About Us

The Natural History Consortium is a charitable collaboration of 14 organisations working together on a shared mission: to develop, test and disseminate best practice to engage everyone with the environment and natural world. Our partnership brings together regional and national partners. This structure, and our charity which delivers joint projects, allows us to deliver cutting-edge events with audiences in the West of England, conduct research and evaluation, and create a national platform for the environmental communication sector to share best practice.

Find out more about our current work, and history, below. Collaborate with us and our programmes: we’d love to hear from you at info@bnhc.org.uk.

Our current work includes:

• Programming for Communicate 2020 to bring the environmental communication sector together in November 2020
• Managing the development of an Ecological Emergency Action Plan for the city of Bristol
• Using design principles to co-design our public events for 2021 in light of Covid-19
• Leading on learning, monitoring and evaluation for the innovative National Lottery Heritage Fund / National Trust Future Parks Accelerator programme
• Exploring national and European opportunities for the development of our citizen science programme

Some highlights from our history:

2018 – We formalised our Research & Evaluation strand, and our Research Group began meeting regularly to explore opportunities

2017 – We ran our first City Nature Challenge, taking the top spot in Europe

2016 – Our River Avon project sets up poetry boards along the walking trail of the River Avon, catching the attention of national media

2015 – As Bristol held the title of European Green Capital, our partners led the development of the nature strategy, and our Festival of Nature was a set piece of the year

2014 – Bristol99, an innovative citizen science project, led to our ambition of reaching every ward in the West of England through our public work

2013 – Our CEO travelled to Brussels to help Bristol win the title of European Green Capital, and helped lead the project as Director of Education and Engagement

2012 – We ran the London 2012’s Cultural Olympiad’s only environmental programme, Meet the Species, reaching audiences across the UK

2011 – Our local work expanded from Bristol across to Bath, solidifying our public work as regional and sector facing work as national. Matt Postles, now Deputy CEO, joins the team.

2010 – The National BioBlitz Network is born as part of International Year of Biodiversity

2009 – We run one of the UK’s first BioBlitz events, leading to the development of one of our major strands of work

2008 – Bristol Natural History Consortium (our original name) is recognised as the Charity Commission as we formalise our structure

2007 – Communicate’s theme is Going Mainstream, as the environmental movement starts to hit the front pages

2006 – Savita Willmott joins as Chief Executive, leading the organisation to present day.

2005 – Festival of Nature in Bristol moves to its current home across the Harbourside

2004 – The Communicate conference is run for the first time

2003 – The founding partners come together to set up the partnership, and the first Festival of Nature is delivered