Youth Leadership

Youth Leadership Group

The Heartwood Youth Leadership Group (YLG) are a group of 18 young people, aged between twelve and nineteen, who come to the farm for residential visits four times a year.
The YLG, along with Action for Conservation and the Heartwood team, are currently exploring the past, present and potential futures of the farm using eco-cultural mapping tools.
This exciting three year project, kindly funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, has so far allowed us to explore the past and present of the farm.
We have delved into some of the farm's history, thinking about what it might have been like at the end of the last ice age and created paints from rocks to make replicas of ancient cave art.
We have imagined ourselves into the bronze age when a stone circle stood at the top of this hill and we have erected our own standing stone, using bronze age methods, in its honour.
We have also explored the more recent past as the land was enclosed and then repeatedly sold, the chattels of each sale depicting the steady increase in productivity over the last couple of hundred years.
Through heritage crafts, stories, songs and old recipes we have captured some of the essence of this place at different time periods in a series of maps.
We are now mapping the present of the farm. Through accounts of people who live, work and visit the farm, along with ecological surveys to allow us to better understand the other species who live here.
The YLG have also actioned many exciting restoration projects, such as planting a heritage orchard and native tree strips, creating ponds, restoring wetlands, growing vegetables and making new paths through the woods.
Next year we will draw from all that we have learnt to create a map to guide the future restoration of the farm.

"When I come here, my social battery always gets charged, whereas if I went somewhere else, it'd be drained.”

"The project has changed my perspective on nature a lot because I live in a big city so I don’t get to spend a lot of time in nature. I just became so much more self-aware of my impact on the environment and what you can do as a young person to facilitate change in the city as well. I've just grown very connected to nature."

"We’ve built loads of friendships through the project. I've built loads of confidence, and I think I've got more hope for the future, which is probably quite a big change.”

This project is part of a larger partnership between Action for Conservation, Heartwood CIC and Avon Wildlife Trust that gives 45 young leaders aged 13-18 the opportunity to co-design and deliver nature restoration with more than 700 local community members across 650 acres of land at three sites, the Penpont Estate in Wales, Green Shoots in Bristol and Heartwood at High Leas Farm.
This project has been made possible thanks to National Lottery players. Action for Conservation, Avon Wildlife Trust and Heartwood CIC have received over £870,000 from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK.