As promised, here’s the detail about our Mini COP that took place in November at the same time as the International COP 30 event in Brazil. This was an event for students from across the Moorlands aged 11 – 16 and held at Moorlands House (SMDC) in Leek. Teachers from eight schools were asked to bring students who were concerned about or involved in climate and nature issues. However, conscious that climate change can cause anxiety, particularly with young people, we planned the event to be positive, fun and solution-focused to give students hope for their future.
We invited 14 organisations and businesses from the Staffordshire Moorlands and beyond to provide information and activities on climate, biodiversity, and decarbonisation issues, as well as on green careers. At the start, students were set up in their own base, fortified with organic bananas and English apples, a Morsbag each full of goodies and things to read, plus a few climate-related games.
Chairman of the Council, Adam Parkes, opened the conference, then Emma Baines from Climate Ambassadors led the participants into the Churnet Room where the separate school groups circulated to visit each stall during the morning. Here they were able to explore solutions and learn how to mitigate against climate change/biodiversity loss, all while participating in fun, hands-on activities. They also discovered ways of contributing via activities at home, in school or in the community.
Over lunch, they had an opportunity to feed their thoughts back to a volunteer from Outside Arts. Afterwards we had a Q&A session in the Council Debating Chamber with a panel chaired by MCA member, Cllr Mark Johnson. On the panel were two Council Climate and Biodiversity officers, Bee Colligan and Katie Hampton, Newcastle Sustainability officer Tom Guilbert-Newell, Youth representative Harry Cotterill, National Education Park senior manager, Martin Harrison, and our own Mike Jones, Coordinator of MCA.
We aimed to give the students a voice with the Q&A, so in addition to questions from the floor, Mark threw his own back to the audience, eliciting some very interesting and informed responses. Although there wasn’t enough time for all the submitted questions to be answered in the session, our sterling Youth Action team made sure that all those on the panel responded after the event and their responses were sent to the relevant schools.
After the Conference we had very positive feedback from schools and participants. A huge thank you to them for taking part. And of course, to all our funders, supporters, the planning group and our 20 plus volunteers, who helped in so many different ways. We could not have done this without you all.