Community Climate Stewards
Skegness
Skegness is one of three places involved in Rights Community Action’s Community Climate Stewards project. Thanks to National Lottery players, the work is being supported for five years by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK.
Living on the coast means that flooding, storms and changes to the shoreline are already familiar concerns for many people in Skegness. Our Community Climate Stewards will work alongside local residents to understand how these issues are affecting the town and what people want its future to look like.
This next phase grows out of the relationships and local work already established through WeAreHere Skegness. It will give people more space to bring forward their own knowledge of the area and raise the things they feel are being overlooked.
“My family have been here for generation upon generations.
Yet no real defence guards have ever been put in place for the people of Skegness”
“This is our home.
How can we give up years of memories created over time in our families, all because no one cared about us?"
We are supporting local organisations and artists to amplify the thoughts, hopes and fears of the community of Skegness about the impact of climate change. This has included working with Lincolnshire Climate Conscious Students and art group Square Peg to create connection, public art and action!
Community sessions are already happening and there’s so much activity underway. We’ve held a meeting in parliament, which was attended by both Government and opposition parliamentarians, where LCCS spoke with passion about the threat facing Skegness. LCCS’s petition calling on Government accept climate changes to the Levelling Up and Regeneration bill has reached nearly 60,000 signatures (like to sign? add yours to the petition here). We created a postcard from the edge on Skegness Beach with artists’ Sand in your Eye and the community.
Skegness is a town which has been historically resistant to climate and social action. Square Peg, our WeAreHere Skegness Place Coordinators, has, through sustained listening and relationship building, overcome this challenge. They have brought together a dedicated group of residents who regularly attend workshops and activities, united by their own lived experiences of climate change impacts, including historic floods. This vital work to activate a largely disengaged community has led to the development of tangible neighbourhood asks to input in the local plan, and the foundation for legal action (more on this coming soon!)
Crucially, our work in Skegness has highlighted the situation of people with disabilities who are housed on a floodplain and for whom there is no emergency evacuation plan. The group which has come together through WeAreHere Skegness plan to address this directly through campaigning and advocacy in the long-term.
Skegness might have been forgotten by those in power, but we are here to support the local community to make them take notice!
From Skegness?
We want to hear your story and help you tell your story to politicians and decision-makers. Please share it here.