Blueprint Epicentre

A Living Campus, Not a Single Site

From above, the epicentre looks less like a traditional estate and more like a living campus. Fields, woodland, rivers, wetlands, facilities and community spaces fit together in a way that lets each part strengthen the others instead of competing for space or attention.

Quiet, protected areas give wildlife and Sanctuary animals room to live without disturbance. Working zones allow vertical farming, research and innovation to operate efficiently. Visitor and learning spaces let people see, film and understand what is happening without disrupting animal welfare or field work. The design goal is simple. Every part of the epicentre has a job to do and those jobs reinforce each other.

Blueprint Epicentre

Sanctuary as the Heart

The Animal Sanctuary is not an optional extra. It is the emotional and ethical heart of the epicentre. It shows in real time what it means to treat animals as beings we have a duty to protect rather than as inputs or by-products of a system.

That principle shapes everything else. Land is treated as a shared home, not a resource to be exhausted. Decisions about innovation, farming and energy are made in a way that protects welfare instead of slowly eroding it. When people visit, work or learn here, they start with the Sanctuary and carry that perspective into every other part of the campus.

Blueprint Epicentre

Rewilding as the Golden Thread

Across the 5,000 acres, conservation, biodiversity and rewilding form the golden thread that ties the design together. This means restoring hedgerows, woodland and corridors so animals can move safely. It means repairing soils and water systems that have been pushed beyond their limits by past land use.

Every decision runs through a simple filter. Does this increase the capacity of this landscape to support life or reduce it. If the answer is that it reduces it, we redesign. That approach applies whether we are placing a new building, planning a path, setting grazing patterns or positioning solar panels.

Blueprint Epicentre

Innovation Hub and Vertical Farming

The Innovation Hub and Vertical Farming campus are where new tools and systems are built, tested and refined. If the Sanctuary expresses our values, the Innovation Hub expresses our intent to act on them at scale.

Here we explore new materials, new ways of building and new energy systems. We trial vertical and controlled-environment agriculture that can take pressure off animals and wild land while improving food security and public health. We use better data, sensors and software to understand how the whole epicentre behaves over time.

This is where the phrase “The Foundation will support you, the Innovation Hub will make you” comes to life. People arrive with ideas and leave with prototypes, pilots and real world results.

Blueprint Epicentre

Learning and Careers Pathways

A blueprint like this means little if it does not open doors for people. The Learning and Careers pillar turns the epicentre into a campus for apprenticeships, placements and research collaborations. It gives people a route from caring about nature to building a livelihood around it.

From hands on land work and Sanctuary care to advanced research, engineering, digital roles and creative work, the aim is clear. This place should support thousands of good, meaningful, future facing jobs. It should help young people see a path that does not force them to choose between stability and their values.

Blueprint Epicentre

Media, Storytelling and Sponsorship

The Media pillar makes sure the epicentre does not happen in the dark. Creators, filmmakers, photographers and writers document progress and setbacks honestly. They bring people behind the scenes of Sanctuary care, innovation experiments, vertical farming and rewilding work in ways that build trust rather than performance.

Sponsorship and partnerships add another layer. Businesses, universities and funders can back specific pieces of work inside the blueprint. Support is visible, accountable and tied directly to outcomes on the ground. The campus becomes a place where people can see exactly what their support enables.

Blueprint Epicentre

A System That Can Be Measured and Shared

Because all of these pillars live together on one integrated landscape, we can track environmental impact, job creation, training outcomes and health indicators over time. We can adapt the design when the data shows that something is not working as intended and share what we learn so others do not have to start from zero.

The epicentre is our first working blueprint rather than a one off project. In Part 3 of this series we look at what happens when we carry that blueprint beyond its birthplace into other parts of the UK and into international contexts.