Spring Supporter Update

Earth Day Gathering & Celebration

On a cold and blustery Sunday in April, supporters gathered to celebrate the purchase of the field.

Thank you and what's next?

Thank you again to all of our supporters who helped make this happen. At the Earth Day Gathering & Celebration we gave this general update to tell you a little bit about our strategy and what we are doing at the moment.

CHARITY 

We are in the process of establishing a charity to manage the field. We'll run it as a project separate to Wilder Wirksworth primarily because of the amount of work involved and quite different responsibilities Being a charity will also allow us to access a broader range of grants and funding offers. We may also be able to qualify for Gift Aid on donations. Setting up the charity is in progress and will take about 3 months to finish – we’re partly dependent on the Charity Commission turnaround times. We will be called Wild Maple Trust after the old mature wild maple on the slope.

WEBSITE 

We have a website nearly ready to go live. We will build on this as the project develops but this will be one of the main methods we'll use to keep you up to date on what's happening and what's coming up.

- We'll use those website updates to create posts on the group Facebook page which we’ve renamed Wild Maple Trust*. [Please note: Wild Maple Field was formally established as a Community Interest Company (CIC) registered number 15790841 in December 2024.]

- We'll also produce a periodic newsletter with a roundup of news which we'll send out by email and we’ll physically post in community spaces around town.

Note that until the website is launched we'll provide updates here as well as on Facebook.   

Lots of lively discussion while enjoying Rosemary’s cake

MANAGEMENT PLAN 

We're starting work on the Management Plan. This will set out our vision for the field and roughly how we plan to get there. We'll be working up additional detail as we work through the plan.

I know you’ll want to know what we’re doing and what the plans will look like. However, until we can show you properly, we don't want to say things that are subsequently changed as this will be confusing for people.  We promise that we will tell you as soon as we can and as soon as we can show you we will.

However, we need to do some groundwork first. We’ll start by

-Consulting experts,

-Doing some baseline ecological studies – flora, insect life and soil analysis.

-We’ll also be gathering input from you.

Suggestions were welcome…

All of those things will feed into the design we pull together which will be nature led. We will tell you as soon as we possibly can.

Our approach is to be transparent and open so if you have any questions please do ask us. Once launched, ideally contact us through the website as those will come directly to us. You can reach us by email on SummerLaneField@gmail.com 

Clearly, we’ll need a lot of help, and over time a lot of funds to transform the space but we'll publicise all of that as the needs become clear.

Thanks again.