This project engages with secondary pupils to consider different religious responses to green issues and ideas about climate justice to generate resources that will help secondary schools and can be disseminated to primary schools enabling many pupils in many schools to think for themselves in creative ways about the green issues which religions all address.

Schools involved in our project include Luton Sixth Form College,  Stockwood Park Academy, Denbigh High School, Challney High School for Boys and Challney High School for Girls.

After a slow start the project gathered energy and pace through our day conference for students from different Luton secondary schools held at the Youthscape centre Bute Mill and including a panel session with SACRE representatives from Christianity, Islam, Hindu community and the Baha’i faith.

Students had opportunities to learn in some detail about the teaching of sacred texts and the application of ideas about the world of nature and the environment from religions to contemporary problems. A creative afternoon enabled students to respond to their learning in the interfaith conference by creating team sculptures that reflected both the varied religious teaching they had heard and their own perspectives on contemporary green issues.

The project has a focus on students building their skills as leaders and all the activities of the day are being carried back into the different secondary schools using the resources of the project in pupil led activity across Luton.
Contributions in kind for the project comes from the teacher engagement which is also connected to the regular SACRE teacher network groups that meet each term and springs from the Luton Agreed Syllabus focus on environmental issues and the ethics of different religions and world views

Here are some examples of student commentary on their involvement in the project

Tendai: “We really liked making our sculptures and the main things we learned are about what is happening with the climate and how we can help learning deeply about the damage caused by humans. Learning to discuss with other people has helped me to see that I can be an ambassador to help other people who are interested.”

Zeinab:
“I have enjoyed hearing four different religious people explain how their beliefs impacted on their worldviews and their ideas about global warming. I really enjoyed doing the art sculpture task and seeing other people's take on the environment. The main things we have been learning are about other ideas and viewpoints on the religious influence on ethical thought and how art can be used as a form of communication and inspiration. We need more time for the activity back in school: we will try to employ some of the skills and ideas we learned within the event towards our eco committee group. We also aim to start interesting discussions on environmental issues through the board game that we all played this has been a good example of the development of issues in RE outside of our normal lessons structures, linking RE to the effects of pollution.”

Shannon:
“We intend to implement eco friendly activities throughout the curriculum eg giving others creative ways to think about religion. It has been good to be involved in interactive ways of interpretation looking at how religion interlinks with climate issues and using creative ways of interpreting climate justice questions.”
 

Masuma:
“We liked listening to the panellists which was really interesting and we learned a lot from it. Being able to ask questions enabled us to gain more knowledge. The main thing we learned is that religions can do a lot and are quite interconnected: most beliefs have core ideas on caring for the planet. Back in school we will use the activity called ‘Paper the walls with the wisdom.’ It’s a very interactive task allowing everyone to see different perspectives. We think that good RE should use more creative activities so that pupils have a greater interest becoming more focused when learning about religion and nature.”
 

Yasmin:
“Today I have been thinking about the values of love and care and many other values as well - caring for the earth even though we are from many different religions is a shared responsibility. It can create unity. I would have liked it if the panel discussion was more interactive but we did enjoy the conference part where we listened to the panel discussing their views on eco friendly religion. Back in school we intend to follow the same thought provoking tasks that we have tried out today for wider groups of pupils. We are thinking of running a competition comparing different artworks on eco friendly ideas. It has been good to do some academic learning that incorporates ecology.”

 

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