Urban Forest Accelerator

The Urban Forester Accelerator was a national project for which Birmingham was the case study, exploring how equity can be centered in the management and development of our urban Forests. The work was led by the National Trust in partnership with the Woodland Trust and Community Forests. The project enabled BTP to hire its first paid members of staff to deliver the work.

The areas of focus were Nechell and Bromford and Hodge Hill, and the delivery saw the co-production of tree establishment programmes in each of the neighbourhoods, working to involve communities in deciding locations, species for tree planting as well as shaping the look, feel and culture of activities and approaches. All the work undertaken fed into national toolkits to support this work to spread.

The project worked to green areas of low canopy cover, to meaningfully involve communities in being able to address the inequities they face, it gave BTP the opportunity to grow its ways of working with communities as part of tree establishment programmes