December 2023
As stated in a recent article on COP28’s website, the Youth Climate Champion has welcomed the Global Youth Statement which calls for increased opportunities for young people to learn about climate innovation through play.
The statement points out that play-based learning fosters creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, all of which are essential for addressing the challenges of climate change.
The Youth Climate Champion agrees that young people have a critical role to play in the fight against climate change and that providing them with opportunities to engage with climate issues in a fun and interactive way is key to inspiring their passion and empowering them to take action.
This is the essence of The Day and the LEGO Group’s Build the Change Wild Cities live lesson and competition, which challenged 7-14-year-olds across the UK to design and create their own city building of the future.
It’s not just the pupils who have benefited from our competition, we’re also delighted to report that their teachers have as well! By providing a platform to address topics such as sustainability, green energy, and the importance of biodiversity in urban areas, this has given teachers an invaluable opportunity to engage with their students in important meaningful discussions.
After careful consideration, we chose Thomas from Brighton College and Alexa from Glebe Farm School as our two winners!
Thomas’s winning entry envisioned a huge bubble over Hove, made from sustainable materials like wood and bamboo, with pavements that double as solar panels for both humans and animals to use. The buildings inside the bubble provide plenty of green spaces and parks, which help to remove carbon dioxide and provide shade for the walkways and roads higher up. It’s an incredible vision for a sustainable city and received fantastic feedback from our judges:
“You elevated the city, that’s amazing! That’s abstract and creative, I haven’t seen anything like that before!“
Our second entry from Alexa was a “Pocket City” that offered a brilliant solution to reduce the carbon footprint in Central, Hong Kong. She recognised the lack of greenery and open spaces, which contribute to the “urban heat island effect” and “air pollution” from cars. Her pocket city design incorporates small green areas throughout the city, creating more oxygen and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. We are impressed by the creativity and practicality of Alexa’s vision. Our judges noted that this design was:
“A really cool design full of rich depth and awesome ideas throughout! We really loved how you integrated nature into the buildings..“
Here’s the live lesson in case you missed it!
Teachers can also download our Build the Change Tuesday resource for free here every week to explore the latest news in sustainability and take part in our weekly Build the Change challenges.
Engage your students in sustainability discussions with Build the Change Tuesday!
The Day is a rich and engaging online educational resource that turns news into lessons across five differentiated reading levels. It provides schools with unlimited access to activities that bring big global issues into the classroom through daily news written in-house, polls, videos, images, graphics, posters, translations and links for external guided research.
Build the Change Tuesday is a sustainability resource brought to you in partnership with The LEGO Group and The Day which forms part of our News Detectives programme, a no-fuss daily dip into the news for ages 7 – 14.
In partnership with The LEGO Group and The Day, this free, high-quality, and no-prep resource helps busy teachers generate thoughtful discussions on sustainability among their 7-14-year-old students. Each week, we cover a new sustainability issue, encouraging your students to think critically, discuss, and debate. Then they are challenged to reimagine the future with LEGO bricks, recycled material, or simply pen and paper!