In 2024 I was an intern in the market garden at the stunningly beautiful Black Isle Brewery. I have taken a circuitous route to growing. I have always loved nature and wanted to participate in building a sustainable future for all, but my approach to that had been lab-based. As such, my growing experience coming into the internship consisted of a few months WWOOFing and weekly volunteering at my local organic market garden in South Wales. Therefore, this internship has been absolutely crucial as an entry point into the market garden world. Without this internship, I would not have been able to build up the skill set that I now possess and would have remained on the outside looking in.

The market garden team was small and the space we managed was around 3 acres, with a mix of vegetables, fruit, herbs, ornamentals as well as a Keder polytunnel. Our main remit was to grow produce for the Black Isle bars – think salads, leafy greens, tomatoes… – and other local food businesses. As a small team, we all had to take responsibility, whether that be managing customers orders or coming in on the weekend to ensure the crops were watered.

Across the season, we grew a total of 41 different vegetables and herbs from seed. I learnt which crops are related to each other, their growing requirements, their regular pests, how to recognise disease and how to care for them.

My favourite parts of the internship, and the parts of the experience that I am most proud of, has been to set up a weekly stall to sell our produce to the local community and to have saved seeds. Saving seed is important for building crop resilience,and with the climate crisis deepening, and weather becoming less predictable and more extreme, having crops that are well-adapted to their locality will be crucial if food systems are to remain resilient. After becoming entranced by seeds, I will be applying for the seed production training with the Gaia Foundation for the coming season.

Following the internship, Tomos is now employed as a member of the market garden team.

After graduating at the Scottish School of Forestry in Forest Management, I joined the Community Woodlands Association (CWA) in December 2021 as an intern. My role was to help two community woodland groups with their communication: Glengarry Community Woodlands in Invergarry and Culduthel Woods in Inverness. The main idea was to help them promote their benefits to the wider community and ensure the continuity of my work.

From video making in the woods with school children to engaging with local media, this internship has been a good opportunity to consolidate my knowledge of community woodlands and communication. Not only have I expanded my network in a sector that I am really interested in, but I also had the opportunity to gain an insight into policy making. Overall, this internship has been very positive and gave me the confidence I needed for my future projects.

This year I was an intern for River Revivers, a small company based out of Aberfeldy, with the goal of restoring Scotland’s rivers to host maximum life. Out of this internship, I most enjoyed time spent outdoors surveying breathtaking places, the freedom to develop skills acquired at university and physically installing the restoration measures. The greatest benefit of this is being paid to get necessary and highly valuable work experience in the sector I find most joy working in – restoration. Secondly, I have met a lot of people through this role, opening many future opportunities.

This internship has greatly developed my career and allows me to look for more ambitious opportunities in the future. I have now developed skills from university into ones I can use with confidence during restoration as well as learning new essential skills. It was also an opportunity to experience the sector and confirmed it is what I want to do at this point in my life. I gained countless connections, having attended meetings and conferences, which I will be sure to draw on in future. I have been using these connections to set up similar freelance restoration work. Additionally, I recently was offered a funded PhD in Corrour, and I think my experience working with River Revivers and at Corrour was pivotal in this decision, made possible only by this internship.

My main role at CLIMAVORE has been supporting the team with community engagement and digital communications for the Bivalve Murals Project. My working pattern has been a mixture of working from home and attending in-person meetings, helping construct the murals in the workshop and assisting at community events.

During my time with CLIMAVORE, I helped to manage their social media pages, write engaging posts about upcoming events and also research elements of Gaelic heritage.

Planning and supporting the delivery of community events was a big part of the role:

• My time at CLIMAVORE started with Coitcheann: Collective Commons, a day of events on the Sleat Peninsula. The event was centred around local food production and wild foods, with guided foraging walks and a communal meal.
• CLIMAVORE organised the screening of a documentary about intensive aquaculture, in collaboration with local environmental groups. The event was well attended and a lively discussion followed the screening, culminating in the restarting of the Scottish Salmon Think-Tank.

The internship was an invaluable experience which has helped me bridge the gap between volunteering and a job in the sector. With the support of Shona Cameron, Director of CLIMAVORE CIC, I was able to take on new challenges and build skills. These included budgeting, liaising with key stakeholders, taking minutes at a board meeting and writing newsletters. Shona’s style of management allowed me to take ownership and responsibility of tasks, while always being there to offer guidance and answer questions.

When I joined CLIMAVORE, the organisation had recently joined the Coastal Community Network (CCN), something I had links to through previous volunteer placements. Shona identified this and suggested I represent CLIMAVORE and attend CCN meetings during my internship. The opportunity to learn more about broader conservation projects across Scotland was really interesting and useful for future work opportunities. Coming from a conservation background, I found it interesting to learn about how art and the environment are so inextricably linked, and how creative practice can be an invaluable tool in creating change and communicating the challenges we are facing.

I had the opportunity to spend time in the workshop assisting in the construction of large scale murals made from innovative Bivalve Terrazzo. As an organisation, CLIMAVORE straddles multiple sectors, arts, heritage, conservation. Seeing how all these areas fed into the organisation’s work was fascinating, particularly learning about the nuances of working in a Gaelic speaking community.

The biggest challenge I faced was finding accommodation on Skye due to the ongoing housing crisis and issues with over tourism. I initially secured a room in Portree and lodged there for two months, however the living situation became difficult and I decided to finish my time with CLIMAVORE working remotely from my family home in Devon. This was a shame, as so much of community engagement comes from living and working in working in the community, however in this instance I had to put myself first. I am really grateful for Shona’s flexibility which made this move home possible.

Over the 6 months, I gained greater levels of confidence in my ability to work and contribute within communications and conservation. My knowledge grew considerably – learning about Gaelic Heritage, the food chain associated with industrial aquaculture and the pressure of over-tourism on small communities. All things which will inform my work in the future.

I plan to continue working within conservation and marine heritage, hopefully in Scotland. I’d be keen to spend more time in the future working on projects surrounding conservation, heritage and art. I find the interplay between these areas interesting and thought provoking.

I want to thank the Pebble Trust for making this internship possible, and for the team at CLIMAVORE for enabling and supporting me. I am so grateful for the opportunity and all the growth and development that has happened over these past 6 months.