Biodiversity Day

Three Warwickshire primary schools attended our first biodiversity workshops.

Throughout June and July a total of 150 children attended the biodiversity days which ran across 3 venues to encourage children to appreciate the need for an increase in biodiversity corridors across towns and cities.

The day began with Bianca Hollis explaining how compost is made, encouraging the kids to make their own at home using a secret recipe.

Followed by Hugh Frost from Planting Ideas and Kate Evans from Graduate Planet explaining the importance of healthy soil and how it is the foundation of sustainable food chains.

The children took a tour of Stratford Butterfly Farm, courtesy of the Education team, where they learned about the importance of pollinators and ways they can support them.

During lessons by the river Avon with Kate, they learned how food chains worked by taking part in a live food chain, dressing up as plants, consumers and predators to help them understand the importance of protecting urban pollinators and wildlife.

Bianca ran a habitat workshops where the children 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 everything they’d learnt during the day to create a brilliant urban ecosystem to support local wildlife.

Action Station designs by some children.

The children then 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.

Publicity

An article published in the Stratford Herald on 1 July 2021 brought community attention to need for increased biodiversity in towns and cities and as well as biodiversity education within primary schools.

We asked the children a question at the beginning of each activity and the same question again at the end to measure the level of impact. The questions were:

Q1) Hands up if you do / will do things to protect and support local wildlife?

Q2) Hands up if you know how to create healthy soil?

Q3) Hands up if you know what a pollinator does?

Q4) Hands up if you know two ways to support pollinators?

Q5) Hands up if you know why habitats are important?

Here's a few letters we received from the children that took part in the Biodiversity day

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.

We would like to thank:

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

Local group keen to get involved in the Action Station when we start to build it.

They are likely to provide free sapling trees for the Action Station in winter 2021.

Provided essential guidance on butterflies, pollinators and wildlife in general.

Professor Dave Goulson shared his expertise with us to create some fabulous educational content for our Biodiversity Day and inform our Action Station approach.