190329CNPABdPaper4Annex2C&EProgressReport

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Paper 4 Annex 2 29^th March 2019

Annex 2: Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment Pro­gress Report 2018

Make It Yours Cam­paign Out­come — Business/​communities pro­mote the Park, deliv­er a bet­ter visitor/​customer exper­i­ence and bene­fit from the Park brand Agreed tar­gets ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉: • MIY present­a­tions to 100 vis­it­or facing staff each year • Increase in Brand Charter users by 10% Year on Year (Tar­get 163 & 220 by 2022) • A vis­it­or giv­ing scheme is tri­alled in sup­port of two com­munity projects

Pro­gramme of Engage­ment – ​‘Make it Yours’ inter­act­ive present­a­tion The CNPA is con­tinu­ing with its suc­cess­ful Thr ​‘Make it Yours’ inter­act­ive train­ing ses­sion for vis­it­or facing staff which star­ted in 2016. The ses­sion is par­tic­u­larly bene­fi­cial to new and sea­son­al employ­ees and intro­duces them to what is spe­cial about the Nation­al Park and what our vis­it­ors are most inter­ested in (based on the res­ults of the ²⁰¹⁴⁄₁₅ Vis­it­or Sur­vey). Dur­ing 2018, 91 vis­it­or facing staff atten­ded a MIY present­a­tion at: • Volun­teer Rangers Wel­come Day • Glen­liv­et Dis­til­lery • Nethy­bridge Hotel • Explore Aber­nethy • Nethy House & Café • Wil­der­ness Scot­land • Bal­later Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation • Out­door Activ­ity Pro­viders Group • Coylumbridge Hilton

A more detailed learn­ing exper­i­ence, along­side the one hour present­a­tions, for tour­ism busi­nesses has also been developed. This I day ses­sion was suc­cess­fully tri­alled with an out­door activ­ity pro­vider in early April 2018 and we are con­sid­er­ing how to take this for­ward giv­en our avail­able resources. The MIY train­ing con­tin­ues to be well received and 100% of busi­nesses would wel­come the CNPA back in future years. Planned MIY ses­sions for 2019 include: • RSPB Osprey Centre • Heath­er Centre • Vis­itScot­land VICs (Aviemore & Bal­later) and oth­er Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres (LICs) • Brae­mar & Badenoch focused events (to be con­firmed with the loc­al com­munit­ies) • New & exist­ing CNPA board members

Tear-off Map pads Tear-off map pads, sponsored in 2017 by Ellis Brigham Moun­tain Sports, con­tin­ue to be extremely well received by tour­ism busi­nesses, VICs and Ranger bases around the Park. In an online sur­vey, out of 42 respond­ents of busi­nesses that took deliv­ery of map pads, 98% used them and 93% of busi­nesses would like to con­tin­ue to use them if they are avail­able. Dur­ing 2018, over 30,000 maps were passed on to Nation­al Park vis­it­ors. Ellis Brigham

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Paper 4 Annex 2 29^th March 2019

Moun­tain Sports has offered to spon­sor the map pads again in ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ and these have gone to print for dis­tri­bu­tion in time for the start of the 2019 tour­ist season.

Mar­ket­ing It was agreed by CNPA and part­ners that the ²⁰¹⁷⁄₁₈ mar­ket­ing budget of £20k includ­ing VAT would be spent on the pro­mo­tion of the east­ern Cairngorms using the focus of the Snow Roads scen­ic route by VisitScotland’s mar­ket­ing team. This work has been delayed until spring 2019 to allow it to coin­cide with the launch by CBP of the Snow Roads web­site and App. It is pleas­ing to report that this work won the 2018 Aber­deen City and Shire Tour­ism Award for innov­a­tion in tour­ism and goes for­ward to the Scot­tish Tour­ism Thistle Awards on 14 March 2019.

Facing a chal­len­ging winter with a closed funicu­lar rail­way this year’s budget has been used to pro­mote the vis­it­or exper­i­ence on the west­ern side of the Nation­al Park with CBP lead­ing this work. The BBC Winter Watch, Spring Watch and Autumn Watch pro­grammes will also raise the pro­file of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park across the UK.

STEAM Data We have signed a three year STEAM con­tract for 2017, 2018 and 2019. The 2017 data is now avail­able and show that vis­it­or num­bers have increased by 6.4% from 2016 to 1.84M. This is the largest annu­al increase in total vis­it­or num­bers seen since the start of our data in 2009 (vis­it­or num­bers have increased by 17.9% since 2009). A sum­mary of the data will shortly be avail­able to down­load from our website.

Vis­it­or Sur­vey Fol­low­ing com­pet­it­ive tender we have appoin­ted Pro­gress­ive Part­ners to under­take the 5 yearly all park vis­it­or sur­vey start­ing in May this year. This involves face to face ques­tion inter­views with 2,500 vis­it­ors across the Nation­al Park and builds on the pre­vi­ous sur­veys com­pleted in 2004, 2010 and 2015. This data is extremely use­ful in under­stand­ing vis­it­or motiv­a­tion and expect­a­tion and focuses our work in deliv­er­ing the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. The first six month data is likely to be avail­able late 2019. A sum­mary of the 2015 data is avail­able on the Cairngorms Nation­al Park website.

Branded Mer­chand­ise Tri­al Branded mer­chand­ise has been sold at the Grant­own Museum and the Vis­itScot­land VICs at Aviemore and Bal­later dur­ing 2018 with all products mak­ing a mod­est con­tri­bu­tion towards the Cairngorms Trust. To date 9 branded products have been developed which have raised around £200 for the Cairngorms Trust. Inform­a­tion on the avail­ab­il­ity of these products for retail will be pro­moted through the Make It Yours Campaign.

Part­ner Vis­it­or Inform­a­tion Centres Work is ongo­ing to build stronger rela­tion­ships with and between loc­al vis­it­or inform­a­tion centres to sup­port them in provid­ing the best pos­sible vis­it­or inform­a­tion about the Nation­al Park. To date ten part­ner­ship agree­ments have been signed at: • Blair Atholl • Crathie/​Balmoral • Dul­nain Bridge (Heath­er centre) • Glen­shee • Grant­own on Spey (museum) • Kin­gussie caber­feidh shop

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Paper 4 Annex 2 29^th March 2019

• Lag­gan wolftrax • Lag­gan shop • Nethy Bridge • Tomintoul

Dis­cus­sions in Brae­mar, New­ton­more, Bridge of Caley, Belabeg and Tarf­side are being explored. Early dis­cus­sions in Blair­gowrie and Glen Esk have not progressed.

Vis­it­or Giv­ing Scheme Nancy Cham­bers has been appoin­ted as The Cairngorms Trust man­ager on a two year con­tract and as part of her remit she will explore how we can intro­duce a vis­it­or giv­ing scheme to help raise funds for The Cairngorms Trust. Plans are under­way to launch the Vis­it­or Giv­ing Scheme at the Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end open­ing event on Fri­day 10^th May in Boat of Garten. Fund­ing has pre­vi­ously been raised for the Cairngorms Trust via the Cairngorm Brew­ery, CNBW tick­et sales, one off dona­tions from indi­vidu­als, a bequest and more recently via our Branded Mer­chand­ise sales res­ult­ing in £23,000 being avail­able for dis­tri­bu­tion towards land­scapes, wild­life and loc­al cul­ture pro­jects. Infra­struc­ture and Nature based pro­jects are cur­rently being looked at for fund­ing. Fur­ther options for rais­ing vol­un­tary dona­tions are being explored. The Cairngorms Trust is cur­rently look­ing to invite loc­al nature based pro­jects to apply for sup­port fund­ing which will be announced at the Big Nature Week­end with a small grants scheme open­ing later in the year.

Cairngorms Nature Cam­paign Out­come — more vis­it­ors & res­id­ents engage with Cairngorms Nature Agreed tar­gets ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉: • Increase CN Fest­iv­al attendees by 10% Year on Year (Tar­get 2200 & 3000 by 2022) • Increase social media fol­low­ers by 20% year on year (Tar­get 14,400 & 30,000 by 2022) • 30 Volun­teer Rangers recruited by 2022

Cairngorms Nature Pro­file – Fol­low­ing the con­sulta­tion on the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2019 – 2024 which received 132 responses the final plan was launched along­side the Forest Strategy with deliv­ery part­ners and inter­ested parties on I March at the Boat of Garten Com­munity Hall. To raise the pro­file with MSPs and oth­er key stake­hold­ers an exhib­i­tion and lunch­time event sponsored by Graeme Dey MSP took place at Holyrood 19 – 21 Feb­ru­ary to show­case the Cairngorms Nature Part­ner­ship and dis­cuss the ambi­tions, oppor­tun­it­ies and chal­lenges over the next five years. In addi­tion, Cairngorms Nature is pro­moted via the Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end, Volun­teer­ing Cairngorms and the Caper­cail­lie Frame­work pro­ject. To date Cairngorms Nature has over 19.9K social media followers.

Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end – The LEAD­ER fun­ded Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end Devel­op­ment Officer role aims to make a step change in the event’s long term pro­file, attend­ance, con­nec­tion with busi­ness and com­munity and its sus­tain­ab­il­ity. The role of the devel­op­ment officer is to cre­ate and over­see the deliv­ery of a busi­ness plan for the CN Big Week­end 2018, tri­al­ling a new approach to strengthen ties with com­munit­ies and busi­nesses and devel­op a sus­tain­able future for the event. This post ended in Feb­ru­ary 2019 and the CNBW work is now embed­ded into the CNPA’s Con­ser­va­tion Engage­ment officer post. Plans for CNBW 2019 are well under­way with a final pro­gramme of over 60 events

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Paper 4 Annex 2 29^th March 2019

final­ised ready to be launched by April 2019. The Cairngorms Trust Vis­it­or Giv­ing scheme will be launched at the CNBW 2019 open­ing event on 10 May at the Boat of Garten Com­munity Hall.

Cairngorms Nature Volun­teer­ing – Volun­teer Cairngorms, launched in 2017, is a pilot pro­gramme fun­ded by LEAD­ER and CNPA encour­aging, sup­port­ing and provid­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for people to bene­fit from look­ing after nature and the envir­on­ment across the Nation­al Park through volun­teer­ing. Ori­gin­ally fun­ded for 3 years, fund­ing for the pilot phase for the pro­gramme has now been exten­ded to Septem­ber 2020.

There are three main areas of activity:

(1) The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Volun­teer Ranger scheme recruits, trains and man­ages a team of Volun­teer Rangers who sup­port a range of Ranger Ser­vice part­ners across the Nation­al Park in the their work. To date the 14 Volun­teer Rangers have giv­en over 2000 hours to the pro­gramme, with two of the team being nom­in­ated for – and win­ning – the UK-wide 2018 Nation­al Parks UK Volun­teer Awards in the indi­vidu­al cat­egory. In 2019 we will be recruit­ing a fur­ther 12 Volun­teer Rangers.

(2) We raise aware­ness of exist­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to volun­teer across the Cairngorms: to date almost 100 oppor­tun­it­ies have been advert­ised on our webpages, through social media and through our news­let­ters with part­ners across the area.

(3) We are work­ing with com­munit­ies to help estab­lish new groups focused on nature and the envir­on­ment, sup­por­ted with train­ing, tools and equipment.

We are work­ing closely with the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject and the newly appoin­ted Con­ser­va­tion Engage­ment Officer, and held an event open to all on the 23 Feb­ru­ary in Carr- Bridge where any­one inter­ested in volun­teer­ing for nature or the envir­on­ment met rep­res­ent­at­ives of over 20 organ­isa­tions, Volun­teer Rangers, and could give volun­teer­ing a go. Over 60 mem­bers of the pub­lic atten­ded the event and a fur­ther 12 volun­teer rangers are being recruited.

To bet­ter pro­mote the col­lect­ive part­ner­ship work of Volun­teer Cairngorms a brand has been developed fol­low­ing guidelines pre­vi­ously used for sim­il­ar brands pro­mot­ing nature and out­door access: • CNPA are a lead part­ner • Work is either Park Wide or of Nation­al import­ance • Is sup­port­ing a ​‘long life pro­ject’ and is not brand­ing an area • Is sup­port­ing a key pro­ject that has mul­tiple part­ners pub­lic, private, third sec­tor • Clearly uses the word ​‘Cairngorms’ as part of the iden­tity • Should have no sub­text as the iden­tity is clear

CAIRNGORMS NATURE

Act­ive Cairngorms

Volun­teer Cairngorms

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Paper 4 Annex 2 29^th March 2019

This iden­tity ​‘head­lines’ the col­lab­or­at­ive volun­teer­ing work in the Nation­al Park of RSPB, NTS, High­life High­land, Forest Enter­prise Scot­land etc. and ourselves.

Act­ive Cairngorms Cam­paign Out­come — Visitors/​residents are more act­ive in the Park Agreed tar­gets: • Increase WWW attendees by 10% Year on Year (Tar­get 440 & 600 by 2022) • Increase social media fol­low­ers by 20% year on year (Tar­get 2880 & 6000 by 2022) • Main­tain deliv­ery of 16 (revised from 25) Walk­ing to Health groups

Act­ive Cairngorms Both CNPA Board and High­land Coun­cil Area Com­mit­tee agreed the first stage of the Act­ive Aviemore Pro­ject con­firm­ing that a func­tion­al mul­ti­use path can be con­struc­ted through the vil­lage link­ing to the exist­ing vil­lage path net­work and the wider net­work of Spey­side Way, Old Log­ging Way and Nation­al Cycle Net­work 7. The next stage is the devel­op­ment of a first stage Design Plan for the area around the pro­posed new hos­pit­al. This detailed design work is sched­uled to be com­pleted by autumn 2019. Act­ive Glen­more Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund (RTIF) man­aged by Vis­it Scot­land was launched at the end of March 2018 to sus­tain­ably enhance vis­it­or exper­i­ences while demon­strat­ing both effect­ive part­ner­ship and com­munity capa­city build­ing. Our applic­a­tion sup­por­ted by Forest Enter­prise Scot­land and Sus­trans to cre­ate a 1.1 km tar­mac mul­ti­use path in Glen­more link­ing the Beach car park to Hay­field and all the vis­it­or attrac­tions has secure £324,000 sub­ject to plan­ning con­sent. We have con­trac­ted Aecom to make this applic­a­tion in Feb­ru­ary with con­struc­tion sched­uled for autumn 2019.

Wee Walks Week now set for 9 – 15 Septem­ber 2019. In 2018 we main­tained the week but did not improve or expand it because of the work involved with the EURO­PARC con­fer­ence. Again our focus will be on encour­aging less act­ive res­id­ents and vis­it­ors to ​‘get out’ for a short walk for both func­tion and enjoy­ment, and encour­aging school involve­ment. We will also use it as an oppor­tun­ity to cel­eb­rate and pro­mote the 16 health walks groups in the Park. In order to encour­age great­er path use we are also cre­at­ing a mobile phone app to allow the 17 com­munity path leaf­lets to be accessed this way. Act­ive Cairngorms is pro­moted via the Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end, Volun­teer Cairngorms and our social media activ­ity. To date Act­ive Cairngorms has 3,759 social media followers.

Health Walks & ​‘Get­ting Star­ted’ Path­way – There are now 16 Act­ive Cairngorms Health Walks tak­ing place across the Cairngorms Nation­al Park area. This is a reduc­tion from the pre­vi­ous total of 25, as CNPA inher­ited the sup­port of 9 groups that walked out­with the CNP bound­ar­ies. These have been realigned with the Aber­deen­shire Health Walk coordin­at­or and 2019 will see a year of build­ing the aware­ness and iden­tity of the 16 remain­ing groups. In 2018, 51 new walk­ers joined the pro­gramme, nine train­ing and sup­port ses­sions took place with 91 attend­ances and we piloted ​‘Next Step’ walks which would be delivered by part­ners and provide a pro­gres­sion route for walk­ers. In addi­tion to build­ing aware­ness of the newly realigned Health Walk group struc­ture, key activ­ity will also include pilot­ing Demen­tia Friendly and Mac­mil­lan Friendly accred­it­a­tion with the groups, and re-enga­ging with med­ic­al practitioners.

Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Paper 4 Annex 2 29^th March 2019

Out­come — Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment Strategy is co-ordin­ated across the organ­isa­tion and our cor­por­ate plan com­mu­nic­a­tion pri­or­it­ies are delivered Agreed tar­gets: • Web­site ses­sions (Tar­get 228K & 400K by 2022), • Total Social Media fol­low­ers (Tar­get 28.8K & 50K by 2022), • MSP sur­vey res­ults (main­tain 2014 MSP sur­vey res­ults – next sur­vey to take place 2020)

Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions a digit­al strategy, pre­pared by Sian Jam­ieson, has increased our Social Media reach and engage­ment fig­ures sig­ni­fic­antly. Stat­ist­ics over the last few years show steady pro­gress towards increased reach and engage­ment through our digit­al com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­it­ies. Our web­site stat­ist­ics show 240,268 ses­sions dur­ing 2018 and our social media accounts (4 twit­ter: C‑News, C‑Nature, Active‑C, Volunteering‑C and 3 Face­book: C‑National Park, C‑Nature, Active‑C) are per­form­ing well with 33,072 fol­low­ers and reach of 3.9 mil­lion. A review of our digit­al per­form­ance in 2018 is attached Annex I.

Cor­por­ate Pub­lic­a­tions & Con­sulta­tions – The Cairngorms Forest Strategy and Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2018 – 2024, fol­low­ing pub­lic con­sulta­tion, have been pub­lished on the CNPA Web­site. Both were launched on Fri­day I March and the work of the Cairngorms Nature Part­ner­ship was pro­moted with MSPs and part­ner organ­isa­tions at Holyrood 19 – 21 Feb­ru­ary. The pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan, fol­low­ing con­sulta­tion on the Main Issues Report, has been pre­pared and is out for con­sulta­tion. CNPA’s Annu­al Report ²⁰¹⁷⁄₁₈ was sub­mit­ted to Min­is­ters and pub­lished on our web­site in autumn 2018 and Bòrd na Gàidh­lig approved the second iter­a­tion of the CNPA’s Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan which has been pub­lished on our web­site in both Gael­ic and English.

Stake­hold­er Engage­ment – A Com­mu­nic­a­tions Grid has been pre­pared to help coordin­ate our com­mu­nic­a­tion activ­it­ies across the organ­isa­tion to deliv­er stronger and more con­sist­ent mes­sages about the work of the Park and role of the Park Author­ity. The Com­mu­nic­a­tions Grid iden­ti­fies a core theme and key mes­sages for each month of the year along­side the com­mu­nic­a­tion activ­it­ies: digit­al com­mu­nic­a­tions, tra­di­tion­al media, stake­hold­er com­mu­nic­a­tions & events. This new approach will be man­aged by the Man­age­ment Team and Organ­isa­tion­al Man­age­ment Group and will be reviewed on a quarterly basis.

EURO­PARC 2018 — As part of the Year of Young People 2018 the CNPA hos­ted the EURO­PARC Con­fer­ence Inspired by the Next Gen­er­a­tion on 18 – 21 Septem­ber. Over 600 European del­eg­ates, many under the age of 30, atten­ded and the con­fer­ence was form­ally opened by Mairi Gougeon, Min­is­ter for Rur­al Affairs and the Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment and closed by John Swin­ney, Deputy First Min­is­ter and Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary for Edu­ca­tion and Skills. The con­fer­ence was the biggest gath­er­ing of Nation­al Parks and pro­tec­ted areas ever held in Europe with world class speak­ers present­ing their views on how to get young people more involved in nature. Del­eg­ates also enjoyed a wide selec­tion of work­shops and field trips across the Cairngorms Nation­al Park as well as social even­ings which cel­eb­rated Scot­tish High­land food, drink and music. The EURO­PARC con­fer­ence report has been pre­pared and will be pub­lished on the EURO­PARC Fed­er­a­tion web­site. A Youth Mani­festo, launched at the con­fer­ence, has led to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity devel­op­ing a Youth pro­ject to take for­ward the recom­mend­a­tions presen­ted in the EURO­PARC Youth Manifesto.