March 20, 2014

Sustainability

“I’ve never felt more inspired and connected to nature. This programme has rejuvenated me, and prompted me to take action.”

We have a pretty outrageously good track record of making sustainability accessible, fun, real and thoroughly empowering with a wide range of people.

There is enough negative information out there about the state of our world. Much of it is complex, heavy – scary even – stuff to get our heads round. Isn’t it time for a different approach? We enable students to access, understand and take ownership of all this information about the state of their world without it being overwhelming. In fact we do so so it actually becomes empowering.

Our process of challenging, connecting, informing and inspiring keeps students motivated by practical solutions and positive people who are making systemic change a reality, or at least a possibility. We dig up and question many of the assumptions that underpin our modern society and create a space where students can discuss how they feel and what really matters to them in a way they may never get at home, at work or at school. We support this with connection with nature, some physical challenge and observations and ideas taken from leading thinkers and actors from a range of disciplines, particularly ecology and economics.

Our sustainability programmes can work in a number of ways:

1. A powerful enhancement to any academic course looking at sustainable development and related issues.

2. Bringing ecology to life; taking concepts that are taught in science classes and making them real, relevant and accessible.

3. Inspiration and motivation for activists and other change makers undertaking sustainability practices themselves.

We use many models and principles from science classes and explore them at work in the real world, both in nature and in human systems. Succession, energy flows through trophic levels, efficiency and energy return on energy invested, diversity, resilience, symbiosis … and more … all weave into the narrative of the students’ experience, reinforced by practical examples and related to real world sustainability issues. This embeds concepts delivered in class in the students’ memories; achieving learning that is both long lasting and of practical use for whatever the students go on to do in their lives.

“I think one of the reasons it has impacted me is because I found that it was a very positive, successful example of shifting mindsets and lifestyles – which was inspirational as many times in Environmental Science there can be more hardship and difficulties than successes.”

Our programmes foster a whole systems view of the world, making complexity accessible, and instilling a deep sense of purpose. This is global, transformational learning – delivered on a local scale.