Dear John,
Back in February, we asked you to tell us what the countryside means to you and why you care about it, to help us develop our plans to take us to our centenary in 2026.
Eight out of ten of you love spending time in the countryside and feel it's good for you, both mentally and physically. More than seven out of ten support CPRE because you want to help create a positive future for the countryside. We were delighted to hear that!
Nine out of ten of you support CPRE because you believe the English landscape is an important national asset. Many other surveys have found this too, including our own YouGov polling. Unfortunately, it also found that just 22% of adults in England have heard of CPRE and, if they have, they’re not aware of all we do.
It’s clear we need to make people more aware of our work, so that we can attract more support and volunteers – and increase our impact even further.
As well as talking to you and our local groups about our future work, we've been busy looking at how we can broaden our appeal and be clearer on CPRE’s purpose. There's clear evidence of growing public concern for the environment, the impact of climate breakdown and awareness of the benefits countryside brings to our mental and physical wellbeing.
We need to grasp this opportunity so that we can achieve our aim of a thriving and beautiful countryside that enriches all our lives.
Our research identified that CPRE can be perceived as negative, and this can put potential supporters off, even if they love the countryside. Promoting a greater understanding and appreciation of the countryside – its benefits and fragility – helps people connect with it emotionally, and encourages them to want to help find ways to improve and protect it to benefit people and nature.
So we’ve realised that we must give equal emphasis to promoting, enhancing, and of course, protecting the countryside.
As a result, you'll begin to notice a change in tone from CPRE, as we focus more on the positive solutions that we have always tried to create. This is underpinned by our new strategic aims – to ‘connect people and countryside’, ‘promote rural life’ and ‘empower communities’ – that your comments helped us develop.
To make our messages resonate with more people, we’ve developed a really eye-catching new look, inspired by the colours and shapes of our countryside. Here's our new logo.
We will also start to refer to the organisation as ‘CPRE, the countryside charity’ – making it immediately clear what we focus on and that we’re a charity.
We’ve been hugely encouraged by the reaction we’ve had so far to the new plans, tone and look, and we’re truly grateful for your ongoing interest and support.
You'll start to see this new look online during the rest of this year, with a new website launching in the autumn. Next month’s Campaigns Update will be in our new brand, along with emails and social media content for our September Green Clean – so watch this space!
Campaign to Protect Rural England,