The National Trust in Cushendun

The National Trust in Cushendun

In 2021 we were commissioned by the National Trust to work with a staff team based on the North Antrim coast on envisaging and planning activity in the village of Cushendun. A picturesque and historic village, home to Glenmona House and sited in a natural environment of great beauty as well as scientific interest, Cushendun and its surrounds are an important part of the National Trust estate.

As facilitators of this planning process, we explored with Trust staff relationships within the Trust and between the Trust and their tenants and the Cushendun community, the needs of visitors and locals, and capacity and resources to act.

In bringing staff together, asking questions and reflecting collectively on the answers, we made space for possibilities - and the beginnings of a plan - to emerge.

Our priorities in this work were to listen and to reflect. We were conscious that the plan needed to come, not from us, but from participants. Our role was to provide creative and proactive means of exploring the issues at hand, to make respectful space for multiple perspectives, to hold participants in process and to enable outcomes to emerge.

“The experience of working with quarto has been very positive. I loved the mix of walking, talking, thinking, recording and reflection, as it resulted in a feeling of being cocooned with colleagues within a positive, safe space, where challenge and query were welcome. I also recognise that you both expertly read the feeling and emotion in the room and flexed accordingly. You absolutely delivered what I had hoped for and more. The ability to pick up on some of my colleagues’ conversations and concerns, after the workshop, resulted in frank, honest conversations and action. Thank you both.”