Wanted – Writers and Digital Ambassadors!

Want to make your voice heard, and help to champion our green spaces and Greenhavens projects and network? Great! We really need your help!

Our fantastic website is full of information about Greenhavens, has a calendar packed full of events, and lots of regular blogs but it will only benefit our network if we keep adding new content. We really need more people to write for our website, as with so many projects in the network, our overworked writers can’t be everywhere all the time, and project volunteers are often too busy to write up stories to share!

We also need people to help with writing press releases and other articles for publication in local media.

What is a blog?

A blog is just an online diary located on a website.

The content of a blog typically includes text and photographs. It is a regularly updated website written in an informal or conversational style

What can I write about?

We are looking for stories about our green spaces and projects in the Greenhavens area under our six themes:

Conservation
Garden
Appeals and Campaigns
Learning together
Health and Wellbeing
Food

We generally only publish stories that are ultimately positive. We cannot get involved in contentious issues, debates, political issues etc. Stories should really be based in our green spaces and linked to our projects – so for example an article about yoga could be about health and wellbeing but this is not enough itself. If the yoga class had found it hugely beneficial to participants to move outside to a local park where more people were encouraged to join in, this would be of much more relevant and interesting to our readers.

If you are involved in your own project we would love to hear about it. If you are not, but want to get involved, why not become one of our digital ambassadors? You can then visit other projects or events, talk to the people running the projects, ask them lots of questions, take some photographs and write up your visit. This would give you excellent experience for roles in journalism/writing. If you would like to do this, please send a message via the website saying which projects/events you would like to cover. We would also encourage younger writers to write, especially about green spaces and projects designed for their age group (for example do you have a teenager who loves the new skate park and could write a review?)

But I can’t write!

You don’t need to be a brilliant writer, you just need to have a story to tell. It’s not a formal essay or a test, just keep it simple. Imagine you were talking to someone and write it down your story as you would speak it. Try and include all the facts (where/when/who/why) and you could think about using all your senses to describe it (for example describing a meadow, you might mention the colours you can see, the textures of the grass you touch, the crickets you can hear, the flowers you can smell). Get the story down as best you can, and if necessary we can sort out spelling/grammar and editing so that it can be clearly understood. You can upload your story via the link on the website. If you have further information to follow (like photos) just let us know when you make contact.

How about photographs?

If you would like to take photographs for Greenhavens, please let us know! There are so many events in the network, and we can’t be everywhere, so it would be great if you could help us to build our photo library. We particularly need more photographs of volunteers, projects and of people enjoying our outdoor spaces.

We like to include a few decent photographs in blogs (It’s said a picture can replace 1000 words!) If you can send photographs with your story that’s great. If not, don’t worry, we will find some another way. Photographs should preferably be as good quality as possible (Take in good light, and get as close as possible to your subject).

If you take photos of people, you must have their permission to publish the photographs (or parent’s permission if taking photographs of a child). We can provide photo consent forms.

Photos need to be landscape way round so if you are using a mobile phone turn it this way