Below we hear from Kirsty Barr Assistant RHET Lothian Project Co-ordinator about some of the work the area has recently undertaken to promote sustainable farming.

Hi, my name is Kirsty, and I am an assistant to the RHET Lothian Project Co-ordinator Liz Ritchie. I work with Liz part time around my full-time job at the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency. I am also studying a 4-year honours degree in Rural Business Management at Scotland’s Rural College, and I am very heavily involved with young farmers.

I enjoy working with RHET as I strongly believe in their missions and goals. They have a lovely network of experienced people who give up their time to teach school children about food, farming and the countryside.

Having only left high school 4 years ago, I can help with a fresher insight to what sort of learning resources will appeal to school children. This is something we have been using to our advantage in the Lothians.

I also have the ability to use digital resources at ease, being in a generation that was brought up with the ever-advancing technology that we use today. Liz and I were recently asked to take part in a digital conference in West Lothian that was all about sustainability. This was something that was quite out our depth, but we took the leap and decided to make a 25-minute-long video to be played to the audience of over 2000 school children in the conference.

We had great fun making the video one sunny Saturday morning in and around Liz’s family farm in Gorebridge. Whilst we aren’t quite Countryfile ready, we put in a good effort and the video turned out really well. We certainly learnt a lot that we can take forward to future projects.

As part of the West Lothian Sustainability Conference, we also had two other 25 minute long sessions to fill, on top of the video. We made a PowerPoint for Liz to show children and teachers what RHET can offer locally in terms of farm visits, classroom talks and projects, this was a success and hopefully raised our profile in the area. We also had one of our volunteers, Jim Wyllie, a farmer from East Lothian, who talked to the schools about how farming is sustainable and tackled some of the misinformation the public is being fed regarding agricultures part to play in climate change.

Overall, we felt the event was successful and great opportunity that we are glad we took. We hope you enjoy the video and find it informative!

If you volunteer with us and have a story to tell please get in touch with training@rhet.org.uk