What REFIT did next…

The REFIT Project is looking to the future. Bringing together all of our findings from Bagendon, Salmonsbury, Bibracte and Ulaca to look at sustainable landscape management practice across Europe has helped us identify other important areas of research.

In the UK we’ve started expanding the work to explore 3 other case study landscapes in the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). These case studies include the landscapes around Sherborne, Painswick and Badminton/Sodbury Vale (see map below). Each of these landscapes has a different ‘character’ and management structure to Bagendon and Salmonsbury (Greystones Farm). This means that the new analysis will enable us to build a clearer picture of landscape management in the region and assess whether the challenges and successes identified at Bagendon and Salmonsbury resonate elsewhere.

Interviews with stakeholders in these new landscapes are focusing of understandings of current land management practice and policy with an eye to developing more integrated online land management resources in the future. The work is also looking at the ways in which stakeholders with different landscape interests, e.g. farming, wildlife, heritage, community, interact and share information. By understanding who talks to whom and about what we can begin to map gaps in the communication chain and look at innovative approaches which will bring groups and information together to support more sustainable landscape management in the Cotswolds and wider UK.

Keep your eyes peeled for updates on the work later in the year!

Location map showing REFIT’s old and new case study landscapes in the Cotswolds

Rudge Hill Common with a view across the Painswick landscape