Gateway Project
The Gateway Project is a unique social inclusion and access initiative set up in 1999 by the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust, with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund of £113,000. Its aim is to enable physical and intellectual access to historic parks and gardens for the widest possible audiences.
The concept is simple: it approaches owners and head gardeners about hosting a group visit, and it approaches charities, community groups and schools about making one. The Project offers free travel, free access to the garden, a personal tour, special interpretation (it produced the first ever Chinese-language guide to the National Botanic Garden of Wales), and refreshments, as well as initial liaison and follow-up. It also helps owners of smaller properties which are not regularly open with the costs of receiving visitors.
Over 5000 individuals have now enjoyed a Gateway visit, and the level of requests for further visits is extremely high: all the groups that participated in 2003 have requested another session. Age Concern originally estimated that 100 members would take up Gateway visits, but the present take-up is 900 and growing.
Currently, inner-city school groups make up the bulk of Gateway visits but about a third are from other disadvantaged groups: the physically disabled, the elderly, the terminally ill, the bereaved and carers, children with special needs, adults with learning disabilities, women’s groups, families on low incomes, asylum seekers, and ethnic communities.
There is no template. Each visit involves close liaison with the group about physical and intellectual needs and about the day’s theme. Every detail is addressed: enjoyable meals are a crucial part of the day. The Project avoids being pedagogical – if a group asks to visit Aberglasney because it has been on the television, that is where they will go. The Project is confident that a successful session will lead the group on to more.
A second HLF grant supports the Project’s Education and Garden Heritage programme 2001-04, which addresses both the young, and lifelong learners. Fund-raising remains a continual challenge. Sponsorship has grown rapidly as a result of energetic leadership. Commercial sponsors, such as Barclays and Lloyds TSB Foundations, as well as the Countryside Council for Wales, now back Gateway initiatives.
The Project has had huge success in removing physical and social barriers and in developing the cultural and educational potential of historic parks and gardens.
One member of the Cyrenians from Swansea, which made a visit to the park at Dynefwr as part of a photography course, said that it had been ‘the best day since I left prison’.
Swansea Children Matter Project commented after a visit, that ‘these children are used to adults having low expectations of them …By taking them beyond the boundaries of their day to day experience, they are encouraged to set their aspirations for the future a little higher. Who knows for one or more of the children, that visit may have sparked off a life-long interest in science and nature and led them a step closer to fulfilling their potential.’
Almost as heartening has been the response of owners and gardeners. One owner said she had ‘more fun out of the Gateway than any other visits, they’re just brilliant’. Russell Sharpe, head gardener at Portmeirion, said, ‘You know how sometimes you have a visit and you think “Thank God, that’s over” – well, it wasn’t like that with those Gateway kids – they were so interested and full of questions. [The staff] talked about them for weeks afterwards.’ Portmeirion now gives prizes of plants to schools with gardens. Another head gardener began the afternoon telling the children not to touch the flowers in his dahlia garden but by the end of the afternoon was cutting flowers for them, excusing it as dead-heading, so that every child had a dahlia to take home.
Now the Gateway is set to become an independent Trust. It plans to grow into England, with the West Midlands as its first area. Demand is clearly vast. DL
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