Primary school’s pledge to educate with climate justice exhibition

A Ribble Valley primary school is set to host a Climate Justice Art Exhibition on Thursday afternoon as part of the UK-wide Get Creative for Climate Justice initiative aimed at encouraging young people to explore climate action through art, literature and creative expression.

As part of the project, St Leonard's C of E Primary School’s Eco Club members introduced the children to the concept of climate justice, and afterwards, each class began exploring a different theme and created artwork inspired by their learning and discussions.

The Get Creative for Climate Justice initiative is supported by organisations including Christian Aid, CAFOD, Oxfam and the Royal Society of Literature. The project provides children with the opportunity to share their ideas, hopes and concerns about climate change with their communities and leaders.

The themes, which range from deforestation and the financial impact of climate change to the impact of rising temperatures in the sea, sea pollution and the impacts on food chain and endangered animals. But how have the children taken to the project, especially when considering the depth of the subjects?

“It's quite a difficult topic for them,” Debbie Cross, teacher at St Leonard's C of E Primary School, said. “So first of all, we talked about climate change and asked them what that was and then what justice means and talked about fairness.

“Afterwards, we showed them a piece of artwork that had been created in the past. It shows how it's kind of the people in the US, the UK and (other) developed countries that are creating more of the greenhouse gases that are affecting the countries around the equator, the hotter countries. That's what the piece of artwork from a previous year shows them. It was talking about making things fairer, since we are one of the countries that contribute more to the problem.

“There were three main parts to that work, and we said that one was to reduce emissions. So some classes have done pieces of artwork on reducing emissions. One was about climate finance, and that's the money that it costs to build things like defence walls for flooding. And two was the money that it costs to react to disasters, such as flooding, and that's called 'loss and damage'. And so some classes have focused more on the finance side of things,” Cross concluded.

The art exhibition, which takes place at St Leonard’s School Hall at 3:30pm tomorrow afternoon, has also provided the opportunity for the school to educate the younger generation on the problems they’re set to inherit as they get older.

“We've been talking about how they are going to be caretakers of the future and also about educating their parents. So one of the other things that (one of the classes) are doing is handing out some leaflets for families. They've said some suggestions for how families can look after God's beautiful world, and it's 10 suggestions of changes that they can make to make a difference,” Cross stated.