Green Corridors North East

Green corridors have risen to prominence as vital tools in urban planning across Europe and Asia to join up enclaves of flora and fauna. Recently, a more capacious vision has seen them as connecting not just pockets of nature but also people to their natural and cultural heritage. In this vein, the National Trust (NT) is committed to an ambitious programme to help establish 20 green corridors across England, Northern Ireland, and Wales by 2030 to connect urban dwellers with nature, history, and culture, contributing to biodiversity gain and well-being.
The Green Corridors North East (GCNE) are among the first of this pioneering scheme, seeking to transform 35-miles of urban, suburban, and rural spaces in Gateshead, Durham, and South Tees into connected, widely valued, and accessible places where nature and communities thrive sustainably. Our Mission’s aim is to develop new co-created arts- and humanities-led research practices that will contribute significantly to the transformative regeneration of green corridors in the U.K. and beyond. We will develop, spread, and scale a co-produced model of place-making focused on sustainability and community wealth building (in a broad, more than human, sense), helping to transform riverside environments.
GCNE traverses green corridors that feature different, and complex, patterns of land ownership, degrees of biodiversity, varying legacies of industrial pollution, and diverse neighbouring communities. All have challenges relating to access, maintenance, and community engagement. Nevertheless, the opportunities they represent are considerable. They have the potential to benefit local communities and visitors whose health and well-being would be improved by engagement with the corridors’ green spaces, heritages, and their wider use as sites of cultural and creative activity. We will work across sectors and communities in the co-production of new knowledge on the rich histories, ecosystems, and cultures of these green corridors, bringing insights from bio-, earth, and social sciences framed through arts and humanities methods and approaches.
Our underpinning objectives are to: (i) convene exceptional teams, bringing together research, professional, and community expertise to shape and deliver change; (ii) co-develop research questions and practices that are place-based, cross-cutting, and focused on environment, community, and storytelling; (iii) co-produce research on 4 themes:

Heritage and history: e.g., exploring the well-being impact of training different age groups to conduct oral histories of one another’s memories of the corridors.
Culture and creativity: e.g., developing inclusive creative methods to co-produce artworks that promote environmental empathy and enhance well-being.
Nature and natural heritage: e.g., examining the well-being benefits of co-producing research that increases access to, knowledge of, and care for nature across the green corridors.
Active evaluation for learning: research conducted by team members, serving as learning partners to GCNE and evaluating the project iteratively.

The first 3 of those themes will incorporate ‘super-themes’ on stewardship and well-being, helping to develop a model that is socially, ecologically, and economically sustainable, empowering all involved to take ownership of their green corridors and nurture them for the future.