Biodiversity day
Three primary schools who attended the Biodiversity Workshops.
St Gregory’s Catholic Primary School
34 x Year 3 kids on 24th June
and 32 x Year 4 kids on 1st July
Thomas Jolyffe Primary School
49 x Year 6 kids on 8th July
Stratford-upon-Avon Primary School
35 x Year 5 kids on 2nd July
Throughout June and July a total of 150 children attended a Biodiversity Day workshop. Running across 3 venues the children carried out the following activities:
Bianca Hollis explained how compost is made and encouraged the children to make their own using the secret recipe.
During lessons by the river Avon with Kate, they learned about the importance of biodiversity...
And in another session, Hugh Frost an Agronomist from Planting Ideas and Kate from Graduate Planet explained the importance of soil and how it’s the foundation to food chains.
The children took a unique tour of Stratford Butterfly Farm, courtesy of the Education team, and learned about the importance of pollinators and ways to support them.
...and completed a fun food chain workshop to understand the need to protect and support urban pollinators and wildlife.
Bianca ran a habitats workshop where they built a bee hotel, ladybird lodge or hoverfly lagoon to take home with them.
After lunch they broke into groups and read clues to follow a nature treasure hunt along the river Avon, learning about the needs and behaviours of different wildlife in their natural habitats.
And finally they visited the new Action Station site where they applied what they’d learnt during the day to create a brilliant urban ecosystem to support local wildlife.
Action Station designs by school children
The children applied everything they learned from the day into wonderful design ideas that we will use as we develop the site and give credit to the children.
Our Impact
We featured in the newspaper!
An article published in the brought attention to the Action Station and one of the Biodiversity school trips.
We asked the children a question at the beginning of each activity and the same question again at the end to measure what impact we had made.
Q1) Hands up if you do / will do things to protect and support local wildlife?
Increase
438%
Q2) Hands up if you know how to create healthy soil?
Increase
313%
Q3) Hands up if you know what a pollinator does?
Increase
128%
Q4) Hands up if you know two ways to support pollinators?
Increase
145%
Q5) Hands up if you know why habitats are important?
Increase
312%
Here's a few letters we received from the children that took part in the Biodiversity day 2021
A special thank you to those who helped us do it!
Our Funders!
The (RSC) Royal Society of Chemistry aims to advance excellence, connecting chemical scientists and shaping the future of the chemical sciences for the benefit of humanity and they funded two biodiversity educational days for St Gregory’s Primary
BAM Construct UK is a leading construction, facilities management and property developer that is customer focused and a leader in sustainability who helped to fund Stratford Primary’s biodiversity educational day
Orbit Group is a group of housing associations providing affordable housing to around 40,000 households in England and they specifically funded the Thomas Jolyffe’s biodiversity educational day.
- Given their full support for the project, particularly Cllr Jason Fojtik. Also, Cllr Jenny Fradgley has offered advice and contacts to help out.
- Max Kendall-Wilson and others cleared the site completely (3 days work), supplied soil, will be supplying wooden tree stump seats, wood chippings, possibly tyres (and at a later stage may provide maintenance to the site - TBC).
- Cleared the embankment and laid the steps.
- Drew the landscaping plans to build a wall at our upcoming Biodiversity Action Station
- Hugh Frost, co-founder of the project, provided hours of expertise, energy, advice, contacts, resources and support.
- Carried out an ecological assessment and measured the biodiversity score of the site. Provided a report and planting plan.
- Transported the school children, teachers and helpers to and from different locations on the day.
- We received a friendly, efficient and cost effective service from TV Toilet Hire and we plan to use them in the future.
- Huge thanks to our local Prontaprint who printed all of our lesson materials and gave us an efficient and friendly service. We plan to use them again
Individual volunteers
- Thank you to Lucy Hartley for volunteering her expertise and passion to help us design a biodiversity space that we hope will educate and inspire the next generation when they visit our future Action Station community site.
- Cllr Jenny Fradgley is keen to be involved and can put us in touch with more volunteers.
And our AMAZING team of on-site volunteers
● Caroline Balfour-Kinnear
● Louisa Hare
● Michelle Hardy Rose
● Tricia Hall-Matthews
● Lucy Gilbert who volunteered her ecology expertise and provided advice about plants and habitats for the Action Station
● James Secombe
● And from Graduate Planet: Kate Evans and Bianca Hollis