUND TO PLANNED ACTIVITYOne of the Partners for the REC project 'The Places That Speak to Us and the Publics We Talk With' is the team that manages the Quantock Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB Service). The collaboration's focal point has been 'Fallen Fruits: Mapping the Disappearing Orchard Landscape of the Quantock Hills' - a 3-month work package conducted and completed during Spring 2012 by Marianna Dudley (a post-doctoral researcher whose doctoral work was AHRC-funded and who currently holds a 9-month AHRC Early Career Fellowship at Bristol U. under Coates' mentorship).Orchards are an integral feature of Somerset's physical, cultural and economic landscapes. Over the past half-century, however, mirroring national trends, orchard cover has declined dramatically (63% nationally since 1950, according to a 2011 report by Natural England). Though Somerset orchard studies focus on other parts of the county, exploratory work by the AONB Service in 2010 suggested that orchards might have been a larger ingredient of the Quantocks than previously thought. The desirability of a full scale study provided the opportunity to extend the collaboration initiated during planning for the immediately preceding REC/LWEC Research Network, 'Local Places, Global Processes: Histories of Environmental Change' (2011). (Coates also worked with the AONB Service to develop a Quantock walk for the Royal Geographical Society (RGS-IBG) - one of the first batch of walks in the recently launched 'Discovering Britain' project: http://www.discoveringbritain.org/walks/region/south-west-england/quantocks.html)Dudley's research (publicized, like the RGS walk, on the AONB Service's website) created a new set of multi-layered maps that plot former, current and remnant orchard sites within the AONB area and its buffer zone. Rooted in solid empirical evidence of the significance of orchards to the local economy, community and ecology (traditional orchards are designated priority habitat under the UK Biodiversity Action Plan), bids for funding to replant trees will pack more punch. Toward the end of Dudley's project, the desirability of a follow-on, parish-level phase became clear: the use of data from early-to-mid-nineteenth-century tithe records and maps - digitized at the Somerset Heritage Centre during her project's latter stages - to generate micro-level information for each parish with AONB land. 'Fallen Fruits, Phase 2' is the subject of a pending application for £5,970 that Coates recently submitted (28 September 2012) to the Quantock Hills AONB Sustainable Development Fund administered by Somerset County Council (decision expected in November 2012; as part of this application, Coates secured funding for the remaining 25% of costs from a bequest for horticultural research held by Bristol's School of Biological Sciences). This innovative digital resource will immediately inform land use decisions, providing the AONB Service and parish councils with the evidence to encourage community orchard planting at parish level, and even the reinstatement of community presses - an event that can reinforce community ties in an area where growing numbers of inhabitants have moved in from elsewhere. Phase 3, the subject of this application to the £20,000 follow-on fund, moves the Orchard Project into fresh territory. Following extensive discussion with the AONB Service, we plan to hold an Apple Event timetabled for the week in October 2013 that includes National Apple Day (21 October): 'At the Core of the Quantocks'.PROPOSED ACTIVITY: AT THE CORE OF THE QUANTOCKS'At the Core of the Quantocks' consists of two interwoven strands: 1. 'Let Your Creative Juices Flow' - an Apple Poetry Event, with poetry commissioned specially for the occasion. To be organized in conjunction with Professor Ralph Pite, Romantic and ecological literature specialist and poet, who directs Bristol U.'s Institute for Advanced Studies, http://www.bristol.ac.uk/ias/people/ralph-profile.html, as well as Professor Daniel Karlin, director of the recently launched (10 October 2010) Bristol Poetry Institute (http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2012/8840.html). 2. 'Know Your Orchard' - an associated 'road show'-style event at Fyne Court, Broomfield (AONB Service headquarters) that is modelled on events held earlier his year as part of the AHRC Connected Communities 'Know Your Place, Know Your Bristol' project, on which Coates was a CI and organizer of the 'Know Your Zoo' event (12 May). This will provide an opportunity for community members to find out more about local orchards, past, present and future, and to contribute orchard memories and memorabilia. We have procured the services of a locally-based event organizer, Rachel Kelly, whose experience includes organizing the Exmoor Food Festival over several years. As she has also administered the Exmoor Tourist Association, Kelly has a wealth of contacts in the local food world. She also works part-time as business manager for 10Radio, Somerset's first not-for-profit community radio station (est. 2008). Based in Wiveliscombe, 10Radio serves ten parishes in the Quantock area (with a combined population of 100,000, including most of Taunton and Wellington). http://10radio.org/ 10Radio's outdoor broadcast vehicle will provide live FM transmission (and also broadcast on-line to 2,000 signed-up listeners). We will also investigate additional forms of dissemination. An initial planning task will be to arrange meetings with BBC1's Countryfile team (based at Bristol's Natural History Unit) and with Mark Smalley, producer for BBC Radio 4's Bristol-based 'Poetry Please'. Pite has already consulted various poets, who are all enthusiastic. The poetry readings will be bookended by apple, apple juice and cider tastings. Participants will also have the chance to try their hand at apple pressing (Kelly has access to two community presses). The event as a whole will provide a fertile environment for canvassing local opinion regarding the importance of orchards and attitudes to their decline and potential return. Feedback from this event will inform the AONB Service's forthcoming Management Plan Review (for 2015-2020).'At the Core of the Quantocks' is the outcome of extensive discussion with Iain Porter, AONB Service acting manager, Georgie Grant, communications officer, and Emma-Jane Preece, landscape planning officer, and enjoys their full support. These activities - tailored to the AONB's mandate to conserve and enhance natural beauty, to protect/augment biodiversity and encourage community engagement, as well as specific forthcoming Management Plan objectives (2015-20) - will disseminate the findings of the AHRC-funded Orchard Project more widely and through different media and heighten awareness of Quantock orchards as a multiple-value resource. The AONB Service has also invited Coates to contribute a weekly guest blog to its website http://www.quantockhills.com/ that raises the subjects of apples, orchards, environmental values and place-based identities within the wider context of arts and humanities research on landscape and environment. (His first blog, marking National Apple Day and Coleridge's birthday on 21 October, recently appeared.) These bogs will be promoted on the Service's Facebook page (3,000 friends) and its Twitter page (550 followers). They will also feature in the AONB Service's electronic newsletter.