How can school grounds make an impact on climate adaptation?

In Scotland, school grounds make up 14% of local authority-owned land. However, 84% of that area is either grassland or hard surfaces, offering little mitigation to the effects of climate change. Because of their scale, school grounds hold great potential to help our climate resilience.

In this blog Architecture and Design Scotland and Learning through Landscapesshare news about the process of developing a toolkit to support Climate Ready School Grounds, including the ways in which they tapped into children’s creativity and imagination with playful activities.

The Climate Ready Schools Grounds project is a pioneering initiative to empower schools to embrace nature-based solutions. The initiative explores using school grounds to address the impacts of climate change whilst creating outdoor environments that support learning and play.

About Climate Ready School Grounds

Throughout 2023 Learning through Landscapes, the leading UK charity dedicated to outdoor learning and play, and Architecture and Design Scotland – Scotland’s design agency – facilitated workshops with three schools across Scotland to help identify the impacts of climate change on the school grounds, along with practical ways to mitigate them. Through listening and involving pupils, we were also able to learn more about their knowledge and views on climate change.

The pupils explored the five different types of climate around the world, and then focused on the UK’s temperate climate. Each school took part in an initial workshop to audit their grounds. The School Grounds Climate Survey is designed to stimulate discussion and awareness around developing climate-ready school grounds and is based on six themes:

• Heat, cold and wind stress
• Biodiversity and ecosystems
• Water management
• Carbon management
• Air quality
• Learning, play and community

Subsequent workshops allowed the pupils to explore these themes further and get hands-on experience of adapting their own school grounds to mitigate climate change. Here are snapshots from the work across the three schools.

Adapting existing resources – St Mary’s Primary School, Dunblane

The children at St Mary’s in Dunblane planted an amazing willow archway in a seating area outside to help reduce the temperature on the tarmac, capture carbon, provide shade for pupils and support biodiversity.

Two existing, but unused, planters at the end of each bench were refreshed and planted to create this green space, making best use of the existing resources available.

St Mary’s already has an orchard with six fruit trees. However, the trees needed some maintenance, so the school contacted a local community group, Dunblane in Bloom, which helped to provide additional soil. The pupils weeded the containers and pruned the trees. This creative activity helped them make the link between the importance of existing adaptations in their grounds and climate change globally.

Building shelter – Newmilns Primary School, East Ayrshire

Newmilns Primary school in East Ayrshire has a huge green grass space and is surrounded by community woodland. It is a relatively green school space, but also close to a very busy main road.

The school is considering fundraising to create a shelter in the playground. As part of the workshops, the pupils created temporary shade structures using loose materials. This allowed them to test the idea of a shelter, for example, identifying the best location and size. They used sticks, pallets, tarpaulins and a range of other resources. This was a valuable way to support the children to think creatively about developing a new shelter as, through the audit, they had already identified where the hottest, coldest and windiest spaces were in their school grounds.

Building community – St Michael’s, Glasgow

The pupils at St Michael’s in Glasgow participated in a film that was created for the project. They showed their playground designs and shared their concerns, creating visual plans and a basic model.

Although St Michael’s already had large planters available, they were too high for the children to use and, as a result of the audit and workshops, have now been made more accessible. The pupils involved with the workshops are keen to promote the growth of fruit and vegetables, harvesting their crops and providing food to the local community food bank.

Practical, local focus

Stephen Moizer from Learning through Landscapes, who led the workshops said:

‘As part of the process we played a lot of related games, including a recycling game and a game focusing on the needs of pollinating insects. We’re focusing on climate change mitigation, but it’s less doom and gloom and more about proactivity and identifying what pupils can do to make positive changes in their local environment.

It is important to know about polar bears and penguins, but identifying the impact of climate change in their local area is vital in supporting children’s understanding and, therefore, the need to take action.’

Climate Ready School Grounds resources

During the year we collated related resources, connected with similar projects around the world and learned about the role that landscape can play in mitigating changing climate. This has helped inspire the learning resources that are now available to anyone involved in creating Climate Ready School Grounds.

How to use Climate Ready School Grounds for schools in your local authority area

Climate adaptation and mitigation require us all to work together, and our school grounds can be one of the many ways we adapt our places to meet the needs of tackling the climate emergency.

If you are a parent, pupil, teacher or designer there is a whole suite of resources – including case studies, practical resources and guides – available on both Architecture and Design Scotland’s and Learning through Landscapes website.

Use the Architecture and Design Scotland website to find appropriate resources to support you in creating and adapting school grounds to be more climate ready.

Use the Learning through Landscapes website to download resources to support you in planning and implementing changes to your school grounds.

The resource also includes a video by Yellow Balloon Film that sets out the opportunities for adapting our school grounds to tackle the climate emergency and create more inspiring learning spaces across the country. You can watch the short film here.

(Top image ID: A grid collage with three photos of children playing with willow, planting trees and sorting seeds. Images by Malcolm Cochrane Photography)

The post Guest blog: Transforming Scotland’s school grounds for climate adaptation appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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