Juliette Green When the children at Kings Norton Primary School, Birmingham, returned from lockdown in March, Year 4 began a cross-curricular theme based on the book The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Over a period of four weeks, we carried out a range of activities based on the characters, settings and events of…
Robin Duckett, Sightlines Initiative. “We just realised how absolutely brilliant mud is!” The educators at Walkergate Early Years Centre in Newcastle had been venturing into a woodland preschool one recent spring and mud had been a big feature. The ‘mud-ludder’ children jump and squelch in it, getting stuck, feeling it, moulding it, churning it, finding…
Esther Sayers, Head of MA Arts & Learning Programme and Senior Lecturer in Education, Goldsmiths University. How we share and invest in our public spaces says a lot about the society in which we live. A community coming together to invest time in making common land better for everyone is a powerful narrative. This is…
Dr Nicola Walshe & Zoe Moula A rapidly growing body of research shows the benefits – happiness, vitality, and life satisfaction – associated with access to nature and green spaces. Indeed, the recent survey by Natural England, which aimed to understand the perspective of children and young people relating to nature during Covid-19, demonstrated the…
Michael Judge New International Encounter Theatre As an artist working with young people, mainly in theatre and across art-forms, I’ve always emphasised the power of creative writing. It feels important to invite young people to be authors of their own work and to write the story that only they can write. They are invited to be…
Shani Ali, Paul Bradley & Ingrid Skeels Room 13 Hareclive studio collective ‘Let’s change things’ was the first banner that Room 13 Hareclive children ever made, carried purposefully out of school in a procession through the local streets. On a later occasion, the banner was marched into City Hall for a Bristol City Council event.…
To ArtScape – verb / ArtScaper – nounTo create a response from materials and feelings in order to express new ideasTo enhance the environment in ways that delight Mayfield Primary School’s involvement with arts and wellbeing charity Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination started six years ago with the project called ArtScapers: an arts education programme that…
Jessie Turner OA Alliance, International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification Ocean and climate are intrinsically linked. The ocean is a major driver and amplifier to our climate system and the ocean is impacted by changes to our climate. As project manager of the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification (OA Alliance), I’ve thought a lot…
Professor Andy Stables died last week. He contributed much to UK environmental education research in the early 2000s, bringing expertise in literature and philosophy. He only wrote one article for our journal (writing with the current NAEE Chair). This restated the case for a liberal education using the idea of literacy, set out 7 pragmatic…
Florence Gichoya African Conservation Centre After decades of conservation research in various landscapes in Kenya, a small group of Kenyan nationals founded the African Conservation Centre (ACC) in 1995. ACC’s work is mainly focused in four landscape areas in Kenya: Amboseli, Maasai Mara, Laikipia and the South Rift. These areas have the richest vertebrate diversity…