‘Living Cities’ is a project to create opportunities to teach for wilder and more sustainable urban environments. By 2050, 70% the world's population will live in urban areas. Cities have been polluted and their nature degraded, with people and all life suffering. But many towns and cities have begun to restore nature, as we realise that making our urban environments wilder makes them more resilient to climate change, healthier and happier places to live. Understanding our relationship with nature in the ever-changing towns and cities in which we live, means learning through history and geography, and we can develop a sense of place through stories of our past, present and future, using English. A key part of teaching for sustainable futures is local, place-based education that brings climate change and sustainability closer to home – feeling more relevant and something young people can act upon. Children and young people need to connect with nature in their home town, borough or city, to understand it as a place with a story of the past, the present and of a future that they would like to see. The school curriculum can help, if teachers, as curriculum-makers, find ways to foreground nature in teaching about the towns and cities we live in. This conference and workshop will share some ways that teachers in the project have done this. It will also help teachers and educators, across subjects and phases (with a particular focus on geography, history and English) to work together in ‘curriculum making’ and developing short case studies of how the ideas living cities can be applied in school.

The one hour, free online CPD module ‘Living Cities’ is accessible here (under the professional development tab). Please visit this before the event.

Learn more and register here.