ARFQ To Carry Out a Community /Engagement Exercise for The Development of a Heritage Lottery Fund Bid for Botanic Gardens, Churchtown, Southport

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<p>Sefton Council is seeking the services of a specialist Consultancy to support with a public consultation / engagement exercise to inform the development of a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) bid for Botanic Gardens, Southport to fund improvements and enhance residents’ and visitors’ access to the historic park, recreation facilities and open space. Botanic Gardens Project Support is required to design, manage and deliver the overall consultation / engagement exercise as well as to provide additional capacity and expertise. This will include carrying out a range of engagement activities and project evaluation activities. The consultation will commence in October 2022 and will approx. take 6 months to complete, followed up with analysis and reporting. Sefton Council wishes to develop a new project to allow us to celebrate our unique but vulnerable heritage features, understand our park users and identify future opportunities within the Botanic Gardens maximising both the key heritage and community links with all visitors both young and old. This will begin with the launch of a community consultation in October 2022. This will be linked to a range of heritage themed events and workshops to allow us to engage with our community identifying current and future potential audiences and help record, share and save the verbal history of Churchtown and Botanic Gardens. A lot of good work with the existing volunteer group on site has already been established but we wish to reach out to the next generation of park users while working closely with the neighbouring schools (Churchtown Primary School) helping change their ideas and behaviours to the park and its history. The Council is seeking to involve more young people in their local heritage and help us design educational heritage interpretation boards and a new heritage trail for families. The Council also wishes to develop Natural Alternatives, an inclusion program already based in the park that support people with learning difficulties, to volunteer in natural environments, specifically to help them better understand and learn about the parks local heritage and to work more closely in volunteering in the park. It has been difficult in the past to engage with these hard to reach groups and is currently not represented well in existing user and volunteer groups.</p> Keywords: Consultancy, Visitors, Project Evaluation, Public Consultation, Recreation