Rewilding Our Community
How Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust has changed by being involved with the Community Climate Action Project
Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust (LNT) is a well-known and respected resident-led hub that has been the anchor organisation for Lockleaze in north Bristol for 25 years. In this blog post, Eleanor Fairbraida, Really Wild Lockleaze Project Coordinator, shares how the Community Climate Action Project has enabled the organisation and community to grow, alongside sharing insights to help other community organisations looking to take climate action.
Lockleaze community action
Lockleaze began as a garden council estate in the 1950s / 60s but became ‘left behind’ with the challenges around housing, health and hardships and an area of high deprivation. Currently housing around 13,500 people over 162 hectares, if you live here, you might live seven years less than someone in a neighbouring ward.
However, the community in Lockleaze is resilient, proud of where we live, and is the fourth most diverse ward in Bristol, bringing a strong cultural mix to the area. LNT fosters connection and wellbeing, while addressing local issues such as housing, health, and social cohesion.
In 2018, LNT co-created Our Lockleaze, a community plan reflecting the priorities of residents – we’re refreshing this plan in 2025. In particular, residents voiced a love for our local green spaces and concern over the effect of new housing developments. So, in 2020, we were delighted to be invited to be part of the ground-breaking Community Climate Action Project coordinated by Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership and supported by the National Lottery Climate Fund.
Developing our community climate action plan
Our Lockleaze community climate action plan was developed in 2022 (and refreshed in 2024), focusing on seven areas of climate action: Transport; Food; Nature; Waste & Resources; Energy; Business & Education; Homes and Buildings. The breadth of actions that people took clearly shared that communities like ours care about climate change and want to create meaningful change.
Climate action now underpins most of the work LNT delivers as we ensure each strand is addressed. This has delivered enormous impact for our community: we have delivered energy advice events, staffed Buzz Community Garden, worked with the West of England Combined Authority to a pilot a mobility hub, created and shared a popular energy efficiency cookbook and are now providing peer support and guidance for other community organisations to execute their own community climate action plans.
Really Wild Lockleaze
Having listened again to the priorities of our community, we then created a ‘demonstrator’ project called Really Wild Lockleaze, which tests new approaches to nature recovery in urban housing estates. We are transforming public housing greens, private gardens, street verges and marginal land for nature, planting bulbs, putting in ponds, planting 1,350 trees, and creating 2,200 m2 of flower meadows. This works has been transformational for our organisation, by:
- Piloting the new role of an embedded Community Ecologist, bringing deep knowledge and scientific expertise.
- Creating an innovative place-based approach working with residents living round housing greens and vacant land to rewild land what was previously short, moved grass. This supports inclusive social action in terms of inequality and access to nature, as well as supporting urban nature recovery, wellbeing and joy.
- Prototyping new approaches to working with local authorities to rewild land and invite diverse, working-class communities into the nature recover conversation.
A project of national significance
Really Wild Lockleaze has been recognised as a project of national significance after being awarded the 2024 West of England Combined Authority Pollinator Award for community action, and by being highlighted as a cutting-edge urban nature recovery case study by the West of England Nature Partnership.
Our outstanding results have been achieved through extensive collaboration with local partners e.g. land partners like Bristol City Council and Lockleaze Sports Centre, or green organisations like Stoke Park Community Group, and Lockleaze Green Gym.
Our unique method of working understands that community-led action on urban housing estates is key to tackling the climate and nature crisis and creating community cohesion.
Overall, the Community Climate Action Project – including the nourishing work of collaborating with the other organisations in our cohort, working on the Community Leadership Panel, and our Really Wild Lockleaze Demonstrator – has been a huge gamechanger for LNT. It has enabled us to bring in new staff, new expertise and new ways of working, and it has allowed us to begin to be a nature connected organisation across all our projects and activities, bringing new forms of resilience as our community face climate change and the ecological breakdown.
“We knocked on hundreds of doors and discovered so much love for wildlife. We brought neighbours together, many who have not met before, to make a real impact for something they care about. This innovative work will make Lockleaze more resilient in the face of future challenges.”
Eleanor Fairbraida, Really Wild Lockleaze Project Coordinator
“The Really Wild Project … has lifted the whole area into being a much more positive place to live. The area has had a huge facelift and now looks loads better. Communities and neighbours have been brought together and so many connections have been made. Lockleaze is so, so much better as a result of the project!”
Local Resident
Future ambitions
We want to keep growing Really Wild Lockleaze, creating a new community-managed green corridor down the centre of our ward and introducing a new Lockleaze Community Garden, encouraging more food growing, learning and togetherness.
Our ambition is for Really Wild Lockleaze to inspire other council estates across the country to embrace community-led nature recovery and the role of dedicated Community Ecologists. By thinking big, we aim to shift the national conversation about what is possible for nature, climate and social action in disadvantaged communities.
Our advice
- Start by assessing your community assets: what are the largest tracts of land in your community, or what are the species that are loved locally?
- Get your partners together – the council, local organisations, volunteers – and decide how you want to work together over the life of your project. We’re excited to see what new innovations you come up with!
Resources
- Summary impact report
- How to green your neighbourhood
- Short film
- Huma and Norman Shaikh’s Really Wild Lockleaze story of change
We have released a series of resources over the last few weeks to share learnings from the Community Climate and Nature project. You can find them here.
The Community Climate Action Project is coordinated by Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership and funded by the National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund.
Share to
