Creating Sustainable Futures

Learning in the outdoors is great fun! We know this to be true, especially after the experience that twenty-five young people from Queen Elizabeth School had at Malham Tarn last weekend. There is a deeper message, though, which is about how much greater is the depth of understanding when we have the opportunity to really observe and explore in an inspirational setting. Creating Sustainable Futures is a project focusing on developing awareness of climate change by looking at the natural environment and creative ways of expressing the learning.

Creating Sustainable Futures, which is funded by the Ernest Cook Trust, brings together twenty-five Year 8 students, teachers, scientists from the Field Studies Council and two creative practitioners. It is a scientific, creative and practical collaboration. Building on existing knowledge of climate change issues, students, scientists and creative practitioners used the limestone area around Malham Tarn in Yorkshire to sketch, record, observe evidence and collect data. On a four mile walk from the centre over the high moor above the centre and down to the tarn, sites of special significance were investigated. A particular high point was taking soil samples on the moors. Examining the different layers of peat, iron and soil in the samples not only demonstrated the laying down of different layers over hundreds of thousands of years but it gave clues about how the landscape would have changed and what influence man would have had. It also gave the opportunity to use the blue plastic gloves so beloved by scientists!

Work continues on developing the creative material back in school with students and creative practitioners Emma Aylett and Adam Clarke. Many hundreds of sketches, stories, photographs and video footage will be woven into a creative outcome. Exactly what that might be is still ‘work in progress’. Students will have the opportunity to present their ‘outcomes’ to Lake District National Park Officer, Richard Leafe, and other leading decision makers in a special presentation at Malham at the end of June.

The end of the project will not be the end of the learning journey for the students. As part of the process students will write a letter to their future self about what they have learned about climate change and what they anticipate may be different when they receive the letter. Viv West and Margaret Riches (Creative Futures Cumbria Project Manager and Director) will revisit these letters with the students when they start the new school year. What is revealed will tell how the project has impacted on their knowledge over a longer period of time and how they might have changed as a result. It’s sure to be revealing!