STEAMLabs: biodiversity champions
- Borough: Hackney
- Organisation: STEAMLabs
- Topics: environment, children and young people
Who we are
STEAMLabs Hackney are a Community Interest Company (CIC) that delivers exciting, creative, and high-quality STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths) workshops and events in Hackney and surrounding areas.
Our mission is to help children and their communities have fun with science. We’re incredibly passionate about cross-curricular learning and champion this across our programmes. In doing so we hope to encourage children to develop a strong understanding of how different subjects intertwine and give them an understanding of their world outside of the classroom.
During these sessions primary school children from Hackney explored what biodiversity means and why it’s so important for a healthy planet. They discussed what could be done to improve biodiversity in our communities and how our waterways could be kept clean.
Creating a virtual aquarium
The children designed their own colourful sea creatures using templates. When complete, we scanned and uploaded the images to our virtual aquarium. The creatures were animated and could then be seen swimming through the underwater scene. The children were excited to see their own designs appear on the screen. “That’s my fish!”
Nature hunt
The children also coloured in woodland face masks and wore them on a nature hunt to explore biodiversity in the school’s meadow.
Children love nature and enjoy discovering new facts about creatures and their habitats. They were able to debate the importance of how animals and plants live alongside each other so that healthy ecosystems can be maintained.
The children made animal masks for their nature hunt. Copyright: STEAMLabs
Being outside in a more relaxed environment allows children to be freer in their communication. Their excitement is palpable, they come alive and even shyer children want to share everything they've discovered.
The changes we would like to see
Children are eager to creatively communicate their feelings about protecting their environment. We would like to see children’s education in environmental issues increased in engaging, creative ways that are relevant to and led by children. We would like children’s viewpoints taken into consideration and for them to be involved in large numbers with local and global environment issues, working alongside young, relevant, inspiring scientists.
We would like every child’s passion and imagination harnessed so they can be part of the solution to our global pollution problems. We want creative solutions within our area so that everyone can get on board with policies to protect our environment.
Find out more
Get in touch
If you have any questions you can get in touch with STEAMLabs at [email protected]
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