Water’s Colour – Community Art

This project celebrated the landscape and its unique heritage through a series of community arts activities, events and workshops. A wide variety of creative activities were offered from the hub at West Stow Country Park, including painting, photography, music and creative writing. The heritage of West Stow also meant the project explored the wellbeing and social benefits of drumming. A number of exhibitions of the work created in these workshops and events were also put on throughout the project.

The people who took part in these activities were able to learn new skills, express themselves creatively, and see the landscape through a different lens. You can see a gallery of photographs taken during seasonal photography workshops, river-inspired poetry and listen to some of the poems composed into song.

This project is not quite done yet so watch this space! There is still one exciting new element to be launched: a special sound-centric walking trail to engage the senses as you explore the riverside in Thetford.

Celebrating River Heritage

Hosted by Ancient House Museum, Thetford, this project delivered a series of exhibitions and activities that unlocked the historical archives in Norfolk and Suffolk, to celebrate lost stories from the Brecks.

This project was extremely collaborative, working across many of our other heritage-related projects to create two exhibitions which we have now preserved digitally on our website: Made by the River – an exploration of riverside industries in Thetford and The Vikings- history on your doorstep.

The collaboration continued with the museum’s volunteers too – the Knit and Knatter group created knitted Vikings as an interactive element to the exhibition and the Teenage History Club collaborated with our Tales from the River project to create this brilliant film: A Fun History of Thetford’s Rivers.

The Museum also offered an enormous range of activities, talks, workshops and trails throughout the project, all in and around the themes of Thetford’s river history.

Accessible Rivers – Improving Access

This project was the ultimate collaboration, bringing four organisations together with the shared aim to connect local communities with five Brecks rivers.

The Suffolk County Council Rights of Way team took the lead on the first three rivers:

The Lark: Public access improvements were made to the 7.5km River Lark corridor and a programme of heritage interpretation provision and links between communities was created. Volunteers through this project have started regular walks for the local community and it is hoped this will continue long after this project is complete.

The Cut-off Channel: Public access improvements and a new provision of 9.2km of permissive routes to link the river corridors and cut-off channel, there is one, exciting, final piece to this puzzle soon to be announced, so watch this space! Regular, volunteer-led, community walks are also taking place along the cut-off channel with plans to continue these.

The Blackbourn: This element connected RAF Honnington to local communities through the creation of the new Jackdaw trails. Mapped and signed by the Rights of Way team, cleared by volunteers and tested by the RAF, these trails were launched with the help of Run Breckland, who continue to use the routes for their social running events.

Thetford Town Council worked with Bush Adventures to improve access to and create local connections with the Little Ouse and Thet through a series of Paddle Days and the creation of three new river walking trails to help people explore local heritage. A new jetty and boathouse improve access to the river and the Thetford Town Council-hosted Conservation Group have worked tirelessly each week to keep river access clear, run community engagement events and protect, maintain and restore local habitats.

The RSPB led the project to improve access to the Little Ouse at Lakenheath, making trails and ramps across their fenland reserve to improve access to hides and viewpoints for those with limited mobility.

Healing Waters – Breathe in the Brecks

This BFER-led project focused on connecting with the landscape for health and wellbeing and, though its activities were far-reaching, a strong element was to support people with mental and physical health issues, and those who are socially isolated or excluded.

Imogen Radford ran a section of this project dedicated to introducing people to outdoor swimming and training open water lifeguards through which over 700 people swam and over 50 lifeguards were trained. Some sessions were run specifically for those with additional needs and their carers and many reported on the huge benefits of the support and sense of safety in the water.

As well as outdoor swimming, this project offered regular activities like forest bathing, sound baths, yoga, creative journaling and running. We also created programmes for specific needs, such as Nature Therapy for Menopause, and a four week-long social prescription series with Art Branches called Landscape Discoveries.

In March 2024, this project ran the first Brecks Wellbeing Festival, specifically designed to connect NHS trusts and other health care providers with local organisations to support and encourage social prescribing. Through this event, we commissioned a Wellbeing Digest to provide an evidence base for demonstrating the health benefits of outdoor activities.

Volunteer & Engagement Programme

The aim of this BFER-led project was to connect all the elements of the Scheme together through delivering events and supporting volunteers.

Events in this programme were extremely varied, from a series of Winter Evening Talks, to wildcraft workshops, foraging and cooking, heritage walks and even walks involving macro-photography and special night walks to study biofluorescence and look at the stars. We also worked with experts to deliver guided nature walks for specific groups, such as home-educating families and adults with visual impairments.

We worked closely with schools, creating a Vikings of the Brecks school resource pack, a Rainwater Garden project, and a series of in-school botanical art workshops.

We supported a number of volunteer groups, providing 6 volunteer training sessions, funding equipment and resources for Thetford Conservation Group and commissioning the Guildhall Crafters to create three river-inspired panels. We also created the Volunteer Hub on the BFER website, where we could keep you updated with volunteering opportunities across the partnership, and invited volunteers to write about their experiences, or share their Brecks-inspired creative writing.

This project was also the main host for the first ever Brecks Outdoor Festival in 2024, inviting all of our partners to run activities across two weeks that celebrated the Brecks landscape.

BFER Third Party Grant Fund

This project provided opportunities for communities and local organisation to apply for funding to enhance, restore or celebrate heritage in the project area, supporting heritage, building capacity and sustainability.

We offered grants between £500 and £2,500 and, overall, funded fourteen projects. Here are some highlights:

• Rewilding the Lark – a river restoration project by the Bury Trout Club;
• Rainwater planters for five schools in Thetford to prevent excess water run-off and teach children about the water cycle and gardening;
• Amphibian pools at the British Trust for Ornithology’s Nunnery Lakes Reserve;
• A Norfolk Rivers Trust project to put fish tanks in classrooms following the success of the Sea to Chalk project;
• Raleigh and Admirals Academy’s Bringing Breckland In garden project;
• A new boiler for the volunteer-repaired miniature steam engine at the Charles Burrell Museum

Take a look at our other Programme Round-Ups below:

Programme 1: Restoring the Water

Programme 2: Under the Surface

Programme 3: Working Waters