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<\/a>TWO local communities in Coleraine, Millburn and Ballysally, are busy preparing for a magical woodland enchanted evening to celebrate the launch of the Cornfield Project on Saturday 10th<\/sup> September 2016.<\/p>\nFollowing on from winning a public vote to become Grow Wild\u2019s Northern Ireland\u2019s flagship site in November 2015, Coleraine\u2019s Cornfield Project received funding from Grow Wild to transform a large area in Hartford Park, Ballysally.<\/p>\n
Supported by the Big Lottery Fund, Grow Wild is the national outreach initiative of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and aims to bring people together to transform local spaces with native, pollinator-friendly wild flowers and plants.<\/p>\n
At the Cornfield Project, local community volunteers, both young and old, have been busy working alongside the Conversation Volunteers to transform an area of scrubland into 7.5 acres of community woodland with beautiful wild flower meadows, sensory garden, community gardens and outdoor classroom spaces.<\/p>\n
This fantastic project is focused on creating thriving and colourful areas of wild flowers, wildlife and environmentally sensitive spaces which are to be used by, and enjoyed by, all members of the public.<\/p>\n
The launch event is a free festival for everyone to come along and see what the project has achieved so far.\u00a0 There will be a Mad Hatter\u2019s Fancy Dress Tea Party, live entertainment and music, storytelling, an appearance from Coleraine\u2019s own renowned professional magician, Rodd Hogg and an outdoor cinema showing \u2018Alice in Wonderland\u2019.<\/p>\n
Award winning local sculptor, Sara Cunningham Bell will be unveiling her new sculpture for the community space, a three metre high new insect called \u2018George\u2019 with its own neighbourhood story created especially for the Cornfield Project after collaboration with local community groups.\u00a0 And fellow local artist Harry McMahon along with Jenny Methven will showcase how the community has helped transform a derelict wall into inspirational wall art.<\/p>\n
The project will be officially launched by three local children from the two\u00a0communities and the Mayor of Causeway Coast and Glens, Alderman Maura Hickey.<\/p>\n
Catherine Armstrong, who is leading the project on behalf of Aspire Community Partnership, a local consortium of grass-roots community groups who are working together for the benefit of the Causeway area, said; \u201cThe Cornfield site was an underused patch of land dividing the communities of Millburn and Ballysally in Coleraine.\u00a0 By getting local people involved to help transform the woodland we hope it will help tackle issues of low\u00a0employment and health by creating\u00a0activities which will increase people\u2019s confidence, enable them to develop new skills and friendships\u00a0which in turn will help\u00a0provide a positive and fun sense of community.\u00a0 By coming together and creating an area for wildlife to thrive, the natural habitat also provides all members of the community with a beautiful outdoor space to enjoy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe evening woodland festival will celebrate the launch of the project and hopefully encourage more people to volunteer and get involved. We hope that the framework we use here will be adopted by communities throughout Northern Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephanie Baine, Grow Wild Northern Ireland Partnership Manager said; \u201cThe Cornfield Project won a public vote to become the Grow Wild flagship project for Northern Ireland.\u00a0 The project is bringing two separated communities together and it has been inspirational to see how the local community has engaged with the project. The woodland has truly been transformed into a magical place, the local people are getting passionate about the wildflower meadows and the training opportunities are just beginning. We would encourage anyone to come along and get involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Big Lottery Fund NI Director Joanne McDowell said; “Grow Wild is all about bringing people together to improve their environment and benefit their communities, and it\u2019s wonderful to see how local people have transformed this area. At the Big Lottery Fund we want to support people and communities to improve the places where they live. This fantastic project is bringing that ambition to life to create a beautiful, interesting and wildlife rich space for the community to enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grow Wild received an incredible 23,493 votes to be named the UK\u2019s Best Environment project in this year\u2019s National Lottery Awards – the annual search to find the UK\u2019s favourite Lottery-funded projects.\u00a0 Grow Wild\u2019s achievements, including a number of locally funded projects in Northern Ireland helped them win it.<\/p>\n
The festival woodland area will come alive with twinkly lights, magical glowing trees and plenty of activities for people to get involved with including searching for bats, hunting for moths, building a bug hotel and making willow creatures with local willow artist Louise McLean.<\/p>\n
So come along and join us for what promises to be an evening of enchantment and see just what the project is all about on Saturday 10th<\/sup> September from 5.30pm to 9.30pm.<\/p>\n To celebrate winning their National Lottery Award, Grow Wild are giving away thousands of FREE wild flower seed packets to people all over the UK. For more information and terms and conditions please go to www.growwilduk.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kew Gardens Grow Wild\u2019s flagship, the Cornfield Project, launches. TWO local communities in Coleraine, Millburn and Ballysally, are busy preparing for a magical woodland enchanted evening to celebrate the launch of the Cornfield Project on Saturday 10th September 2016. Following on from winning a public vote to become Grow Wild\u2019s Northern Ireland\u2019s flagship site in … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12426"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12429,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426\/revisions\/12429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}