Arena Leads Big Lottery Fund's 'Grow Wild'

 Media planning and buying agency, Arena, has unveiled an integrated campaign to encourage people to get involved with ‘Grow Wild’ – an initiative led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and funded by the Big Lottery Fund (BIG).
 

Grow Wild focuses on areas in need of regeneration, giving people the chance to vote for community growing projects in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland that they feel most deserve to receive funding to realise their vision.
 

 
The initiative will be supported by a campaign planned and bought by Arena – created by Mad River – running across radio, social media, local press and blogger outreach.

 
The Grow Wild initiative launches in Scotland and will roll out across the UK over the next three years, awarding one wildlife-friendly project in each region funding to help rejuvenate urban sites, gardens and windowsills, turning them into patches for wild flowers. Grow Wild will award £100,000 in funding to each winning project, with Scotland’s transformed site being unveiled in Spring 2014.
 

Big Lottery Fund Scotland Chair, Maureen McGinn, said, “Grow Wild is bringing communities together to transform unused or neglected urban sites and gardens with wild flowers.  It’s a great chance for people to get back to their green roots and bring more life and colour to the places where they live.  The vote is open now, so please visit the website and get voting for your favourite site.”
 

Andrew Ormston, Grow Wild Scottish partnerships, added: “People across Scotland have the opportunity to decide which of these imaginative and engaging projects win £100,000 funding to transform under-used areas in their local communities.  I have been particularly impressed with the range of community involvement in the design and planning of each site.
 

“Community projects such as these help to improve community relationships, give younger people better access to outdoor space with benefits to health and wellbeing, as well enabling people to enjoy seeing wild flowers in urban areas.”

 
Anna Beynon, Account Manager at Arena, said: “This is a fantastic project that’s all about thinking big, and acting locally. Through a highly targeted supporting campaign – where local radio is an integral channel – we look forward to helping spread the Grow Wild message far and wide, getting as many people involved as possible.”

 
Claire Hyde of Grow Wild, added: “Arena have been great to work with on this- really proactive, with good ideas and very solid follow-through. It’s been a complex campaign and they’ve always gone the extra mile to make sure it delivers.”

 
From Monday 14 October until 3 November people in Scotland can go online at vote.growwilduk.com and choose from three Scottish projects, including a disused sewage works in Barrhead, a community garden in Greenock and a community pond in Livingston. BIG and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew are working in partnership with greenspace scotland and Youth Scotland to complete the Scottish Grow Wild campaign.