Success of the Lough Erne Landscape Partnership Celebration Event
The Lough Erne Landscape Partnership (LELP) are delighted to announce their success in being awarded additional funding of £98,587 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to extend the current Landscape Partnership scheme until December 2024. This funding, alongside additional contributions from the Partnership’s funding partners, the RSPB as lead partner, Fermanagh & Omagh District Council, National Trust and Waterways Ireland brings the overall project value to over £3.4m that is directly benefitting the people, nature and heritage of Lough Erne.
The Partnership began with the aim to protect, promote and enhance the very unique natural, cultural and built heritage of the region through a planned scheme of 23 local projects in 2018. Since then, the Partnership has also been able to work with the local community to identify and deliver a further 20 projects, bringing to life 43 projects delivering a wide range of outcomes for the district. With too many achievements and projects to mention, people are being invited to visit the Projects section on our website.
The current scheme has been hugely successful to date, but of course due to the restrictions of COVID 19 many of the planned events and activities were postponed ensuring that the community could be kept safe throughout. This programme extension and additional award of funding will enable the team and the LELP programme and project partners to be able to make a greater impact within the Lough Erne Community.
The successes of the additional funding and wider achievements of the Partnership to date were celebrated on Tuesday 18th October at The Archdale Centre, Lisnaskea. The hall was a hive of activity with project partners displaying their achievements and information about their projects. At the start of the event, Joanne Sherwood, Director of RSPB NI thanked the LELP Board, Working Group and Legacy Sub-group for providing excellent support and leadership throughout the delivery of the programme.
During the celebrations, Nikki McVeigh Committee Member of The National Lottery Heritage Fund in Northern Ireland, stated;
“We are delighted to be able to offer our continued support to the Lough Erne Landscape Partnership which thanks to money raised by National Lottery players, has been delivering for the people, nature and heritage of Lough Erne. Heritage is a great way of bringing people together to create a pride of place. By offering additional support and flexibility, the final phase now has scope to complete heritage projects paused during recent challenging times resulting in more people becoming involved in local heritage.”
Joanne Sherwood, Director, RSPBNI as lead partner representative of LELP reflected:
“We are grateful to The National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players for the additional support to the Lough Erne Landscape Partnership programme of works in Fermanagh. Over the last four years the communities of Fermanagh have engaged in a wide-ranging heritage programme, providing exciting opportunities for so many people to learn about and get involved in their local built, natural and cultural heritage. We now look forward to the next phase where we will look to secure an appropriate legacy to build on the successful work that has been completed to date.”
Elmarie Swanepoel, Programme Manager of the Lough Erne Landscape Partnership added:
“One of the key strengths of the partnership is the opportunities it brings for the local agencies, organisations and groups to work together and we are very proud of the now established local networks in place that facilitates different groups creating new partnerships and learning from each other. We are very pleased to see the emergence of key strategic opportunities resulting from the work of the partnership, and these will be explored as part of the legacy plans. We are seeing fantastic opportunities for heritage tourism development, focussed and structured heritage education programmes (all ages), landscape scale species and land conservation opportunities, volunteer and youth engagement programmes and vibrant community heritage forums – all of which having the potential to realise additional community capacity, creating new heritage sector jobs and bringing economic opportunity and prosperity to the region.”
During the afternoon, attendees to the event was invited to the National Trust Crom Estate for a guided walk to view the newly completed footpath on Inisherk Island which was created as part of the Lough Erne Landscape Partnership programme.
Take a look at this video displaying the highlights of the day:
If you would like to learn more about the work of the Lough Erne Landscape Partnership contact the team by emailing info@lelp.org.uk
As shown at the celebration event, please find below The Story so Far:
About The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Using money raised by The National Lottery, The National Lottery Heritage Fund inspires, leads and resources the UK’s heritage to create positive and lasting change for people and communities, now and in the future. www.HeritageFund.org.uk.
Follow @HeritageFundNI on Twitter and @HeritageFundNorthernIreland on Facebook and use the hashtag #NationalLotteryHeritageFund