From StrathCEKO to StrathCAN : building a community of climate education ambassadors from the bottom up in a higher education institution

Strachan, Scott and Quirke, William and Sprick, Reiner Sebastian and Gallou, Eirini and Collins, Robert and Faulkner, Suzanne (2023) From StrathCEKO to StrathCAN : building a community of climate education ambassadors from the bottom up in a higher education institution. In: 11th Annual International Conference on Sustainable Development, 2023-09-18 - 2023-09-20.

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Abstract

The paper offers a reflective account of the University of Strathclyde’s activity and experience of implementing its first Strathclyde Climate Education Kick-Off (or StrathCEKO) as the catalyst for the emergence of a bottom-up movement involving staff and students focused on scaling up curricular and extra-curricular Climate Education activities across the institution – and beyond. StrathCEKO initially focused on two separate, but highly complementary, ‘off-the-shelf’ workshop offerings, which together encouraged participants to take a collaborative, peer-to-peer, systems thinking approach to understanding the cause and effects of climate change (i.e. the problem) and discussing/evaluating the range of mitigations and implementation challenges (i.e. the solutions) required to “keep 1.5 alive” and secure a sustainable future for all. One of these workshop offerings, Climate Fresk, is a highly engaging, gamified workshop, where participants - working with a trained facilitator in groups of 8 congregating around a table – are issued with a steady stream of cards throughout the workshop, lasting 3.5 hours in total. Each card represents a key part of the earth’s climate system, including influences on it and the impacts of it. Here, participants are challenged to use these cards to create a ‘fresk’ or collage or, from a systems thinking perspective, form a causal-loop diagram. This culminates in providing participants with a system-level view of the earth climate system, its causes, effects and impacts; and in doing so, encourages a ‘systems thinking’ approach to enhance participants’ understanding of climate change and in particular highlights less mainstream knowledge and understanding around climate tipping points. Following the original StrathCEKO, there was a realisation that despite the scalable peer-to-peer, train-the-trainer (or facilitator) model that made this Climate Education ‘tool’ so attractive to resource limited institutions, it still required a core community, with a clear identity and purpose, to take institutional ownership of these workshops to effectively roll them out. Furthermore, it was understood that ‘membership’ of this community should be open to all staff and students. The main responsibility of ‘the community’ with regards to these workshops should be for members to take individual responsibility to identify opportunities within their classes, departments, networks, even local communities, where these workshops could be organised and run – as well as collective responsibility to support these workshops as and when required. In addition to this practical, logistical, delivery role it became apparent that there was a need, and also an opportunity, for this fledgling Climate Education community to fulfil a more co-creative role. This would see staff and students come together to use other off-the-shelf Climate Education offerings developed by third parties (e.g. NGOs, think tanks), and develop more Climate (and Sustainability) Educational workshops and activities that could be used – expeditiously - by staff and students to scale-up climate education inside and outside Strathclyde. This community now has an identify, as well as a clear remit – the Strathclyde Climate Ambassadors Network (SCAN). This paper will present the journey so far, including the challenges, curriculum successes, activities under construction, as well as its strategic vision for the future.

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