News & Stories

It was an absolute joy to spend the day with students and staff from this year’s Good Life Schools in Redcar and Cleveland at their regional celebration.

Good Life Schools is a National Lottery-funded student-led, project based learning opportunity for schools, which gives young people aged 11-18 the opportunity to explore the impact of our consumer-driven, digital society and take meaningful action for change.

Student representatives from KTS Academy Brotton, Outwood Academy Redcar, St Peter’s Catholic College South Bank and Huntcliff School came together to share their achievements as part of the Good Life Schools programme in the North East and to celebrate the inspiring projects they are working on.

From a uniform repair service to a peace garden, and from growing fruit and veg for use in the school and local community to hosting a more sustainable prom celebration, the students’ enthusiasm for and commitment to creating solutions that are good for people and planet was clear.

Students were invited to share their projects in a marketplace-style session, taking it in turns to host their school’s stand and explain to other attendees what their project involved and how it was going. With different schools at different stages in their journeys, this was a great opportunity for some peer-to-peer learning and some wonderful conversations were overheard. It was so inspiring to see the students display such confidence, enthusiasm and articulation!

A particular highlight for me came from seeing one student from Outwood Redcar, getting out her sewing kit and using the skills taught to her by Jennifer Creek of the Guisborough Eco Group to repair a rip in the blazer of a student from a different school. If this isn’t proof of the positive impact the Good Life Schools programme is having across the region then I don’t know what is!

In true Good Life Schools style, we made sure our refreshments were in line with the programme values and all attendees were treated to a delicious lunch provided by Connections Community Café. This social enterprise participates in the Fair Share food waste scheme, and they make most of their dishes using food that has been rescued from supermarkets and diverted from going to landfill.

In the afternoon, students from different schools worked collaboratively to create collages using old magazines, that represented what The Good Life meant to them. The irony of some of these magazines being consumer guides did not go unnoticed by some of the students! By providing a creative outlet for students to express their thoughts and feelings about the themes tackled in our Good Life Schools programme, we hoped to make the event as accessible to everyone as possible and it was heartwarming to see students of different ages and backgrounds working together for a common cause.

How would I sum up our Redcar & Cleveland Good Life Schools regional celebration event? Inspiring. Hopeful. Changemaking.

If you are a school or community organisation in Redcar and Cleveland interested in finding out more about Good Life Schools, contact Liz Knapper at [email protected]