My time with The Wildlife Trust was planned before the outbreak of Covid-19, meaning the nature of the internship was drastically changed at short notice. Instead of travelling up to the office in Seaforth, getting to know people in person and taking part in events, it suddenly all had to be done from home.

I had been hoping to do a lot of video production work to help promote the City Nature Challenge, as this is line of work I would like to go into. The circumstances meant I had to switch focus to writing a lot more. This was a good thing overall, as it meant I could boost the amount of published work I have to show future employers. I’m now finding myself doing much more voluntary writing about football to boost my portfolio, because this internship reminded me how much I enjoy writing.

It also meant I had to be slightly more imaginative with generating content for social media, and had to rely on people being willing to get involved. Luckily, the naturalist community in Liverpool are an incredibly friendly and welcoming group of people. Whilst I’m not someone who has grown up in a city, I’m not very knowledgeable about wildlife. This internship has taught me a lot more about the biodiversity of Merseyside, but also of the whole country. It’s been great fun interacting with people from all over the country about what they’ve been finding in their gardens. It’s been a great way for me to use the social media and writing skills I’ve developed during my university course on a topic that is much more outside my comfort zone.

What I was mainly doing to start with was finding people who are active within Liverpool’s naturalist scene, and seeing if they’d like to take part in a little Q and A that I could then turn into a blog post. I was also asking people if they’d like to film themselves answering the questions, so that I could then turn it into a set of short captioned videos for social media. Unfortunately, only one person agreed to do that, but that’s to be expected considering it takes a lot of courage to film yourself knowing other people will watch it.

Once the City Nature Challenge had passed, my attention turned to generating public interest into wildlife recording in the Baltic Triangle area of Liverpool. This is because it’s an area that will be focused on during the Urban GreenUP project. I wrote a blog post telling people about all the cool stuff there is to see and do in the Baltic Triangle whilst recording a bit of wildlife along the way. I also contacted multiple organisations to see if they would be interested in helping promote wildlife recording in the area.

Whilst it wasn’t the initial aim, I’ve gained valuable experience of working from home and keeping motivated whilst there’s no one there to check on you. It should be a very valuable skill. The internship has also increased my versatility, as I’m much more used to creating content about football or current affairs. I’ve proved to myself that I can work with a topic I’m not very knowledgeable on.