Championing CPRE Hampshire’s heroic hedgerows
Hedgerows are the unsung heroes of the countryside. These incredibly important habitats boost biodiversity, improve food production, and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Client: The Hampshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) – also known as the countryside charity.
Who they are: A local branch of a national charity, which seeks to promote, enhance and protect the Hampshire countryside.
The brief: Update the branch’s website and formalise their comms output, with a focus on the Hampshire Hedge project.
In this project we: Restructured the CPRE Hampshire website, landed PR coverage, wrote and designed donor reports, published a membership magazine, and managed an ongoing communications calendar.
Skills used: Digital marketing, report writing, media relations, social media, video editing, and design.
Why did CPRE Hampshire work with me?
The CPRE Hampshire team is small but mighty. They can usually be found out in the countryside, planting tree whips or teaching volunteers traditional skills like hedge laying. But without a communications professional in the team, their hard work wasn’t getting the attention it deserved.
Having previously worked with CPRE Peak District and South Yorkshire, I had a thorough understanding of the countryside charity’s brand - so was able to hit the ground running.
Working within the charity’s budget, I delivered a suite of comms pieces which inspired real world action and secured the next round of funding for the Hampshire Hedge project.
The Hampshire Hedge
Over the past 80 years, the UK has lost half of its hedgerows. But CPRE Hampshire is fighting back with an ambitious project which aims to connect the South Downs to the New Forest with a nature recovery corridor.
The Hampshire Hedge is a green corridor of hedgerow linking the New Forest National Park to the South Downs National Park. It will wind its way through the central heart of Hampshire parishes and link woodlands, meadows, local nature reserves and Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).
Giving CPRE Hampshire an online overhaul
When I first joined forces with CPRE Hampshire, their website didn’t reflect the full extent of their brilliant work. Without all of the relevant information readily available, the charity was missing out on potential volunteers and even fundraising opportunities.
By restructuring the website, I aimed to:
Refresh copy across the site, making it up to date, accurate, and engaging.
Improve the user experience by creating a simple layout with clear formatting, which would allow visitors to find information quickly and easily.
Bring the website in line with CPRE’s national brand guidelines.
Publish additional sections to ensure that all of the charity’s projects were featured.
Revamping CPRE Hampshire's website resulted in a 96.7% increase in page views over the year. This expansion helped the charity reach a broader audience, as seen through the 5,326 volunteer hours generously given to the Hampshire Hedge project.
With the website restructure complete, I now maintain the charity’s digital presence with blogs, news pieces, and social media content. I also keep CPRE Hampshire’s members informed through engaging email communications and a bi-annual print magazine which I design, write, and edit.
Informing stakeholders and inspiring funding
Alongside their hedgerow work, CPRE Hampshire runs a fantastic project called Magnificent Meadows. This initiative seeks to rejuvenate Hampshire’s precious meadows and species-rich grassland.
Both the Hampshire Hedge and Magnificent Meadows benefit from the backing of incredible stakeholders such as CPRE National, Heritage Lottery Fund and South Downs Community Trust. A central part of my work was creating reports which conveyed the invaluable impact of their support.
I designed reports for both the Hampshire Hedge and Magnificent Meadows from scratch, using my awareness of CPRE’s brand values to ensure consistency. I translated raw data into visually appealing infographics, complementing them with case studies and testimonials to highlight key achievements.
Alison Talbot, operations manager
“It is great working with Rebecca, her experience working with other charities means she brings new ideas to the table and can take on a wide range of tasks, which she delivers in a professional and timely manner. Rebecca is passionate about the countryside and that really shines through in her work for us.”
All photo credits: Guy Reece
Project highlights:
Supporting media coverage in key titles including BBC South Today and the Hampshire Chronicle, which celebrated significant project milestones.
Designing, writing, and editing the Autumn/Winter 2024 edition of Hampshire Views – the charity’s membership magazine.
Helping the charity to promote 53 hedgerow planting days, in which supporters planted over 5,962m of hedgerow.
Involved more than 1,900 young people in planting hedgerows, collaborating with 9 schools, Winchester Youth Counselling, scouts, and Ickneild School.
Together we also:
Raised over £10k in a week through the 2024 Big Give Green Match campaign.
Raised awareness through the first ever Countryside Day for CPRE Hampshire at Cox Croft Farm. Visitors took part in free workshops, which included sessions on hedgerow planting and foraging.
Promoted the 2024 CPRE Hampshire Countryside Awards. I delivered comms ahead of the event which encouraged community groups to enter and local people to vote for their favourite projects. I also created a mixed-media video which was played on the evening of the awards itself.
Contributed to a collaboration between local CPRE branches and the University of Southampton, which resulted in a new solar mapping tool and policy recommendations for a solar revolution in the central South region.
The project in numbers
