Green Jobs and Skills

The Skills and Jobs pilot is based out of Ward End Park.

Jobs and Skills Pilot

The Naturally Birmingham Skills and Jobs pilot is based out of Ward End Park.

FPA Employment Objectives

  • Invest in nature based green jobs and skills learning.
  • Embed the natural environment in all growth sector strategies
  • Green our grey transport routes and extend walking and cycling

Our Jobs and Skills Pilot is all about promoting the green sector and the fantastic careers and opportunities it has to offer. We hope to see you very soon in person to deliver some interactive events and activities for you to learn more from the professionals working in the green sector, but for now take a look at what we created online…

Green Skills Showcase we’re bringing the green sector to life – something for everyone: Green Skills Showcase – Naturally Birmingham Future Parks Project

Head over to our YouTube Channel to find out more about professionals in green jobs – Click Here

On the Jobs and Skills YouTube channel you will find videos from those working in the industry from horticulturists to sustainability specialists. In the videos you will hear all about the persons – earliest green space memory, how they got in to the role, the highlights of their job and hints and tips on how you could start your green career…

  • Test your knowledge with our Green Quiz

We’ve created a Guess the role quiz – the perfect opportunity for you to delve a little further in to some of the green careers out there – from an Urban Forest Manager to CEO of a sustainability organisation. If you’re a teacher or work with young people, this can easily be used in your lessons –Complete the Quiz now

  • Free Green Resources.

We recently created some interactive green bitesize modules to encourage young people to learn through nature. The activities include,

  • Soil Jar Test
  • Measuring a Design Space
  • Estimating the height of the tree.

We ask that you encourage students studying maths, geography, art or science and those that have an interest in the green sector to have a go – you can find the videos here.

We have created support packs to compliment the videos and highlight the relevant careers that apply to the activity and when or why you might use the activity. If you would like to receive these, please email Sophie.

  • Careers Seminars

We regularly run seminar sessions looking at careers, training courses and opportunities that are available. Our most recent sessions include talking about forestry careers with Adrow and hearing from University students currently studying Urban Planning, Environmental Science and Geography.

If you’d like to book a session for your students or you would like to offer a session, then please do get in touch.

“I have just been offered a horticulture apprenticeship… I have enjoyed the green sector related content that you have sent over…and would still like to receive notifications about these events…”

  • Green Champions 18 – 24-year olds

We know how important parks have become during the pandemic and we have all enjoyed being outdoors a little bit more than normal perhaps. We recently spoke with a group of 18-24-year olds about how they’d like to engage with their green space and what they would like to learn. We are now working in the background to encourage the learning of green skills and how engagement could lead to green based apprenticeships and opportunities – watch this space for more details.

Business Engagement, Social Value and the community – working together to give back to local green spaces and the people that use them…

We want to ensure that businesses are involved with looking after their local green spaces and supporting community groups to deliver on activities and projects. Once we are out of lockdown and back to a ‘normal’ way of life we will be providing a full range of activities that businesses can support with. Support could be offered through volunteering, sponsorship, crowdfunding, providing materials or giving advice and knowledge to help deliver projects. To stay up to date with our social value work please email socialvalueparks@birmingham.gov.uk .

Employee health and wellbeing is very important and we want to encourage businesses to support employees that wish to use the green spaces around Birmingham to support their health and wellbeing – if you have ideas on how we can support this – we would love to speak with you.

We are supporting the already amazing work taking place within the communities, through building on the community activity and events within the park and supporting improvements and activities, whilst working on group action and joint ownership. There are some fantastic groups already operating in Ward End Park with the following groups –

Friends of Ward End Park are currently looking for members to join and support their ambitions for the local area, if you’d like to join or find out a little more information please Contact | Birmingham Open Spaces Forum (bosf.org.uk)

Ward End Park is being improved, plans are on view in the park. Here are some of the jobs and skills that will support the improvement works and on going maintenance:

To keep up with the latest news at Ward End Park, you can follow us on Twitter – https://twitter.com/WardEndPark1