Jonathan’s PIPS experience with Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse

Jonathan Ashworth, a third-year student based at the Earlham Institute in Dr Jose De Vega’s group completed his PIPS with Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse, a museum of rural life and former workhouse in the Norfolk village of Gressenhall.

Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse is part of Norfolk Museums Service and has extensive collections on agriculture and social history in Norfolk. The site has a working farm with rare breed animals, the old workhouse and is also home to the Environment Hub and Gressenhall Community Tree Nursery.

Jonathan’s PIPS project was to support the Learning Officer in the creation of a new volunteer team with a focus on environmental management, biodiversity monitoring and public engagement.

During the placement, Jonathan’s goals were to improve his project planning and management skills, learn how to develop Biodiversity Action Plans, gain skills in recruitment and volunteer training and management plus apply his existing data management and taxonomy skills to a real work project.

He achieved all these goals. He recruited a permanent volunteer team to conduct ecological surveys and habitat management work on Gressenhall grounds which involved creating a role specification around the new Biodiversity Action Plan he produced. He created a new database of existing records and a GIS map of the site’s habitats using QGIS (an open-source GIS software) meaning habitats were linked to the species database. He also deployed various public records as well as “citizen science” tools such as iNaturalist app.

Jonathan enjoyed meeting a range of representatives from nature conservation organisations, public bodies and related tech start-ups from which he gained much insight and confidence.   He frequently communicated and presented his work to a range of audiences at meetings, events (e.g. open-farm Sunday), training sessions and school visits. He also listened to and digested the advice and opinions from a range of stakeholders which all helped with the writing of proposals, briefs, crib sheets, training documents, volunteer role profiles and the Biodiversity Action Plan. At all times, Jonathan found the team at Gressenhall highly supportive and engaged.

Ben Earle, Gresssenhall’s Learning and Engagement Officer and Jonathan’s supervisor whilst on placement said, “It was an invaluable to have someone with experience in surveying tools and GIS in our team. Jonathan developed considerably with his skills and confidence around engaging with the public and working in a dynamic and sometimes chaotic work environment.”

Jonathan’s advice to students about to start work on organising their PIPS is to try to sort it all out in good time then just dive in and enjoy it.