The following principles have been developed to guide this section and are supplementary to the core principles listed at the beginning of the Management Plan.
Access is physical and psychological. Well-designed and well-maintained infrastructure for access (miles without stiles, toilets, all access paths, good signposting) is essential. Many people also need to be given the confidence that they have as much right as anyone else to be here.
Rules and norms of behaviour in the countryside need to be clear to all parties. Rights to access come with responsibilities, and there are rules for responsible behaviour (such as the countryside code) which need to be clearly communicated to allow local communities to welcome people with confidence and for visitors to arrive and explore with confidence. Some behavioural norms (unwritten rules) can also be a barrier to those who are not confident about visiting and who worry they may unwittingly do something ‘wrong’. These behavioural norms are subjective, culturally relative, change over time, and need to be negotiated and communicated.
The involvement of North Pennines residents is a foundation for all other engagement work. Helping people feel at home and giving people a good experience of the North Pennines starts with the welcome they receive. More than that, the story of this landscape is partly the story of those who have lived here in the past and those who live here now. Sharing these stories, and helping residents to tell them, is a foundational step in wider engagement.
The benefits of this work are maximised if we are all involved. The goal is a network of relationships with this plan’s aim at their core.
Everyone should be able to access and experience the North Pennines. Ensuring that people from all backgrounds and abilities can experience the North Pennines means working hard to include all those who currently find it difficult to access and enjoy this landscape.
A number of additional principles relating to work with marginalised communities were developed as part of the NLHF funded A Landscape for Everyone project [86] (see Box 14 below)
We need to accommodate difference. Whether it is the design of new access infrastructure or thinking about how people might experience an event or telling the stories of nature and cultural heritage, access and engagement work should use the principle of reasonable adjustments and apply it broadly. Reasonable adjustment is a concept that can be applied to all marginalised groups from those with physical disabilities to those on low incomes or to visible minorities. Importantly, project design must ensure there is adequate budget to make the adjustments identified.
Everyone has a right to feel at home here. A warm welcome and hospitality are important factors in allowing more people to feel ‘at home’ in the North Pennines, but we need to go further. Everyone has a right to be here and feel ‘at home’.
Representation matters and is complex. Advice and guidance from those with different lived experience to our own is vital to this work of greater inclusion. In seeking this advice, we should remain aware of the danger of reducing advisors to their marginalised identities, ignoring marginalisation that is not visible, and ignoring our own diversity.
We need to tell new stories to reflect diversity. We should seek to be good allies of marginalised groups by turning up the volume on stories which expose and reflect diversity in this landscape.
When working with marginalised groups, building relationships and connections is fundamental. Starting with an activity or event as the goal for engagement work is unlikely to lead to long term connection, or even to deliver a successful activity or event. Building relationships of trust takes a long time and may not proceed in the direction expected, but it will bring about connection – the foundation for further exploration and discovery.
Everyone’s relationship with landscape is unique. Those of us who love the North Pennines and feel connected to nature have all arrived at this point from different directions. We shouldn’t make assumptions about how others might connect with this landscape or what they might take from that connection. We should start where people are.
The only sustainable engagement is one of mutual benefit. Voices from marginalised communities are essential for us to work effectively to build inclusive engagement, but individuals and groups who can bring these voices to the conversation have many more pressing priorities. To enable mutually beneficial engagement, we need to provide practical and financial support as well as solidarity, and we need to meet people on their own patch.
All this collaboration needs resourcing. Building relationships of trust and establishing mutual benefit takes time and skill. Supporting people who can do this work is essential.