Engaging Children with Nature
#CelebratingEngagement
with the Urban Wildlife SSCP DTP Challenge Team
How do you motivate inner city children to explore the natural environment? Every year, Imperial’s Grantham Institute runs ‘Challenge Teams’, giving PhD students a mission to design a programme of public engagement to share their work with the wider public. Last year, a team from the Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet (SSCP) Doctoral Training Programme (DTP) won the Student Team Award for Excellence in Societal Engagement for inspiring London children with their Urban Wildlife project. Team leader Alex Rabeau took some time out of his busy schedule to answer my questions on the importance of engaging with nature.
Alex, tell me a bit about how the team came about.
“We all came together as part of the Challenge Team initiative on our doctoral training program which looks to bring PhD students together across disciplines to tackle contemporary issues.
We were all very motivated to get involved with this particular Challenge Team as we all really connected with the idea of getting children more enthusiastic about nature in their local environment.
As team leader, I liaised with the [Grantham] Institute on project progress. Henry Grub oversaw school recruitment through his connections with external collaborator the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Alex Auyang, George Horner, Verity Miles, and Josh Reynolds all also equally collaborated with resource creation, workshop training, and running the workshops.”
In collaboration with ZSL, you ran a series of eleven workshops at eight different primary schools, reaching a total of 300 students. That’s impressive! Why do you think it’s important for children to have access to, and knowledge of, wildlife in their immediate environment?
“In modern cities, it's easy for children to feel disconnected from the natural world. Forming a connection with nature, especially at a formative age, has been shown to have a wide range of emotional and social benefits.
"In addition to urban wildlife and green spaces being enormously important for people's mental health, improving the next generation’s sense of value towards nature is essential in motivating them to preserve it.” That sounds great – so what are the key challenges in developing an awareness of wildlife in urban areas?
“Inaccessibility and lack of education can be big challenges that prevent children from developing a connection to nature. Luckily, London, as one of the world’s greenest cities, boasts an amazing wealth of wildlife and nature to be discovered. Therefore, our overall goal was to make the most of nearby green spaces combined with educational sessions to increase awareness, enthusiasm, and concern for nature amongst primary school children.”
This is a team award – you mentioned earlier how you all had important roles to play in the project. What values and aims brought the team together?
“It was clear as we began to work together that we all shared similar values around education and working in the local community. Additionally, as we are all conducting PhDs centred around climate change and preserving the natural world, we were all clearly motivated by the overall aim of improving enthusiasm around nature. It made working together really smooth and we all really enjoyed the process.”
Can I ask if you have any advice for academics looking to engage the public with their research? Is there anything you learned from your experience of public engagement that you could share?
“I would say any opportunity to talk about science with your local community is so important, particularly with children.
I think it’s so easy as academics to almost get introverted with your research and too focused around progressing your work that you forget to engage with others. Obviously, things like conferences are a great opportunity to present your own research but I think something we all found really great about this experience was the opportunity to work with kids and get them excited about science at an early age.”
So what’s next for you and the team?
“All of us are in different stages of our PhDs so I think it’s fair to say we will all be pretty busy either finishing or progressing our projects. On top of this, we’re all looking to disseminate our research to hopefully positively impact our respective fields.”
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