Green Leaders gather in Plymouth!
On Friday, the 29th of November, Green Schools Revolution (GSR) worked alongside Plymouth University’s Centre for Sustainable Futures lead, Dr Paul Warick, to put on a day full of workshops, discussions and celebrations surrounding all things climate change and GSR. We had a great turnout with four schools joining us for the day: Plymouth City College, King’s School & Nursery, Exmouth Community College, and Devonport High School for Boys, all of whom have taken part in a strand of GSR.
Opening the event, we had Councillor Tom Briars-Delve, who is a Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change. This highlighted climate action on a local level, with information surrounding green energy and jobs as well as Plymouth’s Youth Climate Ambassadors, which allows young people to have important open discussions about what Plymouth can do as a city to help tackle the climate crisis on a local scale. We are super grateful that Councillor Tom was able to join us at this event.
Following this, GSR’s Molly Scrase-Kings led a fabulous, eye-opening workshop surrounding the topic of climate justice and inequalities when it comes to the environmental movement. This workshop involved thinking about the history of fossil fuel emissions and who is most negatively affected and highlighted the striking inequalities that exist! The moral dilemmas of this workshop really made the students think hard, and many valuable discussions and points were made. Following this session, we had Lucy Davies, running a snapshot Teach the Teacher session, allowing the students and teacher to learn and explore together how climate education can be integrated into all subjects at school! We then had the opportunity to watch a Teach the Parent video by Chris Packham and have a think about how and why we should be talking to our parents and guardians about climate change!
After a busy morning of brainstorming and learning, we all tucked into an all vegan or vegetarian lunch in order to help lower our carbon footprints. This lunch also contained canned water instead of bottles and locally sourced crisps to reduce emissions - it all went down a treat! Most students then went on a tour with Dr Paul Warwick to the Sustainability Hub on the university campus and learnt all about how the university is trying to be as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible. Some students then also took part in a mindful nature connectedness craft, using natural materials such as leaves, pinecones, moss and bark to create Christmas decorations to take home!
Dr Paul Warwick from the University of Plymouth then led our afternoon session focused on sustainable schools of the future. The students worked together in small groups to design their dream sustainable school! We were so impressed by the creative, innovative and thoughtful ideas, including hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, outdoor roof gardens and wilding areas. The GSR team chose their favourite most inspiring future sustainable school, and the lucky group won a goodie bag, which included a special bamboo speaker! Well done to the team from Devonport High School for Boys! Not to leave anyone out, everyone else also got a GSR ruler and a bookmark and we also gifted the teachers a plant from the local garden centre as a thank you for attending.
