South Yorkshire children discuss climate change at conference

The Schools Climate Education South Yorkshire Conference, held at Rotherham United’s New York Stadium, 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.

Ms Champion also said that Rotherham has seen evidence of climate change, with recent flooding affecting Whiston and Treeton. She suggested the most simple thing that anyone can do to combat climate change is to write to their MP.

A group called Drama Kids from Wickersley, Rotherham performed an extract from Trash Planet, a play they devised. It calls for everyone, including governments, to rise to the challenge of climate solutions.

Overheating

The Zines workshop got children making small magazines about nature, using old magazines to cut and paste.

An Energy Heroes workshop looked at the maths of energy. Children learned that 29.4% of electricity now comes from wind power, which is 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 £4,000 a year.

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Led by professional musicians, small groups of students composed verses which were combined to make a rap, making use of a factsheet to provide ideas for the material.

A group called Hope for the Future led a workshop to encourage youngsters to engage with their MPs. Students debated what questions to ask Sheffield Central MP Abtisam Mohammed. They were videoed asking each question and the MP has promised to film her replies.

Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust ran a role-play workshop about planning an open space. Each group was given a budget of £70,000 and had to choose how to spend it.

Students annotated a map of the park and then had to justify how they had spent their money to other participants. They learned how to balance the needs of different people and nature so that the space worked for everyone.

Positive

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. The students then returned to their school groups to debate and finalise their plan.

An art competition was won by Astrea Academy in Sheffield and a student called Freya won a poetry competition. The event ended with the presentation of a Climate Hope banner created during the day by community sewing group Common Thread.