LOUIS (Intro)
Hey there, my name’s Louis and you’re listening to Kakou Talk, a podcast about accessibility and community brought to you by Kakou Technologies. You’re listening to episode five, with Sally Hyslop. I hope you enjoy!
LOUIS
Hey there, and welcome to this episode of Kakou Talk. It’s really nice to be back in the saddle with an almost consecutive episode after last time’s chat with JJ Talat, and I gotta be honest, I really didn’t know how much I’d miss doing this more regularly than I have been. But I’m gonna stop myself there because I want to introduce you to the guest on today’s episode, Sally Hyslop, from the Don Catchment Rivers Trust. How’re you doing this morning, Sally?
SALLY
I’m good. Thank you. How are you?
LOUIS
I’m fine. Thank you. Yeah, you know, like I said, it’s been a while since I’ve done the podcast so regularly. So it’s nice just to be kind of right back into it. And I mean, we are actually re-recording this episode, because- and this sounds like a joke- but because of technical difficulties. So it’s nice to be talking to you again.
SALLY
Yeah! (Laughs) So I’m Sally. I work for the DCRT as a community engagement officer.
LOUIS
So yeah, you know, as always, why don’t you tell us just a little bit more about what you do and some more detail and the kind of work you do in and around Chesterfield as part of the DCRT.
SALLY
So my role at DCRT is mainly sort of sparking community pride, trying to change attitudes towards the river and trying to enable people to make a difference in their sort of green and blue spaces around them. We’ve currently, we’ve actually just finished it, we’ve had a four-year Heritage Lottery funded project in Chesterfield and the surrounding area, it’s been a great project. It’s called Hidden Heritage Secret Streams and we’ve just been wrapping that up really. So it’ll be sad to move on to another project. But it’s been it’s been a good one.
LOUIS
So, something that we spoke about emails leading up to this and my, just passing, knowledge of your work in the DCRT and how Kakou have collaborated with you in the past, is talking about blue spaces. I’m sure a lot of people kind of know, as discussions about environmentalism and consciousness of nature are a little bit more mainstream than maybe they were in the past, people know about green spaces, you know, the parks, the fields, the projects to plant more trees that a lot of corporations seem to be embracing right now, for various reasons. I think blue spaces is very relevant to your work. But it’s also a term I think a lot of people might not be super familiar with if you want to talk a little bit about the importance of blue spaces and what they are.
SALLY
Yeah, so we all know green space is really vital for us, especially for our wellbeing and things like that by reducing stress levels, reducing depression, anxiety- green space for a while has been seen as a bit of a ‘Green Prescription’ for both our bodies and our minds. And actually blue space- so things like rivers, lakes, the sea- there’s scientific evidence that it’s even more important for our wellbeing. And so getting communities on blue spaces is really important to us at DCRT. And also in industrial areas like Chesterfield, Sheffield and other parts of the Don Catchment, blue spaces have often been forgotten, they’re sort of seen as the dirty industrial areas. And so our work at DCRT is to sort of help people see them as you know, these beautiful spaces where you can get a lot of lovely peace and do nice activities, and yeah.
LOUIS
Yeah, I do feel that just, kind of like in my personal life, you know, on walks and trips and various commutings, it feels like that the green spaces seem to be kind of flourishing in a way and there’s a lot of projects to kind of rejuvenate and re instate the importance of them, then you look at like, you know, the streams and the lakes and the ponds in local communities and they just seem to be sort of almost- maybe not ‘forgotten’ is the right word- but they seem to just kind of be like neglected compared to the land around them, you know, they just seem to be, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a river in a residential area of this country that isn’t just been full of litter and it’s very brown, it’s very neglected and so that’s why I kind of think that what the dawn catchment rivers trust is doing as a whole, as a charity and as an organisation in a local area of Chesterfield and Derbyshire, I think it’s really important because I think it’s an overlooked part but obviously, it’s a deeply necessary and important one to the ongoing efforts in conservation and ecology. So something I wanted to ask you, and I think it’s quite pertinent to how the DCRT works as charity, is the- and you touched upon it there actually when you talked about the importance for blue spaces and green spaces for mental health is- how important do you think green and blue spaces are in regards to small communities? Because we’ve had people on the talking about the importance of how the arts and how cultures and cultural events can come and inspire this sense of a local history and local community and culture in the smallest, smallest little areas. I’m wondering if you think green and blue spaces also kind of hold this importance if they can be, like, seen as something not just important to the environment but also just as a cultural artefact?
SALLY
So our rivers, I mean, that’s kind of where our communities really started. You know, if you’re thinking well back, the rivers is where people built the first little villages. You know, it’s where it all began for our towns and our cities. For Chesterfield, rivers are a really important part of our industrial history. And I think from when we go into schools, we speak to little ones about this, they often don’t quite know the industrial history of Chesterfield. I mean, we made so much so much here like lace potteries and leathers, things like that. And this was all surrounded by the river, you know, like they, these industries depended on the river when they started. So the river is a vital part of our heritage here. And that’s something we really want to promote at DCRT rivers as well are vital for our future. So I mean, they’re going to be so important for tackling climate change, that blue spaces are essential, sort of, wetlands, things like that are essential for tackling drought. And we’re doing a lot of work at the moment on natural flood management to help with sort of, like, flood resilience in the future and climate change. So it’s all linked together, you know, past present future. The rivers are kind of central to that.
LOUIS
I think that’s interesting and what you say is very true. And I guess it’s something a lot of people don’t consider, myself, because I don’t really thought about it. But truly, like every sort of civilization, every town, every kind of area where people have gathered and lived, freshwater has obviously been like, the most vital part of it.
SALLY
Yeah.
LOUIS
So yeah, every sort of culture and every sort of town, there is freshwater, there is a river, they are literally vital to the- not just the history of the town- but the actual beginning, the origins of a place like that. And I think that yeah, again, I think this is all just it always comes back to just like how overlooked the waterways and you know, blue spaces are in, kind of, in small communities
SALLY
‘Overlooked’ is the perfect word for it. Like they really were, like, ‘neglected’ as well, we use that word like, yeah, they, it’s important that we realise like how big a part of- rivers have been such a big part of our lives for a long time. And yeah, that’s the big aim for us in our community engagement, to sort of enjoy them and celebrate them again.
LOUIS
So, earlier on, you touched upon the Hidden Heritage Secret Streams app, which I know that Kakou- I think it was just before my time at Kakou, actually, it’s a project that we collaborated on, and we helped out with and we took part in. And I was wondering if you’d like to tell us a little bit more about that project? Because it is still, like you said, we’re just coming to the end of it. You’re just saying goodbye to the project. But it seems to have been a very significant part of the history and work done at the DCRT for the last couple of years. And if you’d like to talk a little bit more about it, I’m really interested to hear it.
SALLY
Yeah, so the hidden heritage secret streams project was like a broad project that encompassed a lot of different things, and practical volunteering, going into schools and teaching little ones, family event days, all sorts of things like that, as well as the practical conservation side of things, improving the river, the app that we did with Kakou was just a really fantastic part of this project. So, Ann made us this amazing app that like linked into five or six walking trails, I think, we created in the end that go around with the city and they’ve got audio and you can discover the industrial heritage and as well find out about the conservation in those areas. So yeah, I do recommend checking it out.
LOUIS
It’s been really nice to like, hear almost about the history of two companies at once. Because as I mentioned, our work on the hidden heritage secret streams app was actually a little bit before my time, before I began at Kakou as a Digital Marketing and Content Creator. So I’ve always been looking backwards at it. I’ve kind of learned things, you know, about in the past tense. So I think hearing about it first-hand from you, and how significant it was to the Don Catchment Rivers Trust and also how like, an important, major project it was for us to take part in. I always felt, I think that’s, it’s very interesting and it sounds like a great idea. Because I think, ultimately, as is with any conservation, it’s about, kind of, guaranteeing the preservation in the future. I think that does kind of start with younger people, children, younger generations. So I think that if you can generate an interest and spark a passionate young people about these causes, it’s almost like a stronger guarantee that in the future, it’s going to continue to be protected and loved and looked after.
SALLY
Definitely, and Kakou were amazingly involved with the community and the creation of that app as well and worked with some young people from local schools and with special educational needs and disabilities to create some of the content for that. And they did some like incredible work, some really professional work for the app. And we also had other members of the community create some of the artwork used in the app and on the walking trails as well. So it all came together in a really nice sort of project.
LOUIS
Nice. So obviously, I know that Don Catchment Rivers Trust, your work is kind of, very broad. And while it is specific to waterways and blue spaces, there’s a lot more kind of going on under your belt than just the hidden heritage secret streams app. So I was wondering if you’d like to talk about the other projects and movements that you have going on at your organisation in the preservation of blue spaces.
SALLY
Yeah, so the Don Catchment area that we work in as a rivers trust is quite a large area. It covers a few different counties as well. So we work from as far up as Ghul across to Barnsley and down to Chesterfield. So that’s a big area and it basically includes all the rivers that flow eventually into the river Don. So we work all across that area. Some things we’ve done in the past include helping salmon get back to Sheffield by building fish passes on industrial ways.
LOUIS
Oh, wow.
SALLY
Yeah! Salmon, historically, used to come up to our catchment to spawn and breed. And they went missing because we built so many industrial weirs, that they couldn’t continue their migration.
LOUIS
I had no idea, that’s crazy.
SALLY
Yeah! Yeah, salmon to Sheffield is a big thing. They might get to Chesterfield one day too, who knows! (Laughs) But yeah, that was a big part of our work in a previous project. And more recently, we’ve done a huge natural flood management scheme at Grassmoor Country Park, which is well worth a visit at the moment, so you can see what’s going on. The aim of this scheme is to create, sort of, storage space for excess rainwater. So it’s helping to combat climate change, and the increased rainfall we’re going to be having. Also being with increased drought as well, we saw that this summer, by creating these storage ponds of water that collect rain it’ll be helping in times of drought as well. So there’s quite- there’s four fields in Grassmoor that we’ve done this work on and there’s these, these sort of big things called bunds that are like embankments that are trapping water and slowing the flow of water into the river. So it’s sort of capturing it in the green space and creating these beautiful wetland areas rather than straight to the river.
LOUIS
You know what, I can see the enthusiasm on your face and in your voice as you talk about this. This is obviously a kind of project and field of expertise that you seem really passionate about. So I think it might be somewhat of a boring question, but I’ve gotta ask you about it, how did you start in this? Has it always been a passion, has the kind of love for nature in blue spaces always kind of been there? Or did it take a while to develop or- just tell me a little bit about how you kind of got into this work?
SALLY
I was really lucky to have a very wild childhood, like, I grew up in a tiny village in Kent and yeah, I was always outdoors. And I always knew I wanted to work with animals or nature. So I did zoology at university in Sheffield, and never really left Sheffield, I loved it.
LOUIS
Same, we have we have a very similar story then that we studied in Sheffield then I didn’t want to leave. So, very similar.
SALLY
And then I did go back for a little bit, I managed to get a job with the conservation volunteers in Ashford in Kent, working on sort of kids clubs in schools. And then after that it went to the Natural History Museum for a year.
LOUIS
Wow.
SALLY
Oh, it was amazing.
LOUIS
Oh, really?
SALLY
I got to walk underneath Dippy the dinosaur every day. (Laughs) So good. And I did a traineeship there where I focused on the collections and learning about sort of the understudied parts of natural history. So mainly sort of the bugs and like flowers and fungi and things like that and learning how to pass those skills on. And with that, with that knowledge, I managed to get my job at DCRT which I’ve loved and I’ve been there six years now.
LOUIS
Gosh, working at the Natural History Museum, that must have been- for someone who like, has a passion for like, the wildness of nature and animals and things it must have been like a dream come true working there, wow.
SALLY
It was the best year of my life, yeah! It was so good.
LOUIS
Obviously, this is kind of going off from the original questions but it’s just interesting to talk about, what was that like? What did you do? What were your responsibilities at the museum?
SALLY
It was really mixed. So it was like, sort of a paid traineeship. So we were like, members of staff, but we weren’t? The main focus was our learning and getting the skills to get into the conservation sector. And then the natural history sector which traditionally is very hard to get into. So there were three cohorts. And we were the first cohort and there were five of us. And yeah, responsibilities really varied. We had so much work to do, we were really thrown into it. But we spent a month with the education team like going around the museum and teaching people that were coming into the museum, we created our own sort of identification resources. We taught in schools, we did all sorts and we worked in the collections as well. So yeah, it was, yeah, very varied.
LOUIS
So did you think that like, just on a personal level, like kind of nature and zoology and like, animals, it’s just something you’re passionate about? Do you think this has been like a nice marriage of like, a personal interest and kind of like, your studying has just been like a nice sort of funnel into like, you know, protecting green and blue spaces?
SALLY
Definitely. Yeah. My role Is amazing, because I get to be outside quite a lot. But I also get to pass on my enthusiasm for nature to- particularly to- young people. And that’s what I’m really passionate about.
LOUIS
So obviously, I think everyone in Chesterfield kind of knows about the river Don, they, you know, they know about the river Rother, you know, these are things that kind of very, relatively speaking, local to us. And I was just wondering, you know, what kind of blue spaces and waterways and wetlands any- because I suppose it’s all blue spaces- what are some hidden gems? What are some very interesting little blue spaces and not oft talked about areas like that?
SALLY
In the local area? Ooh, that’s a really good question.
LOUIS
Chesterfield, Derbyshire, it doesn’t have to be super local, but I think, close enough that people would be interested to have not heard about it.
SALLY
Yeah. I’m a big lover of Riverside cemeteries. And this was- quite weirdly there are quite a lot of Riverside cemeteries in the local area, and one to visit in Sheffield is Wardsend cemetery on the river Don. River cemeteries are great, like, these old Victorian cemeteries especially the ones that aren’t used that much because they, they just sort of get overtaken by nature. And they’re often not explored by people that much. So they’re just amazing places to spot nature. So yeah, Wardsend on the river Don, Attercliffe cemetery also on the river Don. But here in Chesterfield, you’ve got the lovely Spittle cemetery as well, which is near the river Rother, and the spittle trail that goes around the river Rother, is a really, really lovely area that our volunteers have been working to make it look a bit nicer and less littered and things like that. So they’re kind of little urban gems, I’d say.
LOUIS
Yeah. Do we know why there were so many Riverside cemeteries? Do we know the kind of historical logic behind having them on waterways?
SALLY
I don’t! I’ve kind of looked into it a bit before. And I think for some cemeteries, like there’s the Sheffield General cemetery, which is- it has a huge heritage lottery bid going on at the moment and it’s doing some amazing restoration work there. But that one actually was built, because it was meant to resemble sort of going over the river Styx to sort of like, it was kind of a symbolic Victorian thing focused on sort of Egyptian mythology. And so I don’t know if with the big old Victorian ones there might have been that kind of mythology there. But they’re peaceful places, aren’t they? Peaceful green spaces. I mean, you know, maybe that’s one of the reasons.
LOUIS
Do you think it kind of ties into that reverence for like, waterways the way like, you know, communities and towns and, you know, communes would like start like- literally they have to find fresh water, it would vital to life and in many ways you think you might come from something like that?
SALLY
Yeah, potentially, yeah.
LOUIS
Like, talking about the river Styx you know, I guess water has always kind of been like a source of like, spirituality. I think a lot of myths and folklore have kind of been based in and started around the water.
SALLY
Absolutely, yeah, I mean, we have those with the Chesterfield well dressing that was all to do originally with water and rivers.
LOUIS
Tell me a little more about that, the well dressing.
SALLY
So we’ve been involved in well dressing in Chesterfield, which, I think usually in Chesterfield it’s linked in with the churches, but potentially before that it was actually like a Roman or even a pagan tradition. And that was to celebrate, you know, clean water and things like that. So we’ve actually done a river Rother well dressing during our hidden heritage secret streams project. And we displayed that at Tapton Lock every summer.
LOUIS
Wow!
SALLY
It was so much fun. I mean, we did some with schools, we did some with just the general public. And the first one we did; we actually did in the lockdown. And what we did was we split up the well dressing board and gave different families a piece of the puzzle. And it all came together in one big overall design, which is a really nice little sort of social isolation project during a hard time.
LOUIS
So the actual well dressing is that like, again, because this is something that’s completely new to me-
SALLY
Oh, really?
LOUIS
I’m not actually too sure what it is, besides what you just told me. Is it like, literally like dressing a well in like decorations and boards or… art?
SALLY
I think it, it kind of varies across Derbyshire. It’s a very, it’s a Derbyshire tradition. And it’s a calendar custom that goes well back. I’ve heard before that people used to dress taps and things like that at some point. I think traditionally, it’s a board that they used to soak in rivers and lakes, so it’s nice and wet, and then they’d find clay, and they puddle the clay into the board. And then they would decorate that board with flowers, eggshells, seeds, nuts, whatever was locally and seasonally available at the time and make these beautiful designs, and it’s well worth exploring. It’s a really cool tradition.
LOUIS
That’s- I am gonna explore that, I’ve never heard of that before. That sounds incredible, actually. So, you know, as we kind of talk more about the kind of the marriage between like the importance of water and then just like how a lot of human culture is based around fresh water and the coast and just blue spaces in general, wetlands and rivers and streams- I think that like, one of the more negative and more modern sort of relationships that we have between the waterways and human culture, very sadly, is pollution and litter and the damaging of the waterways be it through, like just litter or sewage or all manner of kind of manmade slightly unnatural contaminants of the waterways. And I know that like nature has a way of healing itself a little bit to an extent, but I’m wondering kind of your take on how charities such as yourself and other preservation organisations, how do you find a way of working in tandem with nature because there is obviously there is an amount of to which nature can clean itself and heal itself but obviously, with all the manmade damages done to these waterways it’s… the reality is that people such as yourself have to step in and find a way of giving a helping hand and just getting these waterways back to the way they should be.
SALLY
Yeah, the state of our waterways, I mean, it’s interesting because in the past, because we are in a post-industrial area, you know, our rivers are actually improved from those times like, I mean I hear stories of the river Don, that river in particular, being some of the worst polluted rivers in Europe during the 1980s. And you know, it’s only really recently that they’ve got so much cleaner, but there’s so much work still to do. But I think you’ve touched on it there like we’d need to work with nature. And a lot of our work now is sort of working with nature to solve these problems. So that’s where our natural flood management work comes in. Like, instead of just building tall walls around rivers and cutting the river off to stop flooding, you know, natural flood management works with nature, we’re actually trying to capture and slow down water. And in with that, we create these beautiful wetlands. And wetlands actually are really good at sequestering carbon and also really good- wetlands are amazing at sort of helping with pollution problems as well. So yeah, it’s working with nature is definitely the key there. But we do also think that you know, given space and time, and that’s what’s really important nature can find a way to come back. And we’ve shown that with the salmon returning to Sheffield, like our trustees never thought that would happen in their lifetime, they’ve done all this work over the years, they never thought that would happen. But given space and time the salmon have returned; the waters are clean enough for the salmon to breed and spawn. So I mean, we’re just waiting now for hopefully that population to get bigger and bigger!
LOUIS
That’s incredible. I think it kind of speaks just, I’m sure everyone knows, but maybe in like a practical sense. They’re not aware of just the sheer importance of water just to, like, life as a foundational aspect of it. And I think that when you preserve blue spaces, and you make an effort to conserve and protect the waterways, it’s just- you see this ripple effect, you know, like the wetlands, that all of a sudden creates habitats for all kinds of mammals. And this the introduction of salmon to places they haven’t been in who knows how long and also the, you know, the sequestering of carbon which will just open up an entirely new world of plant life in these wetlands, it really is just kind of like the ground zero from which nature, new nature and fresh nature and rejuvenated nature can thrive. I think a lot of it starts in the blue spaces. A lot of people might not realise that. Now, like you said, we’ve kind of said a few times now, blue spaces tend to be overlooked, I think they really shouldn’t be because I think in the grand scheme of things, they’re going to be so important to, kind of, reintroducing nature to places where it might be dying, and it might not be looked after the way that it needs to be, unfortunately.
SALLY
Yeah, like, the rivers connect everything, right? And connectivity is one of those issues in nature that we’re fragmenting all the landscape, but there’s one thing that still connect to all these landscapes, and that’s our rivers and things like that. So yeah, definitely.
LOUIS
I think that what you do at the DCRT is really fascinating and interesting. But more importantly, I just think it’s very beautiful and interesting and lovely field of work to get into. And it’s something that I think is really noble. I think talking to you now about the importance of waterways, both in nature and to human culture has been really interesting. It’s open my eyes a little bit because I thought I was someone who already kind of, knew a lot of this stuff but really having the perspective of someone like yourself, who’s dedicated years to preserving these blue spaces and seeing the bigger picture in relation to waterways and nature and culture in this country. It’s really been fascinating. And I think before we leave off, I just want to ask you one more question, because this is a fact I think a lot of people know, but I want to see if it’s true- Is it true that the reason we have so many river Avons in this country is because Avon means river? Is that true?
SALLY
I don’t know!
LOUIS
Oh! Well, (Laughs) this is another conversation we can have on the podcast.
SALLY
(Laughs)
LOUIS
But yeah, I heard somewhere-
SALLY
That’s a great fact.
LOUIS
-I heard that when the Romans first came to Britain, they would ask the people here, the natives here, what these rivers were called, and so many of them just said Avon because that’s what river meant, which is why there’s so many River Avons here.
SALLY
That’s amazing.
LOUIS
Well, there you go! I can teach I can teach the waterway expert something, there you go.
SALLY
(Laughs)
LOUIS
Well, you know what, Sally, I’ve had a really lovely time talking with you, but I think we’re gonna leave it here. It’s been a really illuminating conversation. I’ve really enjoyed having this conversation with you for the second time as we’ve had to re-record, I’ve had even more fun than the first time so if you want to plug any future projects, if you want to plug any social media or websites, please it’s completely- floor is completely yours, please do.
SALLY
So yeah, if you’ve enjoyed listening and wants to find out more, you can check out our website at www.dcrt.org.uk and we’re also on all the other social media channels- Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.
LOUIS
Well, there we go. And as always, you can find us at Kakou everywhere at KakouTechUK. So there we go. Fifth episode of Kakou Talk, one of my favourite conversations I’ve had on the show. And yeah, we’re going to leave it there for this episode. So from myself, Louis at Kakou and from Sally at the Don Catchment Rivers Trust, goodbye.
SALLY
Bye!
END
