Three Films from the DerwentWISE Project

Between 2016 and 2019, I made a series of short conservation landscape films for DerwentWISE, the Lower Derwent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme managed by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The three films below each document a different strand of the project’s work across this stretch of Derbyshire — from ancient woodland management and conservation grazing to a youth residential programme in the Derbyshire countryside.

About the Project

DerwentWISE was Derbyshire Wildlife Trust’s largest ever project — a five-year landscape partnership scheme running from 2014 to 2019, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund with a total budget of around £2.5 million. Led by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and involving fourteen partner organisations, it focused on the Lower Derwent Valley: an area extending from Matlock Bath south through a wooded river valley to Derby, encompassing the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, one of the largest concentrations of ancient woodland in England, and a wide range of habitats from limestone plateau to riverside meadow.

The project had four main strands: conserving and restoring heritage and habitat; increasing community participation; improving access; and supporting learning, training and skills. I was commissioned to make a series of conservation landscape films across several years, documenting different aspects of that work as it unfolded across the valley.

Ancient Woodland and Habitat Restoration

A Natural Partnership takes us into Lea Wood and a privately owned meadow in an area known as The Village, where volunteers and conservationists are working to restore biodiversity and improve habitat quality. Lea Wood is an ancient woodland that has been shaped by centuries of human management — timber extraction and woodland craft have created layers of structure and a rich ecosystem. One of its standout inhabitants is the northern hairy wood ant, locally abundant here but nationally rare, and benefiting from targeted habitat work including the clearance of invasive rhododendron.

In the meadow section of the film, conservation volunteers are opening up scrub-covered ground — removing bramble, hawthorn and ash — to give light and space back to native wildflowers. The film captures both the physical work and the longer-term thinking behind it.

“To look at the amount we have here, you’d think they were incredibly common. In fact, they’re just locally abundant. But this is a really great site for them.”

“It’s nice to leave things better than how we found them… so we can come back in ten years and show our kids.”

Conservation Grazing in Urban Spaces

The Grazing Comes to Town documents one of DerwentWISE’s more unusual conservation interventions — the introduction of cattle and sheep to graze at Allestree Park and Darley and Nutwood Local Nature Reserves on the edge of Derby. Bringing livestock into urban green spaces is an effective way to manage grassland habitat without machinery, improving biodiversity and reconnecting communities with the rhythms of traditional land management. The film captures both the practical reality of the grazing programme and the striking visual contrast of Highland cattle in a city park.

Young People and the Outdoors

A Leap of Faith documents a youth residential programme delivered by DerwentWISE in the Derbyshire countryside, where young people take on abseiling, rock climbing and shared outdoor challenges supported by youth workers and outdoor education professionals. The film follows participants as they work through nerves, support each other and emerge with new skills and confidence. Much of the narration comes from the young people themselves.

“They have to be a little bit ingenious when they come to a space like this… it’s very empowering for them.”

“I’d rather be here than playing on my iPad… I learned about being safe, having self-belief, and trying my best.”

Filming Across a Landscape

Working across the DerwentWISE project over several years gave me the chance to make conservation landscape films that covered very different kinds of work — from the quiet patience of habitat management to the energy of young people encountering the outdoors for the first time. What connected them was the same underlying question the whole project was asking: how do people and landscapes support each other, and what does that relationship look like when it’s working well?

The Lower Derwent Valley is a genuinely rich subject for this kind of filmmaking. It carries centuries of human history alongside internationally important natural heritage, and the DerwentWISE project was trying to hold all of that together at once — restoring habitats, engaging communities, training new volunteers, and building a legacy that would outlast the funding. These films were part of how that story was told.