Pupils from 25 schools throughout South Yorkshire took part in this year’s Schools Climate Education South Yorkshire Conference at New York Stadium, Rotherham, last Thursday.
The conference was opened via video message by Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham Central. She spoke about how unfair it was that those who have made the smallest contribution to climate change are suffering the most. Countries in the Global South are having to deal with floods, droughts, and crop failures, and emissions from the rich countries have caused this. Some small island states are in imminent danger of submersion due to rising sea levels. Sarah said Rotherham has seen its climate change, with recent flooding in Whiston and Treeton. She suggested the simplest thing you can do to combat climate change is to write to your MP.
Drama Kids performed a powerful extract from a play they had devised, ‘Trash Planet’, calling all of us, including governments, to rise to the challenge of climate solutions. BBC Radio presenter Sile Sibanda got us thinking with some thoughtful poetry.
Carolyn Leary explained some alarming temperature facts. In 2015, the Paris Agreement highlighted the importance of not exceeding a 1.5°C increase in average world temperatures, but now it is clear we will overshoot this. The average global temperature in the Ice Age was 10°C, and the average planetary temperature now is 15 °C, so 1.5 °C makes a massive difference. Think of it like your body temperature-which is usually 37°C. If you have a temperature of 38.5°C, you are very ill. Our planet is currently sick.
The Zines workshop got children making small magazines about nature, using old magazines to cut and paste. It was run by the National Education Nature Park, who help schools analyse and improve the biodiversity in their grounds.
The Energy Heroes workshop looked at the maths of our energy mix. Did you know that 29.4% of our electricity now comes from wind power, bigger than gas at 25.9%? A typical annual bill for a primary school’s energy is now £40,000. Energy Heroes calculated that if staff and pupils work together to turn off appliances when not needed and avoid overheating classrooms, a school can save 10% of its costs, about £4000 a year.
Led by professional musicians, each small group of students composed a verse, which was combined to make a rap. A useful factsheet gave students material to put in the rap. Did you know for instance, that one less serving of beef a week for a year saves the same amount of CO2 as driving 348 fewer miles? Or that one domestic flight takes 64 trees to offset its CO2 emissions?
The group I sat with wrote
Gas and coal are so mean
So is Biomass it seems
Make more wind and use the sun
Make our world a better one!
It was wonderful to see students’ ideas being turned into a finished product in such a short time. They performed it to everybody at the end of the day, using bin lids for percussion.
Hope for the Future led a workshop to encourage the youngsters to engage with their MPs. Sheffield Central MP Abtisam Mohammed was used as a case study. Students discovered what common interests they had with her and then debated questions to ask her. Students were videoed asking each question, which will be sent to Abtisam Mohammed, who has promised to video her replies.
Lunchtime provided students with time to interact with the multitude of stalls from different environmental groups. (See below for a full list.)
Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust ran a Greenspace Role Play workshop about planning an open space, using Eldon Road Recreation Ground as an example. Each group was given a budget of £70,000 and had to choose how to spend it, on items such as tree planting, wildflower meadows, ponds, bird and bat boxes, habitat improvements for otters, litter picks, paths, bins, fences, play equipment and community events. Students annotated a map of the park and then had to justify how they had spent their money to other participants, learning how to balance the needs of different people and nature so that the space worked for everyone.
After lunch, each school created a Climate Action Plan to take back to their school leaders to make positive changes for climate and nature. Each student chose one priority on which their school should concentrate. These included school meals, school ethos, curriculum, food growing, heating and insulation, gender equality, buying less and buying eco products, active travel and engaging the community. Students gathered around a mentor for each idea and discussed what their school might do and what help they might need to achieve it. Then, students returned to their school groups to debate and finalise their plan.
The Art Competition was won by Astrea Academy, and Freya won the poetry competition.
Common Thread, a community project that organises social exchanges of
clothing, repair workshops, and playful up-cycling activities, created a
banner based on the patches schools brought with them on the theme of
climate hope. Jess Dawson from Common Thread had this to say about the SCESY Conference:
‘What a FANTASTIC and inspirational day working on this community art
banner and discussing the slow fashion movement with so many brilliant
young people at the Schools Climate Education South Yorkshire Schools
Conference!’
Students I spoke to had enjoyed the day and were enthusiastic to go back to their schools and help make changes. Violet, Edith and Lucy from Wales Comprehensive wanted adults to use less energy, stop using so many plastic water bottles and drive less. Amina from Rescope Primary thought adults should spend more time enjoying nature and had made a Zine about this. Jane and Jessica desired more wildflowers to encourage butterflies and bees, and wanted their MP to provide more green spaces in their community.
Many thanks to everyone who put time into organising this conference and especially all the youngsters who were a credit to their schools.
Groups who participated
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