Celebrating youth-led climate action in schools

During the summer term, Loz Hennessy, the local Community Climate Action Manager at Green Schools Project, worked with staff and students at three Easton schools as part of the Zero Carbon Schools programme. In this blog Loz shares and celebrates the achievements of pupils at May Park Primary School, Whitehall Primary School and Evergreen Primary Academy, with the hope of inspiring further climate action in schools communities.

At May Park Primary School, year 6 pupils worked on an active travel project, starting Bristol’s first ‘bike bus’, which saw pupils and parents cycling to school together in one big group making cycling safer and more fun. This has been covered by Bristol 24/7 and ITV news, so look it up for more info. Another project was the ‘switch off week’, where year 6 pupils design and lead outdoor activities for younger pupils to encourage getting outside and turning off devices. As part of ‘switch off week’, Alex from Generation Soil delivered a day of compost workshops, and pupils from Evergreen Primary Academy were also invited. The pupils from both schools also exchanged ideas about what their perfect school would be like, which were displayed on colourful leaves hanging in the trees for other pupils to look at. On Monday 9 June, a group of year 6 pupils from May Park attended the Festival of Sustainable Business, where they gave a fantastic speech to business leaders about the climate action they want to see.

At Evergreen Primary Academy, the project focused on nature connections and outdoor learning. The year 4 and 5 pupils involved were encouraged to take care of their outdoor space and to develop responsibility, through planting seeds and watering the plants in the greenhouse. Having attended the composting workshop at May Park, they also helped decide where to put the new rotating composter that was bought with funds from Bristol City Leap. Pupils then created posters to share what they had learnt about composting, including the food waste-compost cycle. Year 4 also delivered a zero carbon assembly to other pupils.

At Whitehall Primary School, creative expression was used as a way to celebrate biodiversity. Each of the three year 5 classes took part in a workshop as part of health and wellbeing week, to promote time in nature as crucial for wellbeing. The workshop was entitled ‘hip hop garden’ and was led by Ian Solomon-Kawall (artist name KMT). Through silent observation, pupils were encouraged to notice the natural world around them and appreciate the biodiversity in the wilderness space on their school grounds. Through the wide-ranging observations, they drew creative inspiration to produce a performance piece about nature. Their performances were recorded and shared on local radio station BCFM’s One Love One Planet show on 15 July in conversation with Gary Regis of Bristol Energy Network, along with recorded interviews with the pupils at the other two schools. Listen back to that episode here.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to share in the successes of local youth-led climate action in our community! Finally, thanks to Bristol City Leap for the funding which made this work possible! Find out more on our website and follow us on LinkedIn. If you have ideas for collaboration, please get in touch – together we can bring climate education to more communities.