Community groups setting up

The conference was broad yet practical. The day  was split into two parts, presentations and workshops. I would like to briefly mention a few main ideas that have come across:

On the definition of term ‘sustainable development’ it has been noted that it is not just about economic but also social and spiritual development, it is ‘equity between groups of people, space and generations and future generations’.

The leading schools in ‘sustainability’ shared key issues and practices in becoming sustainable:

The need for passion, interest and drive from the principal and staff and ability to sustain the momentum.

To be successful ‘sustainability’ should be embedded in School Improvement Plan and Curriculum Plan and be delegated rather than being under supervision of one teacher or principal.

Involvement of the pupils in planning and decision making, through Student Council and Eco groups becomes pivotal for sustaining everyone’s enthusiasm and participation, as well as changing behavior.

Taking action in award schemes such as Eco-schools or Healthy schools helps schools to stay focused on their targets.

Doing a workshop with School Food Matters

It was noted that funding for creating change exists yets need to be sought and be planned for; while multiple partnerships, networking and ability to take risks may create greater opportunities than expected. A great example is a secondary school that was rebuilt as a result of the Building Schools for the Future program to be a community hub that includes multiple services to the local community including a sky bar where parents may purchase a cup of coffee after dropping their children off.

Listening to presentations

A wonderful message of the day was that schools use creativity in how they use resources and include sustainability topics into the curriculum:
re-used doors and computer tops in its new BSF building as tables and plant holders,
theme days such as Water Day,
and creating a wind turbine noise to be a symbolic school sound

Sustainable Schools National Framework was used as a reference point by schools as well as the council. It allowed schools to note their strengths as well as their weaknesses, and every school noted that there is definitely a space for improvement in each category.

These are very exciting early days for Kingston community and it’s schools to move forward with the sustainable agenda. One of the topics to be brought up often was the lack of space where all the information may be found or shared. OpenDoors Kingston is a project that has potential to fulfill such need. I developed it during the MA Design for Development course in Kingston University, in collaboration with Kingston Council and Transition Town Kingston. OpenDoors is an online platform that enables, motivates and supports both community and schools to become more sustainable through the eight doors which are based on Sustainable Schools National Framework.

The project is currently work in progress, and has several potential outcomes including a place where teachers and headteachers may find resources such as lesson plans to general documents from the government such as sustainability evaluation tools. It also may be a place where schools and community share their ideas and knowledge on topics of sustainability as well as form partnerships and projects around topics of the eight doors, or invite and participate in local sustainable events.

Display of OpenDoors Kingston

The potential for the platform is wide and I am currently looking for a web developer and designer to continue my work as well as funding opportunities. If you would like to learn more about the project, or are aware of any such opportunities please do contact me at ksiuxak[at]gmail[dot]com

I would like to thank Lovelace Primary School for its great hospitality, Matthew and Carlos from Kingston Council for putting the conference together, and all schools and community members that have taken part in it! I hope to see you next year, with a well developed product

We volunteered with the public service design company ThinkPublic to work on a live project at Cambridge Estate,  YouCanKingston . ThinkPublic  and YoungFoundation were to perform a “scoping exercise [ for NHS Kingston ] into uncovering the health needs of the estate”. The solutions then to be co-produced with citizens to improve their health and to make the estate “a flourishing place to live”.

The photos are of the final stage in which ThinkPublic and we, KU volunteers will be involved in. In the first stage the awareness was brought to the public through bright logos painted on the walls of the buildings. In the second, community members were interviewed to what their general concerns are, what is their perspective on the health of the community, and what do they think can and should be improved. In the last stage, categories have been created and community members were then asked to specifically describe solutions to the issues identified in the previous stages, and what role they are to play if something is to change.

As you can see the tables were set out, and we were to speak to individuals who came there with the knowledge that they can talk and discuss their concerns. It was our job however, to not only listen, but try to steer them to think how these concerns can be resolved into solutions. I have spoken with two community members, and it is preventitive solutions that seem to be needed the most. An “Art class for elderly”, and “an internet cafe in the now abandoned gym” for everybody are the two ideas that I hope get to be discussed and become a reality.

Liani and a community member

Rao loved working with kids

John the internet champion, the only one with the "right mind" for the job

John making me laugh:)

Paul after an attempt of the community members teaching him to breakdance:)

My mind moved from Papanek to Buckminster Fuller and Illich, and then began to think in terms of contemporary speakers.

Current list is ambitious but so is the goal of the designers’ on the course to create positive change, if we could bring in the few from the list, we will be looking forward to a lively and fulfilling debate :

Ezio Manzini – Professor of Industrial Design, Politecnico de Milano
Nicola Morelli – an associate professor at the School of Architecture and Design, at Aalborg University
Richard Buchanan – former Dean of the Design School at Carnegie Mellon
Victor Margolin – Dept. of Art History University of Illinois
Jane Bickerstaffe – director of Incpen, the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment, UK
Helen Hughes – national adviser, voluntary and community sector, Improvement and Development Agency

Lucienne Roberts – author on design and co-founder of sans+baum
Michael Eavis – festival event business organizer, Glastonbury
Cameron Sinclair – co-founder of Architecture for Humanity
Ken Livingstone – British politician, environmentalist
Albert Tucker – from Twin Trading
Chris Sherwin – Forum for the Future
Valerie Casey – from Design Accord
Adam Werbach – CEO of Saatchi&Saatchi S.
Tim Smit – Eden Project
Ann Thorpe – Design Activism
Alice Rawsthorn – design critic of the international Herald Tribune
Bruce Mau – Bruce Mau Design
John Thackara - director of Doors of Perception

David Kester – chief executive of the Design Council
McDonough/ Dr. Braungaurt – Cradle to Cradle
Lynda Relph-Knight – Editor, Design Week
Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry – founders of Method, environmentally cleaning products
John Grant – Author of The Green Marketing Manifesto
Debra Szebeko – ThinkPublic
Rob Holdway – Giraffe Innovation
John Elkington – Founder of SustainAbility (pick)
Jonathan Chapman and Neil Gant – Authors of Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays
Stephen Bailey – cultural commentator
Jonathon Porritt – Founder Director of Forum for the Future
Alastair Fuad-Luke – itinerant sustainable design lecturer and writer
Slow Design
Bill Dunster – ZED Factory
Nabeel Hamdi – architect and author
Trevor Baylis – English inventor
“As they say, art is pleasure, invention is treasure, and this nation has got to recognise that. If they can spend a fortune on dead sheep and formaldehyde, then it can spend a bit more of that money on inventors.” Trevor Baylis, Wiki

Toy of the day:

James Galt and Company (galt toys)

And the quote of the day : “I think God’s going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding”  – Steven Wright

A story of malaria

A rationing plate

Sense, Annie Cattrell

Participants were asked to choose a word on the card and illustrate it

A body map, work looks at how the ideas of faith, dependence and hope are made physical in medicine. A number of tablets, vitamis, are carved into images of those parts of the body that they are designed to treat.

RCA Show:

RCA MA Show: Wind socks

carpet tiled in a way that different images may be created

RCA Show: Video illustration and text

We walked into a dark cool theater space and sat in the back with people in front of us leisurely lounging. As we watched elderly woman on the screen silently hanging and folding cloths, we heard the voice of a woman speaking the words of wisdom. She spoke about the relationships, and the need to be yourself, not letting the other insert habits and routines into you, but develop them yourself. Be true to yourself, and you will be happy in a relationship, submit to the other and you will struggle.  How was voice connected to the image Rao asked afterward? Was it the thoughts of the same elderly woman that was in front of us? was she talking to us? was it someone else? I felt connected to the image and the voice, for me it was the voice of all the beautiful wise women in my life  talking to me.

“The design approach is characterised by a thoughtful exploration combining imagination with anticipation.” Platform 10, RCA

Loughborough University

In the last four days I have visited two new towns in UK, Loughborough and Lancaster. Trip to Lancaster was an MA Design for Development first trip together, which added to the excitement. Both places held Design for Sustainability Conferences, and both are places I consider for my further study for PhD. So it was very special for me but it is a lot of material to digest.

Conference in Loughborough was a series of presentations by researchers from the universities of Brunel, Kingston, Nottingham Tent, Bath, and delegates from PDD, Boots, and ThinkPlayDo on the development of ‘sustainable’ products and services. Vicky opened the conference by reflecting on how sustainability is being integrated into the product design processes today. She spoke about the difficulties for such objects as Dell Inspiron to be sustainable when its parts come from fourty different stakeholders and exemplified Herman Miller and other products from Information Inspiration collection, for their closed-loop design and ‘sustainable design’ practices.

Actually, Information Inspiration is a very comprehensive website with case studies exemplifying sustainable products (by which I mean products, graphics, services, etc.). It seems to relate to what Martin from Quite Riot is trying to do at the moment, but I think the examples in the latter are personal contacts of Martin, whereas Information Inspiration is global, desk researched examples. For both websites, and I haven’t explored Information Inspiration in depth yet, the criteria for choosing the exemplars seem a bit blurred, but definitely is worthwhile to check out both.

Presentations focused on sustainability as a tool for innovation. This topic has positive and negative sides.

Paul Micklethwaite presenting on the future of furniture design

On the positive note, Paul noted that though UK furniture industry is in decline, the alternative models of production are being considered. One such model of ‘re-manufacturing’ is done by organizations such as Green Works, where they redistribute/remodel the surplus furniture. Melissa spoke of products’ multifunctionality where ‘energy is harvested’ rather than used, such as yo-yo mp3, which is an amazing idea, but needs a very careful consideration with regards to initial design/material use.

On the cautious side is big brand greenwashing. The case of Botanics from Boots was presented, where supply chain is integrated from the very beginning of the design, the product is 100% organic, and packaging is to the minimum. However, the decision to keep aluminimum cap because it is part of the brand leaves product to be ‘unfinished’. This was an almost perfect product for Boots, one case study out of thousands products sold in the shops, and yet even here the obastacles to be fully sustainable were met.

A beautiful campaign for WWF

The models for innovation was another subject, which seems to further add to ‘greenwashing’ , eventhough it involves ‘sustainability’ its focus is on helping companies to stay in business rather than understanding users, changing behaviors, changing the business models or models of production. At least three models for innovation were presented,  the one from PDD was based on trend analysis and ‘insight’ or client behavior analysis,  ThinkPlayDo presented a formula innovation+integrity=achievement, and a third one was web-based CWE (which i believe stands for common weakness enumeration) a software for detecting damaged furniture. The result of implementation of these models is unknown to me, yet as the last presenter noted, there are too many tools out there and it is better to tweak the tried ones than to try to reinvent the wheel.

The Lancaster conference was a PhD conference, and therefore less ‘applied’ and more academic which I will record in my next blog=)

one of the deers I met on my walk in Richmond Park

I am really sorry for being out for so long. I have been buried with assignments, all very interesting and insightful, yet, I feel that every time I thought of writing an entry it felt like another thing to do on my list. This I do not want to happen anymore. This weekend will be packed with design conferences one in Loughborough and one in Lancaster, and I hope to report from there.

Last night Elise adn I have met to discuss Transition Towns Kingston School’s (TTKS) project. It is moving along, and it is great to have a team that is responsive to your ideas. In the last couple of months we have talked about creating a support network for teachers in Kingston-upon-Thames to talk and discuss what it means to be sustainable school, how to further bring sustainability into the curriculum and how can schools be involved with the local communities. Of course, I as a design student and TTKS  group may have as many ideas as possible, but ultimately we dont want to create another thing for teachers to do. So a questionnaire is in order. Why are we doing this? Well it is my belief and it has been shown by ethnographic researchers that the way you are raised truly effects how you are. See Wade Davis’s very insightful presentation on endangered cultures here. But teachers are bogged down with accountability tests, so when Department for School, Children and Family tells schools that they need to be sustainable by 2020, who are they talking to?

Kingston has already become a Transition Town so it seems natural for schools to get involved as well. I am not sure how to approach this yet. Since it is an intervention teachers might ignore us, or feel that we are too pretentious. So being transparent in our research will have to be one of the main points.

Martin Hoenle, the founder of TheQuietRiot.com presented his website, which was launched on January 21, 2009 at Danish Design Center, in one of my design for development modules at Kingston University. “There is a gap between green design and mainstream design” Martin noted at the beginning of the presentation “and the world will only become sustainable when green design becomes mainstream”. TheQuietRiot.com is a website that creates an opportunity for designers and users to close that gap. A platform for showcasing the most exemplar design solutions to the pressing issues of energy use across the world and a forum for designers and users to discuss ideas and share opinions on featured designs, TheQuietRiot.com is both informative and inspirational.

KK: How did you start your journey?

RD: Let me give you a bit of a background, I have always been very interested in education and children and learning, and the environment and our beautiful world. I have worked closely with Dr. Jane Goodall, who studied chimpanzees in the wild, and has a global youth programme called Roots and Shoots, which empowers young people to make a positive difference to their world. I have been involved with that programme for a long time now, over 10 years.

Through the Jane Goodall Institute I met the polar explorer Robert Swan. He was the first man to walk to both the South Pole and the North Pole unaided, and he is a great man. His message is simple; “walk your talk.” If you want to do something, do it, don’t talk about it, do it. I went to Antarctica with him to set up an education station there run on renewable energy; solar and wind power, with the message “if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere”. The experience opened my eyes to the issues of climate change and the need for sustainable energy.

So that was really the first part of the journey. I then came back from Antarctica and thought we need to start doing something here that will impact in a positive way on climate change and carbon reduction, probably the biggest sustainability challenge of them all. Yes, we need to save forests and prevent deforestation, we need to stop landfill and throwing waste into the ground. They are all important issues, but for me right now we need to become much more energy efficient as well as finding clean renewable energy alternatives.

So when I came back from Antarctica I looked into sources of funding to enable us to do this. Then we started to introduce the technologies to make us more energy efficient. That was really the beginning of our journey, but since then it has continued to evolve in lots of different and exciting ways.

Sustainability is about living more simply, it is about choices we make everyday, it is about a lifestyle we choose to lead, it is about challenging the status quo right now, challenging how we have done things, and finding better ways to do them. I almost feel it is about revolution and here at Ashley we are creating a green revolution. This is our school bag. It is a jute bag with the strapline “The Little Green School with the Big Green Attitude” and these bags are everywhere in our school now. We are trying not to use plastic bags. And we are promoting these bags with schools in this area. We have just made an order for another 1,000. If people use these jute bags, they do not need to use plastic bags, which go into landfill and take 400 years to decompose.

The school operates a Values education programme. Every month students are introduced to one of the twenty two Values and explore it daily including in their curriculum. This month it is Simplicity. Images copyrighted by Ecoideaz

So what about the leadership issue? Well, obviously it is fine for one person to lead it because you need someone to drive it. If I wasn’t driving it in the school it probably wouldn’t be happening. So the leadership element is very important. My passion and commitment is giving momentum to what is happening. And if you keep sustaining it, sustaining the message, keep it high profile then it does get through.

Since beginning this work at school a national framework has come into schools based on the 8 Doorways of Sustainability. And over the last year or so, increasingly schools are realising that they need to find a new way of thinking and need to role model best practice.

KK: So schools are being told to take on sustainability?

RD: I think it is partly that. If it is statutory then schools will do it and I think we have now reached a stage where it has to be something that people have to do.

KK: But the framework is just a guideline right now?

RD: Well there is a commitment for schools to have integrated the 8 doorways of sustainability by 2020. I think it is too far away. We need to be changing faster than that if we really want to make an impact.

The whole school approach is divided into three areas; curriculum, campus, and community, and that is how we have looked at it. We probably started with the campus and looking at this school site and saying OK what can we do to make this site more energy efficient. And then we looked at where the opportunities are in our learning right now linked to the topics we teach so that we can start to address some of these areas. At school we have “Learning Questions” rather than objectives so we ask the children key questions. Why is there so much traffic? What causes the traffic? Can we change the amount of traffic? In another scenario we might look at energy and ask where does energy come from and how do we use it? And soon the children start asking questions themselves and so the debate begins.

KK: What about the teachers, how do they take that message and bring it into their classrooms?

RD: I think one of the biggest challenges right now is how do you engage teachers who do not think it is important, who aren’t excited by it, who perhaps don’t understand the issues around it.

LC: I found your lecture to be very different. We were sitting there all thinking this is what the learning needs to be about. There was lots of discussion after the lecture.

RD: Thank you. I appreciate that. What I said in the lecture was from the heart. These issues are very important. And the children really, really want to engage in them. It makes their learning very exciting. I didn’t show this in the lecture, but we have something in school that is called an ecoDriver, which is an energy monitoring system. In 2007 all our energy for the school site was just over 46,500 kWh of energy for year. It is not a huge amount, but it is enough. This last year 2008 with just the last month to confirm, we are at 21,500. 46,500 to 21,500 in one year, that is a massive change! That is incredibly exciting! And I know that January this year in our new block our energy has gone down from last year 41%, we need dramatic changes, not 2 to 3%.

We put in renewable energy technology and we put in energy efficiency measures such as double glazing, low energy lighting, but alongside that we have said to children that it is about how we behave. When you are in a room, we always say don’t forget to turn the light off. The message now is do you have to turn them on in the first place? And if you need to turn them on do you need to turn them all on or just some?

Natural lighting is one of the school's options for decreasing energy use. Images copyrighted by Ecoideaz

During holiday time or at the weekend or the end of the day, we have shut down, so we try and shut down the school site. I will show you something quickly here on the graph [shows ecoDriver graph] we get the children to use it, and it is real-life data. It is not a worksheet with a graph on it, it is their school.

Richard shows a graph on their new building, how many units of energy have been used.

When it is a simple graph like this, even young children can understand it. They can see that a tall bar means a lot of energy and a low bar means little energy, and they work out that the blue bar is the weekend. So as you can see this is last week and on Friday we had an inset day training [very low bar], and then this is half term [ lowest bar], so we completely shut that building down. I reckon in a lot of places when people are not there they still use a significant amount of energy. And we can compare this information. I can go back to last year in our New Block when we were using between 40% more energy, and that is because we are changing our behaviour and we are putting in place things that make it easier for us to save energy.

So going back to your question, the challenge is how do you engage teachers in the debate, and it is probably two things: either giving them experiences to enable them to appreciate how important these issues are. It’s an extreme example but to go to Antarctica was a life changing experience. Now you can’t get everyone to go to Antarctica, but there is a need for us to get out there and connect with our world. Too many people spend too much time in artificial environments, not natural environments. We need our teachers and our young people to understand that world better. I went to a lecture on Monday at the Oxford Business School on climate change and if the statistics are true on climate change, they are unbelievably shocking! They are truly terrifying. The data that is coming through shows that by the end of the century escalation in the global temperatures could be anything from 1.5 to 5 degrees and in the polar regions anything up to 12 degrees. When we look at the last 10,000 years it’s been 1 degree. The argument against human induced climate change is that it is just a natural cycle. I personally don’t think that holds because I look at the data, and it is the speed of change that has created such dramatic changes in climate. Yes, certainly there will be variation over great extended periods of time, but not in 100 years.

KK: How are teachers bringing these issues into the classroom?

RD: I think there needs to be accountability. The teachers are accountable for making sure that they share the information on these issues, but you have to be careful because it is not about scaring our children. The last thing we need to do is have children scared about it, they need to understand that there is an issue, but most importantly they need to feel excited about the way in which their involvement can bring change. So as an example last summer we had at school what we call “The 100 Club”. The school has a total energy allocation per day of 100kWh. If they get below it every day for 5 days of the week, I give them £10. If they go over it they don’t get it. It was a realistic challenge and they raised £200 over the term. Now we have broken it into different blocks, so it is different amounts but it is the same principle and the children are much more aware of energy now. They are becoming energy literate.

You have to say to the teachers in their planning we need to see where your sustainability questions are.

KK: Is it subject based?

RD: No, it infiltrates all aspects of learning. And I think that is where curriculum will start to move. So rather than having a green agenda attached to the end of what you learn in geography, it will increasingly come right into the centre of the curriculum. The sustainable schools programme is about care for self, for each other and for environment. That agenda is now being pushed into the centre of learning. I had an interesting meeting with people from NCSL, Ofsted, HMI and so on recently on sustainability. We spent a lot of the day discussing what sustainability means, is it about sustainability in school i.e. keeping good schools going or is it about a bigger picture? In my view sustainability has to be about the bigger picture and linking everything together. It is about individual, community and the wider world. We have done Every Child Matters, which is the first two, now we need to do Every Child’s Future Matters, which includes the third element.

Students rotate taking care of the chickens. Images copyrighted by Ecoideaz

Everything should interconnect, where possible, so for teachers they are providing opportunities for non-fiction writing or maths investigations to be relevant and engaging – Ways of Writing and zim mathematics, alongside learning that gives children a chance to be really creative because we still need children to be a bit zany and off the wall. That is where children’s imagination comes from to get the answers to the problems. One of my favourite quotes around sustainability is that “it is finding beautiful solutions to ugly problems.”

My feeling is when children are younger they need to have good experiences of learning, they need to be outside, they need to be connecting with their world, they need to be creative, they need to exploring their relationships with each other and their world. Getting into the good habits, knowing how to share things, knowing how to express themselves. Then when they reach the age of 7-11, you start to crank it up a bit, you start to say, ok, let’s start to think about the issues, explore them in more detail, think about them more deeply.

What we do at the end of each term is a care and concern assembly, where we get every group from the youngest to oldest to share the projects that they have done to show that they care. If you are in Reception Year aged 5 and you do a “Christmas Shoebox Appeal” (when you get an old shoebox and fill it with gifts and wrap it up, and send it to another child), that is quite a big thing to give something away. That is a big awareness. Then by Year Five or Six the children might be discussing and exploring some of the bigger issues, understanding them from different perspectives and appreciating their role in them.

KK: How does government help with the sustainability agenda?

RD: There are funding opportunities for renewable energy technologies such as the Low Carbon Building Programme, which will support schools and give 50% funding for projects. There is the Sustainable Schools framework as we have already discussed. In a positive way the Government wants schools to take ownership of sustainability and look at how they can apply it to their own situation. So the issues in this school and community may be very different from a school in another area. You have to apply the framework to your own campus and community. So ownership is very important from the government’s framework right through to the children and their learning. It is about our curriculum, our school, our local community.

KK: How do the Ofsted inspection and the government’s sustainable schools framework correlate?

RD: There is a debate on that because Ofsted is still coming into schools based on the core data. We need to find other, softer means of measuring schools that carry equal weight. We need to move on from simply judging and grading a school based on SATs and Value Added to a measure that says “we recognize the importance of the value culture and how that permeates through school life”. There is always a fear factor around Ofsted and SATs. It is one of those situations, you have good SATs and Value Added and you get praise. We had our Ofsted and we got “outstanding” in everything. In my opinion, we still had areas to develop as all schools do, but it gave us the confidence to push on and open up the curriculum. For some schools that is quite hard. I think this school is now better than it has ever been. It has evolved and is stronger now than when we had our last Ofsted. So that is tricky. If school’s core data is not good and schools are striving to be better, it is easy and understandable for them to get caught up in the data, to narrow the curriculum, to not take the risks. So it’s a catch 22 situation and yet we need all schools to take the risks to make an impact on broader issues.

KK: What is your vision for the school?

RD: Now it is about embedding and refining the practice. Sustaining the good areas, and developing others that are coming along. I think sustainable energy is now really good here. We should soon be in the position here when we are carbon positive and putting energy back into the grid. And so the next challenge for us is food. We have created seven vegetable beds for every year group for this summer and we are creating a herb garden outside our kitchen. Ideally I would like us to be producing enough food that we can use a lot of food in the kitchen that has been grown on this site.

KK: How do you engage with the wider community?

RD: There are different ways of doing it. We run Working Parties to get parents to support our grounds development. We are presenting an art and music project in our local community centre next month. We currently have 75 families at school participating in a Carbon Countdown energy saving initiative. It is about seeing opportunities and exciting people about what you are doing.

In terms of leadership it can be quite a juggling act. My challenge as the head of the school is to say keep that going, don’t let that plate drop, let’s start another project here or this initiative is coming on very well so can you make sure that it keeps going please. But you do need to keep an eye. I have a really fantastic Year 6 teacher working on our Eco-Schools project and we regularly discuss how the meetings she has with the children have gone and what the next actions need to be. So there is plenty of delegating because ultimately it won’t work if it is only one person’s initiative. You have to find key people around you who can share the vision. In terms of training colleges, I think there has to be training and understanding on sustainability. We can’t separate learning how to read and write, how to do maths and science from this big picture. The way the curriculum for our children evolves is from very holistic in the early years to very fragmented at secondary, from interconnected learning to ultimately a one subject focus and onto one job. Potentially they can really lose that understanding of the big picture. That is a real challenge.

Tree planting is one of the projects that students, teachers, and parents get involved in annually. Images copyrighted by Ecoideaz

Kingston has been awarded a status of Transition Towns eight months ago, and currently has six action groups, including a School Group. This is where I would like to contribute. As it is in my interest to create a framework for helping schools to become sustainable, this could be a good starting point. There is a difference in approaches, where I am interested in targeting teachers as the main user group and applying whole school approach to sustainable development of the schools, TTK School Group is looking at involving children directly and is focusing on knowledge transfer of two themes: peak oil and climate change. However, I think that by my direct involvement in the School Group will give me a better understanding of the school environment as a whole, as well as hands on experience. The more focused approach will later then be fed into a larger development plan.