Stephanie Gardiner
Stephanie Gardiner: bringing young people and communities into Cumbria’s landscapes.
Stephanie Gardiner began volunteering with Friends of the Lake District in 2023, joining conservation work parties before becoming a volunteer Ambassador. When the charity created an Engagement Trainee role in 2025, she stood out as a strong candidate and has since thrown herself into achieving change across Cumbria’s landscapes. She led the Go Wild Under the Stars project, engaging over 300 primary school children in tackling light pollution and installing ground-based monitoring stations in school grounds. She encouraged participating schools to install TESS-W meters, contributing real data to a national network of ground-based light pollution monitoring stations, connecting local action to a much wider research effort.
She also drove the Great Cumbrian Litter Pick, producing an interactive map that helped 34 groups and 278 volunteers cover 156km and collect over 256 bags of litter. Most recently, Stephanie has been the driving force behind a new Youth Voice Project, creating a platform for young people aged 18-25 to shape the charity’s campaigns and policy work directly. She is also developing her own research into how time spent in nature builds positive environmental behaviour, with a focus on making it more accessible to underrepresented communities near the Lake District National Park.
Nomination details
Why this matters
Stephanie has made an outstanding contribution in helping us work towards achieving our vision of Thriving Cumbrian Landscapes, for nature, for people, for ever. With an infectiously positive attitude, a solution focused approach to her work, and someone who is always willing to get stuck in, help others and get things done.
Stephanie has developed a strong understanding of the issues facing Cumbrian landscapes and of our work in safeguarding these special environments, which has translated into several community-based initiatives that have engaged, informed and inspired people to act to support nature recovery and care for their local environment.
Impact
The Go Wild Under the Stars project engaged and informed over 300 5–11-year-olds, plus their parents and teachers, cascading into the wider communities by drawing in new local audiences to support the Dark Skies Cumbria Project, driving a net reduction in artificial light pollution.
The Great Cumbrian Litter Pick brought together local community groups, businesses and schools across Cumbria to take action and help make the county a cleaner place. 34 groups took part, with over 278 volunteers, covering 156.3km and collecting more than 256 bags of litter.
We now have 4 young people signed up for our Youth Voice Project and Steph is paving the way for them to get stuck in and start taking action to achieve change in the Cumbrian landscape in areas that are important to them.
Inclusion and accessibility
Stephanie has developed her own research project about understanding the relationships within woodlands and the part people play in this relationship, based in our temperate rainforests in the Rusland valley. She is focussing on positive environmental behaviours and how these are built through connection to the natural world, accepting that time in nature alone doesn’t build this connection, but how that time is spent.
She has decided to focus on how these activities can be made more inclusive and accessible for underrepresented communities in the nearby Barrow & Furness area on the edge of the Lake District National Park. She is keen to raise the profile of these beautiful and special places through storytelling to inspire others to get involved in helping to look after this rare habitat.
