The future of treescapes belongs to children and young people. It is the children and young people of today who will be tasked, as adults, with much of the labour required to reverse this decline. However, children and young people’s voices are still rarely heard in policy and practice.
The long-term decline in biodiversity and environmental quality in the UK will have a disproportionate effect on future generations. Trees are really important in the future of the planet as they have the capacity to store carbon. In this project we work with ‘Treescapes’ that its, places where trees are growing, including urban areas as well as woodlands.
This project employs an innovative co-production approach, in order to learn from children and young people to engage them in designing, creating and caring for Treescapes. This learning will be underpinned by innovative methods applied to enable children and young people to evaluate the contribution of different treescapes to future climate mitigation.
We will particularly attend to the ideas and experiences of young people from marginalised backgrounds in particular in order to collectively explore the values and affordances of treescapes, We aim to create a ‘lexicon of experience’ that is both scientifically attuned and collaboratively created with children and young people. This will be cascaded out to teachers and curricula makers.
The futures of children and young people will be improved by their greater understanding and appreciation of and participation in shaping the future of their treescapes, and by their increased inclusion in policy, pedagogy and practice.
Partners
The Chartered College of Teaching is the professional body for teachers. We are working to celebrate, support and connect teachers to take pride in their profession and provide the best possible education for children and young people.
National
Early Childhood Outdoors (ECO) is a social enterprise seeking to increase the amount and quality of outdoor experience for young children across the UK, through collaborative and enabling work with a wide range of development, teaching,