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Blue Plaques for Nature

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What are Blue Plaques?

The iconic English Heritage blue plaques commemorate a notable person who once lived in a particular place. This action mimics these historical plaques to honour nature... one species at a time.

These plaques can be edited and tailored to:

  • Outreach and grow your local group by substituting the text and QR code with your information.
  • Promote your events.
  • Raise awareness about species lost or under threat and your local waterway.

Example plaques

blueplaquesRNN.png

When the Blue Plaques should go up

This action can carried out at any time however look out for emails and posts for UK-wide events where Dirty Water can create a mass blue plaque action.

Create your blue plaque

Templates can be printed on a standard domestic A4 printer. You can glue the plaque onto cardboard to strengthen it, or laminate it to make it waterproof. You can either:

Ready-made templates

Download and print a ready-made plaque from a suite of templates on the Dirty Water Google Drive:

  • Blue Plaques Templates - the current QR code on the templates points to the Restore Nature Now page on the XRUK website - you can create your own QR code here and swap it out using the edit option.
Editable templates

Here is a step-by-step 'How to Edit a Blue Plaque' video and in the folders above you can find editable templates to copy and edit yourself and written instructions are how to copy and edit the templates.

Buy a blue plaque

Or you can order a commercially made Personalised Heritage Blue Plaque for £14.99

How to place a Blue Plaque

How permanent you wish to make the fixing is up to you. You need to balance the permanency against any possible damage you may cause and whether you have permission to place a Blue Plaque. Easy to remove, no-damage options, which are much less long-lasting, would include using blue-tac, double-sided sticky tape, string or wire twists around railings.

Where to place a Blue Plaque

Almost anywhere! The power of the Blue Plaques for Nature rests on them staying in place to get passers-by talking and thinking and on their wider impact via an image on social media. So think carefully about where you choose.

You could place a Blue Plaque for Nature on a fence post by your local playground, or by the stile on a favourite woodland walk. Perhaps a café, corner shop, community centre or church hall in your neighbourhood would like to put one in their window. And lastly, of course – how about your own house? Have you always secretly wished you lived in a blue plaque house? This is your chance!

Remember - always take a photo of whichever location you choose and upload it to social media wherever possible. Then like and repost others' posts to amplify!

Amplify your action

Social Media
Use these hashtags to help spread the message #ExtinctionRebellion #DirtyWater.

Photos
You can also upload photos to Dirty Water's Google Drive. We can all share them with others and use them for other actions. Upload photos here for XR groups or here for RNN groups.

Further information and reading

More than 100,000 known wildlife species depend on the freshwater ecosystem. And that's not counting the seas/oceans!

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