Nature Calling across England

Nature Calling was the first national arts commissioning programme for the National Landscapes, 24 National Landscape teams took part: six larger scale ‘hub’ projects and 18 smaller ‘spoke’ projects in National Landscapes spread the length and breadth of England.

The spokes were a really important part of the Nature Calling programme: enabling National Landscapes teams to build connections with local community groups and artists and building capacity within our teams so we have the skills in place to do more work with artists in the future.

Alongside the commissioning programme, Arts Development and Programme Manager Kerenza McClarnan worked with our executive artistic partners, Activate Performing Arts and equity and arts consultant Ruth Pitter MBE to devise a training programme for National Landscapes officers. This covered practical aspects of creating plans for arts projects and how they could be used to support wider organisational strategy, how to commission artists, an understanding of what is possible, promotion and evaluation of audience responses. It also gave a grounding in the benefits of creating emotional connection to landscape and expanding audiences, and how to work with artists in protected landscapes. 

Feedback on the training was overwhelmingly positive and National Landscapes teams are planning to embed some of the learnings and approaches they gained from their Nature Calling experience into other projects. Vicky Wilson of the Isle of Wight National Landscape commented that the training helped to direct focus towards process and building relationships rather than narrowing down on specific outcomes. The freedom to try new ways of working has also informed future development of Isle of Wight National Landscape projects, with the team  committed to using easy to digest scientific facts and figures when sharing project information– taking time and care to explain their approach so people can understand and potentially even help or take action to support nature in the choices they make. The team is also looking to do more with creative producers and artists in the coming years to support more people to access the wellbeing benefits of nature connection in the National Landscape.

The spoke projects ran over the course of 2025 covering a huge variety of themes from a dance-based exploration of the lifecycle of the Devon Red-legged Robberfly co-created with young people in South Devon, to a project that trained women from urban Lancashire in the basics of woodcraft and placed benches they had carved in their local station, Accrington, and in a nature reserve near to their twinned station in Arnside & Silverdale National Landscape, creating a visible link between the two places.

You can find out more about the spoke projects on the events page on the Nature Calling website.