Quantock AONB Service Report
April 2008The AONB Service is a dedicated team of Rangers and Officers who work to help ensure that the Quantock Hills remain a natural haven for wildlife and visitors. The team also work with local communities on projects that boost environmental, economic and social well-being in the area.Â
Education Project Launch
A fantastic new website for children www.quantockeducation.info was launched in November 2007, alongside seven teaching packs, helping children learn more about their local landscape. These two new resources provide local schools with the confidence and ability to use the special beauty of this protected landscape as a learning tool, and help children get outdoors and make the connection between the classroom and their local surroundings.
The teachers packs cover 7 specific areas in the Quantock Hills, and provide teachers with lesson plans, activities and worksheets that can be used across a variety of subjects from Science to Geography. The packs were developed by teachers in the local area, alongside the Quantock Hills AONB Service, and are aimed at children aged between 7 and 11 (Key Stage 2).
Mixed Blessings Book
A new book by photographer Gary Penny has just been published.  ‘Mixed Blessings’ uses black and white, and colour photographs alongside transcripts and extracts from interviews with farmers to record the lives of our farming community here in the Quantocks. The book highlights the precious nature of small scale rural industry, and celebrates the vital role it has in sustaining vibrant and working rural communities
This is the culmination of a project funded through the Quantock Hills AONB Service Sustainable Development Fund. It forms part of the many hundreds of pictures that he has made for the Quantock Hills AONB rural archive. Mixed Blessings is available at the Quantock Hills office in Nether Stowey and at two local bookshops: Brendon Books, Bath Place in Taunton and Bridgwater Bookshop, 35 High Street in Bridgwater. It costs £15 (plus £4.50 postage& packaging if ordered from the Quantock Office).
Quantock Arts Project
In the footsteps of the Romantic poets.
Two new collaborative arts projects are currently underway, with the aim of making connections between people, their environment and the heritage of this unique area. This exciting project is possible thanks to funding from the Arts Council England. The two projects began in September and will culminate in a showcase event in August 2008.
Somerset based ‘4 Reel Films’ will create a piece of artistic film that will draw its inspiration from the sumptuous verse of the Romantic Poets and the vivid drama of the Quantocks landscape.
Artists Antony Lyons and Ralph Hoyte will collaborate on a project called ‘Quantock Dreaming – Secret Mappings and Mapping Secrets in the Quantock Hills’. They will produce a body of work based on map and mapping techniques that will include text, poetry and sound recordings.
Your Postcard Maps
As part of this project Lyons and Hoyte are asking the public to draw their own secret and treasured places in the Quantocks on specially designed postcards, which will then be incorporated into their project. Postcards can be obtained from the Nether Stowey office, as well as local libraries and art galleries.
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