Environmental education journal features

The polar regions are immensely special, but are rapidly changing due to direct human disturbances, like fishing activity and habitat degradation. Penguins and other seabirds are key environmental health indicators as well as the most threatened group of birds globally.

With nearly 85% of the UK population living in urban city dwellings, it can become increasingly difficult for young people to understand the role and value of nature. When we think of wildlife, most of us think of wild animals such as tigers and leopards, but wildlife includes plants and animals that live around us, not just those in tropical rainforests or savannahs across the world.

Soils underpin our ecosystems, our climate and human culture. Some of the biggest issues affecting our world and its inhabitants have soil at their heart. Healthy soil supports biodiversity: biodiverse soils can host millions of organisms in each teaspoon.

‘This is Rubbish’ (TiR) is a community interest company focused on large scale, pre-consumer food waste. It is a crucial climate change issue and a useful subject for looking at both the environmental and social impacts of modern life.

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 the story.

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 worms.

This is a tale of creative placemaking, impactful because it engages young people in the process of urban renewal. Such community engagement is not simply about teaching someone to become an active citizen, but about enabling people to come together to invest in their communities.

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 positive role of nature in supporting children’s wellbeing, with eight in every ten children agreeing that being in nature made them very happy (Natural England, 2020)

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.

‘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.