Creative partnerships in the classroom: A case study of Climate Change All Change schools’ programme

LINDA LLOYD JONES, DEBORAH OUTHWAITE AND EMMA RAWLINGS SMITH, CLIMATE CHANGE ALL CHANGE, UK

Introduction

The climate crisis is a significant threat to children’s lives and futures. We live in a warming world, with rising sea levels, more extreme hydrological disasters and declining biodiversity. Recent school climate strikes illustrate that children and young people are not only aware of the climate crisis but want to do something about it (Taylor et al., 2019). Yet research recognises that children and young people are experiencing eco-anxiety (Pihkala, 2020) – fear, despair and anger about the ecological crisis – and are beginning to question how is it possible ‘to live in a world that evidently does not care about the future of children and young people’ (Hickman, 2024, p. 356). We argue that primary schools should be educating children with knowledge about climate change and teaching them creative and interdisciplinary skills to imagine and innovate solutions to it (Safford, 2020).

If we don’t learn about it, if we don’t know, we can’t help. We’re the future of this planet.

Primary student, aged 9, London

Currently, in England, the national curriculum in Key Stages 1 and 2 pays little attention to climate change, only requiring children to develop basic knowledge of climate zones, vegetation and the environment (DfEDepartment for Education - a ministerial department responsible for children’s services and education in England, 2014). More recently, the UK government has developed a strategy for sustainability and climate change with five steps in place ‘to make the education sector more sustainable and prepare all young people for a world impacted by climate change’ (DfE, 2023), but there is still more to do. Climate change education needs to be embedded in the national curriculum with connections across all subjects, not just science and geography (Greer et al., 2023).

Design and technology is a required curriculum subject in primary schools, but there is no accurate information on the take-up and nature of design and technology activities taking place. At secondary level, the take-up of GCSE design and technology has declined by 81.8 per cent between 2009 and 2024, with 80,580 candidates entered for GCSE in summer 2024 (Ofqual, 2024). Alongside this, the number of subject-specialist trainee teachers has declined by 40 per cent in the same timeframe (Ryan, 2024). Major businesses and the Design Council have voiced their concerns as the design sector contributes more than £100bn to the national economy and designers have vital knowledge and skills to think, problem solve and design solutions to help address the climate change and achieve net zero (Ryan, 2024).

Climate Change All Change: A cross-curricular schools’ programme

This case study explores a programme led by a small charity, Climate Change All Change (CCAC), in which designers from a variety of disciplines work with primary students to develop climate science literacy while using their imagination and creativity to generate sustainable designs that respond to climate change. This champions professional design practice in primary schools and supports students to develop the vocabulary to talk about climate change and sustainability.

In preparation for the programme, school leaders and teachers collaborate with local designers to understand how climate change is impacting their area and develop a design task that involves children generating a response to a changed world. This builds on the children’s prior learning and experiences and can link with other curriculum areas. In the school term leading up to the co-design collaboration, students are taught about climate science and principles of design, using teaching resources provided by CCAC. These two inter-dependent parts can be blended into various aspects of the curriculum across multiple subjects, including English, geography, science, art, and design and technology.

The charity then places a practising designer in school for up to three hours a week for six weeks. The designers are from various disciplines (including fashion, food, architecture, rural and urban design) and work with children and class teachers to imagine a climate-changed world in a range of extreme conditions and to develop creative designs that respond to future environmental conditions. For example, in Bristol, children working with landscape designers and architects learned about habitats and mapped their local environments, before designing homes fit for the future. In Nottingham, children worked with a fashion designer to learn about bio‐design and engage in making sustainable textiles before designing workwear suitable for future climates (Wood et al., 2024).

CCAC’s mission is to increase climate literacy and awareness of design as a valuable problem-solving skill. On the path to this, students experience working collaboratively in teams; they learn how to present their design concepts to an external panel; and for an extended period are introduced to a professional designer with experience of their discipline, seeding thoughts of a potential career. The project closes with the designer returning to school to reveal the students’ concepts digitally rendered – as if for presentation to a client.

An evaluation of CCAC’s creative partnerships

In 2020 CCAC conducted a pilot project (Safford, 2020) and in 2022 a demonstration programme followed in five schools across England (Glackin et al., 2022). At the end of the project, six participating designers and ten partnering teachers took part in semi-structured interviews to provide feedback on the project, their learning, and student outcomes. Three key themes from the research are each discussed in turn.

Confidence to teach about design and climate change

It is important to support teachers to gain new knowledge for teaching about climate change (Greer et al., 2023). The programme gave teachers much needed confidence to teach about design and climate change, as evidenced by a teacher from a school in Nottinghamshire who said, ‘I thought I had quite a decent bit of knowledge beforehand, but I’ve learned so much from all this work and I’d feel really excited and enthused to do it again next year’. More than this, it gave teachers a starting point when they had no prior knowledge about the design process:

I would say… the primary thing that I’ve learned is so much about the design process: what’s involved, materials that are used – why some of them are good, why some of them are bad. I had no clue at all, nothing… It’s not my area of expertise… What the [designer] told us and what they provided us with to teach the children, and what she taught the children. And I took from that as much as the children did.

Teacher interview, Nottinghamshire school

For other teachers, with some prior knowledge, it helped improve their climate change literacy:

From the climate change side and the sustainability side, I thought I knew a bit, but now I know a lot more. And it’s that vocabulary – it’s words like ‘emissions’ and ‘carbon neutral’ and ‘greenhouse effect’. It’s that subject knowledge [which] is something that now I would feel confident in teaching next year…

Teacher interview, Nottinghamshire school

Confidence to try different pedagogical approaches

Working with designers not only gave teachers new knowledge, but opportunities to experience different ways of working, with a teacher from a London school stating: ‘It’s given us the confidence to be a bit freer. Normally, we have to do so much box ticking, but this has been great in encouraging us all to try different ways of working, or mixing things up a bit’. The programme also put a spotlight on the skills needed to be a designer, as noted by a London-based teacher: ‘The project gave great insight into some of the skills needed for design, planning and architecture itself’. This meant that the project complemented the curriculum by providing a real-world context, as outlined by a teacher from a Manchester school: ‘With a real-world context, heavily linked to whole-school learning about being “passionate protectors of the environment”, the three climate scenarios sharpened the children’s focus, while maintaining creativity and autonomy over their designs.’

Inclusive project-based learning

There were many positive outcomes for the participating students – they learned about climate change and how to apply new ideas in creative and innovative ways, but they also improved their communication skills and were motivated to present to authentic audiences. One teacher concluded:

This project was great for inclusionAn approach where a school aims to ensure that all children are educated together, with support for those who require it to access the full curriculum and contribute to and participate in all aspects of school life. We often find that children working in mixed-ability groups raises the attainment and achievement of the whole group. It can help to support the development of new skills, develop students’ self-confidence and problem-solving skills, as well as helping children gain a greater understanding and acceptance of differences. The project’s hands-on approach meant that all children were able to participate. We also have a culture of speaking in the school, so children are used to engaging audiences when presenting.

Teacher interview, London school

Concluding thoughts

The research reports assisted CCAC to refine its creative partnership model, and in the 2023–24 academic year, a further eight schools participated in the programme. As the creative partnerships in the classroom programme matures, further teaching resources will be developed to support primary teachers with climate and design literacy. Vital learning from the research recognises the importance of developing strong partnerships between CCAC, classroom teachers and professional designers which value the contextual expertise of each partner, while enabling children to contribute to their communities’ response to climate change.

Resources for schools are freely available from the CCAC’s website: https://cc-ac.org/resources. The resources cover three key areas: climate science teaching, design teaching, and classroom training for designers. The two teaching resource ZIP files include notes for teachers.

Linda Lloyd Jones MBE is an Honorary Officer at Climate Change All Change, having spent most of her career at the V&A, London.

Deborah Outhwaite is a Special Education Advisor for Climate Change All Change and has a long-standing interest in school-based partnerships.

Emma Rawlings Smith is a Special Education Advisor for Climate Change All Change and works as a teacher educator and researcher at the University of Southampton.