Biodiversity Uplift in Longton
Wilder Connections is a community-focused biodiversity uplift project exploring how people in Longton can connect more deeply with the wildlife living within their neighbourhoods. Working alongside Professor Deirdre McKay and researchers from Keele University, Staffordshire University and Aston University, Urban Wilderness CIC designed a programme that brought creative practice, ecological awareness and local knowledge together in one place.
Throughout summer 2023, we delivered nature walks, creative workshops and citizen-science sessions, inviting residents, families and young people to explore Longton’s parks, paths and hidden pockets of green space. Using tools such as iNaturalist and bird-identification apps, participants learned to document their observations of plants, insects, birds and small mammals — building ecological confidence while contributing valuable data to wider research efforts.
More than 130 participants took part in the programme. Activities ranged from pollinator workshops to youth mural sessions, each encouraging residents to notice and value the biodiversity around them. These sessions created space for conversation too — whether through shared walks, informal creative exercises, or our Global Cafés, where community members reflected on access, belonging and the future of local green spaces.
A key moment in the project was the creation of Dawn Chorus an audio artwork by sound artist Leanne Cunningham, commissioned by Urban Wilderness with Stoke Creates CASCADE funding. The piece captures an early-morning soundscape recorded at Berryhill Fields, a 68-hectare reclaimed wilderness near Longton, celebrating the species that many people hear daily but rarely stop to really notice. Dawn Chorus premiered at the Wilder Connections launch event and is now an important cultural asset for the area.
The project also laid the foundations for the continued development of the Longton Cultural Action Zone, a strategic initiative led by Urban Wilderness to bring culture, ecology and community collaboration together in shaping the future of the neighbourhood. Wilder Connections demonstrated how creativity and environmental understanding can work hand-in-hand to support regeneration and wellbeing.
The programme concluded with a public celebration and the recruitment of Nature Tracker Volunteers, who continue to record species sightings across Longton — building a living library of local biodiversity to support future research and community-led stewardship.
Wilder Connections showed that biodiversity uplift begins not with large interventions, but with people learning to look more closely. As residents discovered, the wild is already here — sometimes we just need an invitation to pay attention.