Show and tell

Martin O’Neill uncovers the communications challenges of setting up one of our newest National Parks

How do you tell the world out there about a new National Park?  What do you say?  As Director of Information and Visitor Services for the New Forest National Park Authority and one of its first recruits, these questions have been of something more than academic interest to me over the past few years.

For those of us in the early days, starting with a blank sheet of paper was an exciting prospect...until we realised that someone had to order the paper, and it needed to be recycled.  The would-be National Park Authority had to find members, staff, a fully equipped office, a whole planning department and develop a corporate plan, not to mention a website and a logo.

For the first 12 months after National Park designation in March 2005 most of our external communications inevitably revolved around the frenetic pace of activity to prepare for the Authority’s taking on its full powers in April 2006.  While responding patiently to the local media’s obsession with our salaries and our struggle to find a home, we sought to engage the wider community in the excitement of setting up a new National Park, even going so far as a Big Brother-style vote to influence the choice of logo.

Internal communications at that stage was a cinch.  If I tell you that our first borrowed office space in Lyndhurst was ‘the Cottage’, you will understand that the half dozen staff did not need to make a huge effort to stay in touch.

Oh, did I mention that not everyone in the New Forest was a hundred per cent supportive of a National Park?  This was and is one of our big communications challenges.  There are others:

• How do you justify a National Park when the New Forest has survived more or less intact for the best part of a thousand years without one?
• How do you stand out from the conservation and recreation crowd when the New Forest already has many well-established players in the field, most notably the Forestry Commission which manages nearly half of the Park area?
• How do you reassure partners that you are not going to ‘take over’ and yet at the same time be seen to do enough to prove the worth of the National Park?
• How do you communicate effectively when you have no rangers and no visitor centres?

Welcome to my world.  Over the months we have used a combination of actions and words – show and tell – to meet these challenges.  We have a plan – a Communications Strategy which defines audiences, tactics and five key messages:

• The two purposes of the National Park and the social and economic duty
• The major challenges faced by England’s newest National Park: the pressures for economic, transport and housing development from the south-east and the south-west; the future of commoning (the historic system of grazing rights that shapes the Forest); sustainability and climate change; balancing conservation and recreation
• Partnership as a key way of working for the New Forest National Park Authority
• The Authority as a listening ear and national voice for the New Forest National Park
• How the New Forest National Park Authority is starting to make a difference through actions inspired by the Corporate Plan: grants, partnership working, and so on.

These messages run like the words in a stick of seaside rock through our communications: from our news releases and press enquiry responses to our Pocket Guide leaflet and our Park Life newsletter, from our talks and events to our website.

Is the strategy working?  Well, in common with most youngsters we’ve had our teething troubles but we are toddling along.  And we’ve had one big advantage: as the baby of the National Park family, the New Forest has been able to learn from its big sisters.

We’ve had our communications ‘moments’, good and not-so-good, in the early years.

In the media we’ve had positive features as far afield as North America, national coverage on Radio 4, in the Telegraph and from Country Walking magazine and, of course, regular local press stories.  Stories about terror training camps in the New Forest proved a challenging diversion.

Since 2008 we’ve been embroiled in controversy sparked by some aspects of our draft plan for the next 20 years, known as the National Park Plan, which received in excess of 10,000 responses from the public.  Highly personal and emotive concerns around the keeping of horses and dogs overshadowed big issues such as climate change or development pressures.  On the plus side, awareness of the National Park and its work has increased – the challenge is to convert people’s clear passion for the New Forest into a shared commitment to look after it.

We have worked with the Forestry Commission and New Forest District Council on a major visitor newspaper and a lifestyle magazine, keeping costs low, distribution wide and partnership prominent.

A couple of years ago our website was a feeble little thing – a few pages of dull content with four pictures.  Now it runs to many hundreds of informative pages and includes many interactive features.

We’ve had a stand at the big New Forest Show each year and twice won the award for ‘best large stand’ with our displays based on Forest life.  This came as quite a surprise to me because I didn’t know there was an award for best large stand or even that our stand was large.

So what’s our verdict on telling the story of a new National Park?  I don’t think we can claim the world out there knows all about the New Forest National Park just yet, but we intend to keep on showing and telling.

Words:951
Written by Martin O'Neill, New Forest National Park Authority