What is Coast Alive
The project has dual goals, firstly to develop a Toolkit of best practice initiatives for how to mobilise people, how to attract new visitors to the countryside and to the paths and how to ensure that they keep coming back without damaging our valuable heritage. Secondly, the project hopes to develop initiatives that will contribute to the improvement of people’s health through increased levels of exercise.
The plan is to exchange ideas and jointly contribute to improving the competencies of physical health practitioners, and to support and advise local small businesses. Ideally this qualitative improvement will survive over time and the influence on SMEs will help retain new health and activity related business activities. Mapping barriers to improved activity and to improved access is proving to be important parts in this.
The project is operating through a series of focused activities. One is looking at new, innovative ways to improve numbers using paths and outdoor facilities. This is primarily being done through a series of small test projects called Community Mobilisation Initiatives (CMI’s). These CMI’s are described in detail in the Best Practice section. In total the project will probably see around 100 of these be tried and tested. They range from working with ’hard to reach groups’ to our own geocoins providing hammocks for those wanting to spend a night outdoors and digitising trails for visitors using GPS systems.
We feel it is important to link national and cultural heritage to the latest uses of modern media such as facebook and social networking sites. The link between the geocoins and the trails is another way of bridging the gap between the computer users and outdoor experiences and activities.
As we encourage more outdoor activities, we are also mindful of the potential damage to natural and cultural heritage from such activity. The project is actively looking at various approaches to measuring or monitoring changes in quality of the visitor experience. It has not been easy to find concrete examples good practice in this field. British Columbia’s approach, called Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) stands out as a very well structured, if data hungry way of doing this. By the time Coast Alive is completed, we hope to have developed some procedures for this which can be undertaken easily, and that based on awareness, will help custodians of heritage ensure that visitors degrade the very assets they so appreciate.
At the end, the project will have developed a ‘Toolkit ’, a set of procedures and examples of Best Practice. The draft document will only be available to project partners. The final toolkit is planned to be completed during the spring 2012.
The partners are located around the rim of the North Sea, but we also have a very interesting cooperation with the International Appalachian Trail organisation (www.iat-sia.com).
They will also put the Coast Alive logo on at the start and finishing points of some of their trails. The plan is to develop a joint long-distance trail all the way from the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail the US, through Atlantic Canada, to Newfoundland follow the Viking trade routes to Southern Greenland and across to Iceland, the Faeroes, and around the North Sea on our trails, before following the coast up the eastern seaboard of the UK and around the coast of Scotland to Northern Ireland and into the Republic of Ireland in Donegal where the trail meets the sea at some of the most spectacular views in Europe.
We also have a series of very interesting associates around us. We work with the British Federation of Small Business, with the UK Climate Impact Panel, with the UK’s Obesity Observatory and with EURISY. Each of these organisations have provided valuable input to the project and the cooperation with EURISY has resulted in some very specific results as seen elsewhere.
Coast Alive is an EU-supported project comprising 14 partners and a series of sub partners around the North Sea, building on the work of two earlier transnational projects. The first one, the North Sea Cycle Route, was aimed at promoting cycling on long-distance paths, whilst the second, the North Sea Trail, targeted walkers. These two projects developed paths; the Coast Alive partners work to use these to develop new initiatives to draw their local population out into the countryside for health reasons. The project is supported by a substantial inheritance of articles on natural and cultural heritage to attract people not normally interested in outdoor activities. All of these are on the web site.
The project receives support from the EU’s Interreg North Sea Programme.
PARTNERS
The participants in this project, the partners are, starting with the northernmost one: Møre og Romsdal, Sogn og Fjordane, Hordaland (Lead Partner), Rogaland, Vest Agder, Kragerø, Halland, Sjælland, Nordjylland, Syddansk Turisme, Fryslan, Zeeland, Norfolk and The North York Moors National Parks Authority. Most work with a range of local bodies, forestry commissions etc, taking the total number of agencies involved in the project to 26. The Links section of the website has links to each of the partners.
