We’re thrilled to announce that our community campaign, Discoveries on your Doorstep won Highly Commended in the ‘Improving the Environment, Promoting Health’ category at the ADEPT Awards!

The Association of Directors for Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport Awards (ADEPT) recognise and celebrate work that makes a real difference to local communities, whether this is through improving the environment by delivering sustainable services, or supporting and empowering residents by creating engaging local projects.

We were commissioned by North Yorkshire County Council to deliver a pilot intervention to target the general public in Scarborough and Selby, with the aim of encouraging more local people to engage with walking in these areas. The project needed to: positively change residents’ perceptions of walking, encourage them to get out and discover the local area, and to ultimately increase engagement with the Council’s Pathways to Health walking scheme.

Championing the campaign with students at Selby Community Primary School.

 

 

With all this in mind, we gathered insight from a number of different local groups including schools, healthcare professionals and walking enthusiasts, to co-create the campaign. 

The campaign centred around a number of themed walks across Selby and Scarborough, which were designed to encouraged people to get outside and experience the unsung history, nature and culture that their local area has to offer. The free, downloadable trails gave the public the perfect opportunity to discover the natural gems in their local area, as well as experience the wellbeing benefits of getting out and about.

The vision was to build stronger communities across Scarborough and Selby by empowering our target audiences to engage with their local area, to feel a sense of pride in the campaigns and to really take ownership of them.

The intervention has been a huge success and the results speak for themselves:

  • Footfall in the trail areas has increased by 87% from 2015 to 2017 (according to ‘people counter data’).
  • 1154 likes on Facebook
  • 3,368 unique website visits across the two locations
  • New trails have been created and promoted in Scarborough by local community groups.
  • 98 community groups and businesses engaged with campaign communications
  • 10 community champions were recruited
  • 20 health groups including GPs, CCGs and charities shared campaign media
  • 9 schools took part
  • 4 campaign-branded community events have taken place so far

Congrats to Hertfordshire County Council, who won first place for this category.