Event date: 08 October, 2019

BREATHE Conference 2019

Community, Events, General, Junior School, News, Pastoral, PIE, Senior School, Sixth Form

Building on the success of our first ‘Breathe Week’, our second PIE2 Conference took place on Tuesday 8 October 2019, on an environmental theme.

Our Breathe Conference involved a whole day off timetable for the entire Senior School, and local partner schools from the Borough, to build awareness, understanding and appreciation of our environment both at school, locally and on a wider level. Sponsors of the event, HSBC were kind enough to donate a tree to every school involved on the day.

Our aim was to develop greater awareness of the issues facing our environment and identifying pro-active solutions and campaigns to tackle those issues.

Our first Keynote speaker was Professor Sir David King, Senior Strategy Adviser to the President of Rwanda, the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2000-2007 and the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative on Climate Change, 2013-2017.

Professor King spoke about the climate emergency facing the planet and the steps that need to be made to avert a catastrophic rise in temperature.

He gave inspiring insights into major technological advances that are already underway e.g. the VariaLift Airship – the future of air travel.

 

In the afternoon, our second Keynote speaker was environmental writer and broadcaster Lucy Siegle. She explained how every thing we use and every decision we make is dependent on a healthy planet and yet our addictive consumerism is overwhelming our existing systems.

Using her specialist knowledge of the fashion and plastics industry she explained how innovation and design is helping to shift our lives and lifestyles in a different direction; in favour of the planet, from spider silk grown in a lab, to mushroom leathers that have never seen a cow.

 

There were talks, workshops and brainstorming sessions throughout the day covering everything from planet friendly dietary alternatives to meat (gourmet bug tasting!) to an Eco-Innovator competition to design an on-street electric vehicle charge point, an eco-bricking workshop and plastic hackathon.

Thank you to the many delegates who joined us for a fascinating and inspiring day.

Have a look at the full programme and photos of the day.

Junior girls got involved in bulb planting in the Senior School

Junior girls got involved in bulb planting in the Senior School

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