ALERTING ALL YOU RIGHT TO ROAMERS

Can't see this message? View in a browser   Our First Ever Supporter Survey Dear Roamers, In the past week the Right to Roam team has been ping-ponging between Westminster and Yorkshire to meet with supportive MPs and plot our strategy for the year. There’s a lot to share. And several points of hope on the horizon for all of us who care about access reform. But we’ve realised a piece of the puzzle is missing: you! Every few weeks we reach out to all of you with updates about the campaign and ways you can get involved. It’s not a one way conversation. Lots of you get back in touch to share powerful stories, provide intel you’ve received from your MPs, suggest avenues we might not have thought of and, sometimes, (usually correctly) to tell us off for something we’ve said. Still, we don’t actually know much about you, our core supporters. With that in mind, we’ve put together our first ever supporter survey. We’d love to know more about who you are, what you think, and what motivates you about the campaign. This will help us better understand who we’re reaching, who we’re missing, and give us confidence we’re carrying out the work that matters most to you. You can fill out the survey here. We’ve kept it punchy, so it should only take 2-3 minutes. To aid your thoughts, below is a quick explainer of who we are, what we do, how we work, and where we’d like to be. A CAMPAIGN EXPLAINER How we started: Right to Roam was founded in 2020, in the midst of the global pandemic. It was a moment when the country became keenly aware of the role which nature played in our lives – and just how unequal access to it was. The campaign began as a kitchen table project between two friends, Nick and Guy, who had both recently published books about land justice. Since then it has grown into an established organisation run by a small team. What we do: We develop policy on access reform, hold meetings with Ministers and MPs, create press stories, organise major events – including, most famously, peaceful trespasses of large estates. We document macro and micro-enclosures of access, hold talks and speak to the media, investigate government failings on access commitments, write books and articles, and support a network of local groups to take action around the country. Since 2023 we’ve also been leading the resistance to major encroachments of existing access rights, whether it be wild camping on Dartmoor, or against the paywalling of Cirencester Park. As of 2024 we’ve been developing a network of access friendly farmers and landowners to help shape our policy proposals and provide a counter-narrative to the negative lobbying conducted by the NFU. What we want: Our primary goal is to achieve a Right to Roam Act for England & Wales, modelled on the Scottish approach to access (a default right of responsible access to land and water, subject to common-sense exceptions). Long term, our aim is to use access to help catalyse a culture of grassroots nature guardianship – a concept we call Wild Service (which Amy-Jane does a beautiful job of explaining here). Where we’re at: There are six of us in the core team (you can see who we are in ‘Meet the current team’ here), twelve local groups, and forty thousand of you – that is, people who receive our newsletters. This mailing list represents the core of our community of supporters, though we’re also active on Instagram and so on too. About 600 hundred of you provide us with regular donations, for which we’re hugely appreciative and without which the campaign could not survive. Where we’d like to be: We don’t want to grow much bigger ourselves - more on why in a moment - but we would like to increase our team’s capacity over the coming year. The six of us currently work part-time for the campaign alongside other jobs, and it’d be great to make that work more secure and full(er) time so we can give the campaign our full focus in an important year. So If you’ve got the means to sub us a pint over the coming months, we’d be grateful. Getting to 1,000 subscribers would make a big difference to our efforts. You can read more about how we’re funded and what we spend money on here. (Note: We’ve now set it up so subscribers can control their donations via an automated link in an email and cancel by themselves anytime. We don’t lock people into annual memberships. No worries if you can’t afford it right now. There are lots of other ways to get involved). How we work: We’re a ‘flat’ organisation, so there is no internal hierarchy and everyone is paid the same. We make all big decisions as a collective. If we can’t agree (we usually can) we punt the matter over to our experienced Parliament of Owls (see who they are by scrolling down here), who we meet with four times a year for guidance. We don’t have fixed titles and instead work in line with our passions and expertise. The team is empowered to take initiative (there’s a lot less ‘signing off’ in Right to Roam) which means we can move fast and often be more adaptable than larger organisations. What we’re not trying to be: We also don’t want to become a large organisation with lots of overheads and a complicated internal bureaucracy. We want to avoid the time and expense involved in keeping a big machine running, which might distract us from focusing on what’s most important to achieve. Instead we seek to seed local groups around the country who can influence their regions long term. What we believe: We don’t think it’s the role of a campaigning organisation to mould itself to the vagaries of whoever is in power. We think it is our job to work out what is right and to build the arguments, evidence and support necessary to achieve it. So we’ll ruffle feathers when we have to, while keeping our ears open to sensible critique. If we change our mind about something big then we’ll let you know, explain our reasoning, and see what you all think. Ultimately, our belief is that the countryside should reflect shared, democratic values, not just the whims of those with the most wealth and power. Thank you for being part of the journey! FOR THE DIARY Dartmoor: Any week now we could receive the Dartmoor supreme court verdict on the wild camping case. Win or lose, this will be a hugely significant moment for access reform and we’ll be responding with a mass rally to pressure the government to take action to either reverse the decision or prevent such cases arising again. Unfortunately, we won’t have much forewarning when the verdict will be delivered. But we’ll let you know as soon as it lands. Save the date: There is, however, one date we can plan for! This year, on the weekend of April 26th & 27th, is the anniversary of the Kinder Scout mass trespass: the most famous access rights protest in British history. We’re in early discussions with our local group and other organisations to do something big. More details as we have it, but save the date. Event: Folk singer and long-time campaign supporter, Johnny Campbell, is walking across the Pennines next month. He'll have a guitar strapped to his back and will be bringing songs about trespasses new and old to the people of northern England. Amy-Jane Beer from Right to Roam will be joining him on March 25th at Horton-in-Ribblesdale for an evening of song, history and access politics. Tour dates here. AND FINALLY… A shout out to the Wiltshire, Somerset and Bristol Right to Roam groups for their beautiful trespass at the Priddy barrows last weekend, which you can read more about on their Instagram page here. About fifty people attended to hear from local writer and photographer, David Abrams, about the significance of these inaccessible monuments – and how vandalism by the landowner (who bulldozed the southernmost ring to create a motocross course) was only uncovered thanks to a member of the public: “and yet we constantly face the narrative that it is us, the ‘general public’ who pose the most threat to these scheduled monuments”. Makes you think. A final reminder to complete our short supporter survey here. More anon! Jon, On behalf of the Right to Roam team ---------- For the latest campaign updates, follow us on Instagram & Bluesky To get involved, check out our website here. Can you help keep us roaming? Head to ‘Donate’ here. Right to Roam groups from Wiltshire, Somerset & Bristol reunite with their ancient local heritage Take Action Visit our social accounts Check out our site   This email was sent from this site. If you no longer wish to receive this email, change your email preferences here.