National Trust unites urban and rural communities via MyFarm
The National Trust does a superb job of protecting our heritage, empowering communities and supporting rural enterprise. But 10 years ago it didn’t do very well in terms of articulating and communicating its role.
That’s not something you could accuse it of today. A higher profile on TV, an interesting events programme and shrewd sponsorship deals with the likes of Sky and Cadbury’s have given it more of a family feel. Perhaps that explains why it has seen its membership rise from 3 million to 4 million since 2002 (the landmark 4 million figure released on Friday, October 6th).
MyFarm
This year, it added another innovation – an online project called MyFarm which hands control of a working farm to a community of virtual farmers.
So far 2,000 members (each paying £30 a year) have signed up to take control of decision-making at The National Trust’s Wimpole Home Farm, a 2,500-acre estate in Cambridgeshire. Every major decision, from crop choice to animal purchasing, is voted on by the MyFarm virtual community.
It sounds like a recipe for chaos. But fear not. There is a real farmer on site to do the necessary jobs and a project manager who sets the agenda for the farm before giving the virtual community options to choose from. Novice farmers are helped by information-based blogs and videos.
Webcast
This combination of rich media and real scenarios is what makes MyFarm so compelling, because it brings the virtual farmers closer to the action. In July, for example, the NT webcast a live stream of a Shire horse foal being born. This kind of activity binds members to the process and also provides an ongoing stream of PR for the project. The next planned step is a smartphone app, so that cyberfarmers can make instant decisions about whether to bring in the cows or store the hay as they head into work on their crowded tube train.
Learning where our food comes from
So why is the NT doing it? According to Director-General Fiona Reynolds, the rationale for the scheme is to reconnect people with where their food comes from. “Our TNS poll showed that only 8% of mothers feel confident talking to their children about where their food comes from."
At the same time, however, it is helping the NT re-engineer its image as a critical part of living culture, not just a guardian of antiquities. How many people, for example, realise that the NT is the UK’s largest farmer?
Evidence of the impact that the project is having is the mass of column inches it is generating in the online and offline media.
Shaun the Sheep
No less interesting was last week’s announcement that Aardman character Shaun the Sheep has been recruited to help reach out to more families and young children.
Under the terms of the partnership, Shaun will feature in a dedicated Shaun the Sheep day at Wimpole Home Farm. The NT has also created a dedicated Shaun the Sheep page on the MyFarm website which will be regularly updated with new content, including activities and discussions aimed at a family audience. Andrew Cock-Starkey, Project Manager of MyFarm said: Shaun “will enable us to turn some of the bigger issues and debates of MyFarm into bite-size chunks more readily digested by our younger MyFarmers. Learning can be fun too and teaching children about farming and food will be a lot more enjoyable with Shaun the Sheep's help”.
If you’re interested in how MyFarm might be adapted to your own context, visit http://www.my-farm.org.uk or follow tweets @MyFarmNT.