Community action/Maidstone

Kent Life, formerly the Museum of Kent Life, is an open-air rural life museum at Sandling, near Allington Locks, on the east bank of the River Medway. The museum includes a collection of historic buildings including a chapel, village hall and old houses. It also includes displays on agriculture, including a farm yard and farm animals.

Blackthorn Trust is a UK charity in Maidstone, Kent which offers specialist therapies and rehabilitation through work placements in the Blackthorn Garden. They offer help to people with mental health difficulties, chronic pain and type 2 diabetes. The charity's work is based on the work of Rudolf Steiner (an Austrian philosopher, social reformer), and the charity aims to assist individuals to progress towards their full potential.

Oaken Wood is a 18.7-hectare (46-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest west of Maidstone in Kent. It is a Geological Conservation Review site.

Known locally as "Barming Wood" due to the village of Barming being the closest settlement to Oaken Woods, it is an ancient woodland with orchids, dormice, tawny owls, nightingales and many species of bat (alongside various other species).

This site provides the best example of a very unusual topography, with cracking and tilting of underlying weaker strata during the Pleistocene by periglacial processes producing crests and troughs in the surface rocks.

A public footpath crosses the site.

In 2013, plans to uproot parts or all of Oaken Wood for a ragstone quarry were met with controversy due to its environmental importance (with various different species residing there) and its possibility in setting a legal precedent for up to 300 other ancient woodlands in the UK.

The most current threat Oaken Wood faces is the proposed expansion of Hermitage Quarry (Gallagher Aggregates Ltd). Along with the 32 hectares lost by a previous expansion in 2013, “The loss of ancient woodland … could be greater than the losses from HS2 and the Lower Thames Crossing combined". (The Woodland Trust).

Maidstone is the largest town in the county of Kent in South East England, of which it is also the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town, linking it with Rochester and the Thames Estuary. Historically, the river carried much of the town's trade as the centre of the agricultural county of Kent, which is known as the Garden of England. There is evidence of settlement in the area dating back before the Stone Age. The town, part of the borough of Maidstone, had an approximate population of 100,000 in 2019. Since World War II, the town's economy has shifted from heavy industry towards light industry and services.