Our education programme allows us to provide opportunities for young people and advocate social inclusion. This is exactly what we did by supporting a recent collaboration with Learning@TheGrange and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Three local schools took part in their food sustainability project called Planet Food, where they examined the impact of food on our environment.
Encouraging further thinking around food waste and its impact on the environment demonstrates our Sustainability Strategy and our commitment to meet our ambition of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
“Most of us might believe it’s our energy or transport choices that cause the most serious environmental damage. In fact, it’s our food system that creates the biggest impact.” – Dr Tony Juniper, WWF
The students from Cranbourne School, the Vyne Community School and Everest Academy joined the Learning@TheGrange’s creative teams to examine how we produce, eat and often waste our food. They discussed how we could improve our eating habits and expressed their thoughts in written text and then composed that text into music. Each school produced their own original song to represent their opinions. Their songs were filmed and edited and will be shown by WWF at various environmental and educational conferences to highlight the urgent problem.
“It was an amazing day full of fun and everyone was working hard, sharing ideas, singing, writing, switching our creative minds on.” Year 8 Student
Our support for Planet Food has strengthened numeracy development throughout the schools, which is a core part of our Social Impact programme. Music itself is very mathematical, it includes counting, rhythm, pitch and timing. Composing music helps us to improve our motor skills, communication, problem solving capabilities and improves mental and physical health.
You can watch the three thought-provoking and inspiring videos below.