Did Curiosity Kill The Cat?

The title intrigued me – Did curiosity kill the cat or is it a vital skill to have in our ever-changing world?  The first speaker, Dawn Austwick (Chief Executive, National Lottery Community Fund) delved into where the phrase came from, that plagued many of us as children when asking too many questions of parents and teachers.

Dawn suggested that rather than being a vice, curiosity is the very reason why we set up charities or social enterprises – by asking, ‘Why is that the way it is and how could we do things better?’.  Curiosity is the very lifeblood of innovative organisations.  Funders and educators are still to some extent trapped in systems and processes and often measuring to prove rather than improve.

However, things are changing, especially in funding regimes.  Funders are more and more looking to fund ‘place-based’: viewing applications through the lens of the local and being principle-based as opposed to rules-based.

This is good news indeed for those of us who have struggled to fit exciting, collaborative, innovative ideas born out of curiosity into the existing funding boxes with their boundaries and borders.

The rest of the day I spent in workshops ranging from how to use social media to pique your interest and curiosity to how to tell funders the unique story of your organisation.  All-in-all an interesting and informative day which finally put to bed the saying ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’

Making do, sustainability and living a simpler life

July 12th is National Simplicity Day – a day to put technology away and get back to basics; reflect on the simpler things in life.  Claire reflects on how we can be more positive about sustainability and more aware of the benefits of living a more frugal life:

I may be looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, but out of necessity, many of our grandparents lived a thrifty life, often making do with alternative ways to get a job done. From using natural and inexpensive cleaners and soaps to cooking from scratch and fixing the broken. Shoes and boots, bicycles and clothes, you name it – everything was repaired and made to last as long as possible.  It seems as though we have lost this in more recent years, but there are new kids on the block who are taking up the baton, like ‘Fast ‘n’ Fashion’ – a group of students from Heath Park School in Wolverhampton, who are running workshops to encourage their peers to ‘sew it – not throw it’.

Back then, most people grew their own vegetables in their backyards.  Buying local or growing food in your own garden was a staple of life for our grandparents and great-grandparents. Growing veggies and herbs is something we can easily do, no matter if you live in a rural or urban area, and it is friendly to the environment and your wallet.  This year we had a number of teams in the Big Ideas Competition that were looking at bringing the school garden concept back into secondary schools, such as ‘Grow Your Mind’ from Moseley Park School, Wolverhampton, and ‘Vegetables’ from Castle View Academy, Portsmouth – so perhaps all is not lost.

Shopping locally as our grandparents did also reduces the use of plastics as most local butchers and greengrocers or farm shops tend to stock loose produce. So, if we want to really learn about living more sustainably perhaps, we could ask the experts, our grandparents.  Rather than sustainability being seen as something for the green elite I, for one, would be happy to go back to my working-class roots and make do and mend.

At Solutions for the Planet we support the right to repair

Why?

·         One study showed that between 2004 and 2012, the proportion of major household appliances that died within five years rose from 3.5% to 8.3%.

·         An analysis of junked washing machines at a recycling centre showed that more than 10% were less than five years old.

·         Another study estimates that because of the CO2 emitted in the manufacturing process, a long-lasting washing machine will generate over two decades 1.1 tonnes less CO2 than a short-lived model.

·         Many lamps sold in Europe come with individual light bulbs that can’t be replaced. So, when one bulb packs in, the whole lamp has to be jettisoned.

However, a growing network of citizen repairers and campaigners are making themselves heard, calling on governments and manufacturers to ensure that products last – and that means making repair easy and affordable

The Manchester Declaration -https://manchesterdeclaration.org/ , which was published in 2018 by UK community repair organisations, calling on policymakers, product designers and manufacturers to ensure products are easy and affordable to repair. Repair Cafes and Restart Parties are great examples of communities getting together, supporting each other, sharing skills, creating environmental benefit. 

But repairing is nothing new and in many countries a necessity;

Kintsugi (金継ぎ, "golden joinery"), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair"), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

Travel to the developing world, and you'll see many examples of patched-up products providing long service, from makeshift plumbing to reworked clothing. Our grandparents and great-grandparents were quite adept at fixing things up as funds were often limited.

Let’s get back to repairing and save money, learn new skills and help to save the planet!

One in Five UK children have never seen the Sea

Yet the young people that we work with @Solutions_for_the_planet in the landlocked cities of Bradford, Inner City London and Birmingham have a strong bond and passion towards the worlds oceans and how they can help to clean them of pollution. As Tom Franklyn a primary school teacher in Inner City said: “We’re never going run to out of inner-city children, but we are going to run out of clean, pure ocean. If we put the two together, what a combination that would be, what a powerful force. We’re trying to come up with a truly humanitarian approach to ocean sustainability. Helping these kids fall in love with the sea is a vital first step in safeguarding our planet’s future.”

However, these young people also need to fall in love with their local rivers and green spaces. We need to ensure that inner city young people see the contentedness of their planet.  Discarded plastic, food wrappers and polystyrene cups are threatening wildlife in Britain's rivers.

The trouble is, litter dropped on land, often ends up in our rivers and drifts out to sea resulting in harm to land, river and marine life. There isn’t a part of our landscape that litter isn’t reaching. rivers are acting as the highway for our rubbish, transporting rubbish from streets to sea. Stopping plastic reach the sea in the first-place means working with communities where they live and showing how they can make a difference locally even to the Ocean that may be many miles away.

Constructive Hope and Human connections

Reflections after reading Sarah Milburn’s article on ‘Young People and Hope’ and Russell Brown’s article on LinkedIn – ‘Trust – building (and rebuilding)’.

Although many young people think climate change is an important societal issue, studies indicate that pessimism, anxiety and fear is common. How do we communicate with young people around these issues? How do we find ways to instil hope? Will doom-and-gloom messages scare people into action, or cause them to give up? Will emphasizing hope put people in a can-do frame of mind, or reduce their sense of urgency?

How we communicate with young people on these important issues is as important as what we communicate. Many young people are very aware (in some instances more aware than adults) of the current environmental crisis. However, in order to help students, feel hope for the future we must build trust, which is why @solutions_for_the_planet works over a period of time with pupils and schools. As Russell points out, ‘Establishing a human connection is an essential element in building Trust. People build bonds with people they feel they are connected; friendships are built on connections. We need to find a common ground with which to form a connection. To do this we need to ask questions and really listen. Show curiosity, respect and honesty and a willingness to share. Really listen. Embrace diversity and all the benefits that this can bring and seek to find the similarities and opportunities to build the trust.’


Studies have been undertaken considering how to communicate with young people around worrying societal issues, in particular climate change (Source: Marlon J.R. et al. “How Hope and Doubt Affect Climate Change Mobilization.” Frontiers in Communication 2019). These studies identified two different kinds of climate hope: constructive hope, meaning the belief that people will take actions to avert climate disaster; and false hope or wishful thinking, a belief that some outside force such as God, nature, or technology will solve the problem.

Similarly, the studies reflected two different kinds of doubt: constructive doubt, or the worry that people might not take sufficient action in time to solve climate change; and fatalistic doubt, the conviction that nothing humans can do will make a difference or that it’s too late to do anything.

People who have constructive hope tend to believe individual action against climate change can be effective, they support climate policies, and say they will engage politically. The study suggests how climate change communicators could precisely tailor their messages for best results. ‘They can focus on building constructive hope, by emphasizing climate solutions that exist and describing how people are fighting climate change. Meanwhile, they can also make space for constructive doubt by emphasizing the magnitude of the threat and the need to step up our efforts’.

Our focus on Constructive Hope, Human Connections, Future-Orientated Positive Solutions, Education for Positive Action and the use of the Language of Possibilities makes Solutions for the Planet’s educational programmes critical to ensuring positive, hopeful and action-orientated young people now and in the future.