We Have a Winner!

congratulations to 11-year-old Layla Williams!

Remember I told you about the wonderful Hedgehog Street Art and Craft Competition?

Well, here is some inspiration for you!!! The winners of the Hedgehog Awareness Week (HAW) poster design competition! Congratulations to 11-year-old Layla Williams – your design is beautiful, bold & clear.

British Hedgehog Preservation Society HQ is always in a frenzy at this time of the year in the run up to HAW - around the country people are getting ready to do things to raise awareness - letting their friends and neighbours know how serious the threats facing hedgehogs are - and, importantly, sharing the top tips of how we can all help them.

Reuben, age 6 - a hedgehog with the best eyelashes (not him, the picture)!

This page of the BHPS website is full of information leaflets - all free to download. There is information on the basic facts about hedgehogs through to how to garden for them. Then you can share your new found knowledge with your street!

Maybe you would like to do some more good for hedgehogs, but feel like staying on the sofa today (the rain is coming!!) Well, you can go shopping!!! The BHPS has a shop packed full of hedgehoggery - and the profits are all fed back into helping hedgehogs.

Back to the poster designs and also the art and craft competitions … These are, in my mind, so very important. I used to think that if I just stood in front of people and told them the facts about hedgehogs - about how they lived, how we were causing their population to collapse, and how we can help - that that would be enough. Well, it is not!! We need to tell stories and get to the heart of the matter. We cannot rely on the head!!

George, age 6 - a very smiley hedgehog … again, the picture, not him!

Getting involved in arts and crafts on a subject requires that we look at it from different perspectives - there is a degree of empathy required to make these things work. And this is worth all the facts I can give you in a lecture (trust me, there are a lot!) - which is why I am such a fan of the creative work all the contributors are up to!!

There is still plenty of time (and maybe a few rainy days of Easter Holidays to fill!!) so get your creative juices flowing and make something that tells a story!!

Now, if you have not had your fill of my thoughts … I can point you to a few other places … there is the gardening column I write … but that does have a paywall.

Then there are the bits and pieces that end up on Bluesky, Instagram and Twitter …

On Thursday 17th April I will be in Maidstone, talking about Cull of the Wild.

On Tuesday 22nd April I will be up in Cumbria, talking to the Bothel Community Wildlife Group … bcwg2024@gmail.com for details.

And on Monday 28th April I will be talking in Enstone, near Chipping Norton.

I have some lovely stuff for later in the week - more stamps and a lovely cartoon!!