Interest area: Environment

Dawn Chorus Walk

In May, we celebrate International Dawn Chorus Day! Kindling Farm invite you to mark this annual celebration by joining us for a Dawn Chorus Walk.

You will be guided by ecologist and long term volunteer at Kindling Farm, Andrea Sarkissian who will help you identify the sights and sounds of the birds they have on site. Andrea has been carrying out regular bird surveys here at the farm and will share her wealth of knowledge about the activity and habitats she has discovered.

The walks will start promptly at 8am. Join them from the earlier time of 7.30pm for coffee and a sweet breakfast treat!

Please bring binoculars if you have them and a small notebook to write down your findings (they will have some for people to use).

This activity is aimed at beginners and can be suitable for all ages. However, please be mindful that it does involve walking across uneven ground for over an hour and being quite quiet so that we don’t scare the birds away, so it might not suit everyone!

They suggest wearing sturdy, waterproof footwear – walking boots are ideal. As this event is an early start, it may be a bit chilly so please dress accordingly. And of course, we never can trust the weather so it’s best to bring a waterproof!

You must register to come to this event as facilities and parking are limited.

World Bee Day

As we approach World Bee Day, they are hosting a fun-filled day of family friendly activities here at Kindling Farm.

Bees are one of our pollinator superheroes, they couldn’t grow all their fruit & veg on the farm without them – this day is about celebrating their hard work and helping protect them for years to come!

Did you know that they have around 270 species of bee in Britain? See how many you can spot by taking part in a Pollinator Walk around the farm.

Help their bees to survive and thrive by building a Bee Hotel to take home or join them at their Seed Bomb Station to create your own wildflower mix; plant it at home to make sure bees can find food in your outdoor space.

Meet Gemma who grows cut flowers on the Kindling Farm site and sells them at markets across the North West. She will tell you what flowers will be popping up in the flower patch this year.

You must register to come to this event – please don’t just turn up as facilities are limited.
Parking is very limited – only 1 car per booking. The farm is very easy to get to using public transport!

The farm is very easy to get to using public transport and due to limited parking on site, we are encouraging people to travel by bus or train! To help us keep track of car parking spaces, please email us ahead of time to secure a parking space.

You can book a time slot between 10.30am-12.30pm or 1.30-3.30pm.

They do not have a cafe on site but refreshments will be available (donations are welcome. Please note that we only accept cash).

This activity will take place outdoors (weather permitting!) and as a working farm, the ground can be uneven in places which makes it unsuitable for prams or pushchairs for the walk and activities in the fields.

They suggest wearing sturdy footwear – walking boots and wellies are ideal. And of course, we never can trust the weather so it’s best to bring a waterproof!

This event is free BUT you must register to come to this event – please don’t just turn up as facilities are limited. You can book a time slot between 10.30am-12.30pm or 1.30-3.30pm.

Training: Apple Tree Grafting – ...

Unlock the ancient art of apple tree grafting and take your very own tree home with you!

This half day workshop will train you in the skills of grafting apple (and other fruiting) trees.

A range of local and heritage apple varieties will be available to graft onto MM106 rootstock. At the end of the day, you will be able to take your grafted tree home with you!

You’ll be grafting scions (young cuttings) to rootstock at Kindling Farm under the guidance and training of Mark Simmonds. Mark has many years of experience managing orchards and looking after fruit trees and can help you get a grip on the science and practice of apple grafting. There are plenty of opportunities to talk through the process and Mark’s training sessions are always full of fascinating theory and history surrounding tree grafting.

This is a practical workshop yet grafting is fairly low impact and involves no heavy lifting. Grafting with knives involves carefully making safe cuts, which can be fiddly, but there will be plenty of opportunity to learn. If you have any access needs please let us know in advance and we will endeavour to meet them where possible. We’ll also be providing safety equipment.

This day is only appropriate for adults – look out for our family activities on our website.

The workshop will take place from 1.30-4.30pm. There are 12 places available.

The cost for this workshop is £10.

If you are wanting to book for more than one person, please make sure you register them separately.

If you have any problems, please email farm@kindling.org.uk

Bugs Are Us: Easter family workshops

From dragonflies to beetles, you’ll be buzzing with excitement with the bug-themed activities in Tate Liverpool’s Learning Space this Easter holiday! Take inspiration from the creepy crawlies in Tate’s collection to construct multi-coloured neon replicas of your favourite bugs. Use the materials from our pick ‘n’ mix recycled craft box to make a 3D model of your bug.

On Saturday 5 April 13.00-15.00 there will also be a free workshop led by artist Colette Whittington. You’ll learn how to make relief stamps to print bug patterns and textures that can be used in your bug models.

Tate Liverpool’s Learning Space is open every day for visiting families- a space to relax and create with art games, colouring-in, books, toys and more!

Generation Hope: we have the power

They are generation hope, and in partnership with the Natural History Museum, they are exploring what changes we can make to benefit ourselves and the environment.

The theme of this year’s Earth Day (21 April) is ‘Our Power, Our Planet’. We believe that all of us have the power to:

  • Use our voices and speak up
  • Advocate for collective and global change
  • Influence our peers
  • Make individual changes
  • Connect with our community
  • Share learning, and learn from others
  • And most importantly, make a difference!

What do you have the power to do? Head along and explore this question, make a pledge, and make tangible positive changes to your daily life that will help the planet.

This event has been developed by the Youth Engagement Forum, a group of 16-24 year olds at National Museums Liverpool. Young people are the future, and their voices must be heard.

DDFI40: How F**ked Are We? Climate Cri...

Disabled people are impacted more directly by global issues such as the cost of living, the rise of the right, and the Climate Crisis is no different.

Using Artist Lois Weaver’s Long Table format, we will be inviting disabled artists and cross-sector professionals to participate in a carefully held discussion at Metal to discuss the climate crisis. Hosted by Liverpool Artist Dora Colquhoun, with contributions from disabled artists Liz Crow (UK) and ZU-UK, (UK/Brazil), they will explore climate change and disability from local and global perspectives.

About DDFI40:

DaDaFest International returns 8th-31st March 2025 to celebrate DaDa’s 40th Anniversary and this time they are coming with ‘RAGE: A Quiet Riot’.

Event

DDFI40 will showcase work by disabled artists that captures all shapes and sides of rage. From the internal quiet frustrations and righteous rage, to overt injustice and activism, DDFI40 will explore disability rights, disability arts, access, ableism and ‘Rage’ in an explosion of creativity.

Earth Day

Now is the time for the unstoppable courage to preserve and protect our health, our families, our livelihoods…together. We must Invest In Our Planet, because a green future is a prosperous future.

Call to Action! As their exhibition Bees: A Story of Survival draws to a close they mark the interrelationships between this tiny creature and the future of our planet  – and they plan for action right now!!

Join them at World Museum to explore how we can all do our little bit for our local environment.  Create a bug hotel or simple bird feeder to look after their pollinators and make flowers out of used papers and think about how we can do more to reuse and not waste materials.

The Ecologies of Hilbre Island –...

It has been 165 years since Charles Darwin published ‘On the Origin of Species’; a landmark text in evolutionary biology. To mark this occasion, they invite you to join them on an expedition to Hilbre Island, a landmark in the river Dee estuary and our ‘Galapagos’ in the North West of England.

They embark on a creative investigation of the island’s ecologies through storytelling, observational drawing, poetry and performance, looking closely at how the land, sea and humans interconnect.

Walking across the mudflats of the Dee estuary from West Kirkby and upon arrival at Hilbre island, attendees will listen to an audio guide, which comprises a history of the island and oral histories from locals.

On the island attendees will choose to take part in one of two workshops that observe and document the island 1) Creative writing and charcoal rubbings will record the island’s geology and generate a ‘mapping’ of the island’s geological history 2) a field sketching workshop to identify species of migrating birds visiting the island, before drawing an evolutionary (phylogenetic) tree.

Finally, a poetry performance based on collected oral histories and poetry, will be performed in a costume that turns a performer into the native sea lavender. We will then walk back to West Kirby before high tide.

This event is part of Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 7–16 November 2024. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. For further information please see beinghumanfestival.org.

Stories from the Climate Future

Stories from the Climate Future

Take part in a research project on how we imagine climate futures. Share stories of your own future.

Date: Sunday, 27th October 2024
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: Kitty’s Launderette

A listening and conversation event at Kitty’s Laundrette on Sunday 27th October 6.30 pm to 8.00 pm at 77 Grasmere Street, Everton, Liverpool L5 6RH. They will listen to the unique audio play Three Sisters – a story from the climate future, set in the mid 2030s in a climate-altered Britain, in the Nith Valley near Dumfries. Their collective listening session will last 30 minutes and will be followed by conversation, which will help imagine our own climate futures.

The event is organised by Lena Simic (Edge Hill University) and James Marriott (Platform), co-authors of Three Sisters – a story from the climate future. The complete audio play is available on all major audio platforms should you wish to experience it before or after the event. The play and artistic research have been funded by Arts Council England and British Academy.

Stories from the Climate Future

Take part in a research project on how we imagine climate futures. Share stories of your own future. A listening and conversation event at Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre.

Listen to the unique audio play Three Sisters – a story from the climate future, set in the mid 2030s in a climate-altered Britain, in the Nith Valley near Dumfries. This collective listening session will last 30 minutes and will be followed by conversation, which will help us imagine our own climate futures.

The event is organised by Lena Simic (Edge Hill University) and James Marriott (Platform), co-authors of Three Sisters – a story from the climate future. The complete audio play is available on all major audio platforms should you wish to experience it before or after the event. The play and artistic research have been funded by Arts Council England and British Academy.

Please note that the Dome, where they are planning to hold the event, is only accessible by two flights of stairs. Please let them know if you have accessibility needs in order for them to be able to accommodate everyone. Tea, coffee and snacks will be provided.