Illuminating Waste

OASES have delivered Illuminating Waste for three years running. School children across Consett and Chester-le-Street learned about litter, recycling and single use plastic, and used their knowledge to create sculptures out of clean waste, which were showcased in switch on events around Consett and Chester-le-Street town centres.

Year 1- Consett – Funded by Derwent Valley AAP

The work in schools began with a whole school assembly to inform and educate the pupils and staff about sustainable consumption and resource use and to explain the initiative and promote the event. This was then followed up with two practical workshops at each school. These workshops were used to reinforce the messages about the need to conserve resources and to  develop and produce window displays based on different environmental themes created from reused materials, decided upon by OASES. The following themes were decided upon:

The school sessions were well received in general, and the assemblies ensured that the sustainable resource use  message was spread as widely as possible within each school.

To engage with more people across the AAP a public launch event was organised where the different shop window displays would be switched on.

To make this a little more engaging two musical groups were brought in:

This definitely raised interest locally as traffic had to stopped (by the local police) at various points en route and the parade made a lot of noise. A number of passers by stopped and asked what the activity was. This was used as an opportunity to hand out further flyers.

As it was a cold and windy night, during the course of the event the numbers of people fluctuated. The number of attendees at the beginning of the event was approximately 105 with a peak of roughly 120.

After the launch event the displays were kept in the shop windows for a week (until 29th October) so that the general public could enjoy the windows and, hopefully, learn some important sustainability facts from the display boards.

Year 2- Consett – Funded by Derwent Valley AAP

On the 2nd December 2016 months of hard work were realised in the Derwent Valley AAP’s Christmas in Consett event.  The Illuminated Christmas Parade formed a large part of the event, with Jack Drum’s ‘Baghdaddies’ and a giant polar bear leading a large number of families around the various Illuminating Waste displays.

Prior to the event OASES staff went into the following schools to deliver the Illuminating Waste workshops:

• Consett Juniors
• St Pius Primary
• Consett Academy
• Collierley Primary
• St Mary’s (Blackhill) Primary
• St Patrick’s (Consett) Primary x 2
• St Patrick’s (Dipton)

All of the schools involved received a whole school assembly (about the project, the need to look after our local environment and the need to reduce, re-use and recycle rubbish) and 3 half day workshop session.

The first workshop focused upon educating the children about the issue of waste and natural resource depletion and investigated the children’s thoughts and feelings about their local natural environment. During this first workshop the children also started to think about possible themes and designs for their window displays, to answer the question ‘What Does Our Local Environment Mean to Us?’  The second and third workshops focused upon designing and building the window displays.  The children had lots of fun and worked very hard throughout.

OASES also worked with 4 youth groups:

• Benfieldside Brownies
• Benfieldside Guides
• Circle Crew for Change
• Hamstreley Youth Church Group

Each of these groups received an introductory session and then further support (as deemed appropriate by the group leader) to realise their ideas.  The Brownies and Guides needed very little additional support, OASES staff simply helped by bring along appropriate ‘waste’ materials.  Circle Crew of Change needed a lot of support, as the initial group dropped out at the last minute and the younger children rose to the challenge of the window construction instead.  Two

OASES leaders consequently delivered an additional session to help the young people design and construct their window.

OASES staff collected each display from the school/group and assembled it in the following shops:

Young People’s Groups

Year 3 – Chester-le-Street – Funded by Chester-Le-Street AAP

The work in school began with a whole school assembly to inform and educate the pupils and staff about sustainable consumption and resource use and to explain the initiative and promote the Christmas in Chester-le-Street’ event. The assembly was followed up with three practical workshops at each school. These workshops were used to reinforce the messages about the need to conserve resources, look after the local environment and to  develop and produce window displays based on different environmental/local themes.  To tie the themes together, the window displays were created from clean waste.  The individual window theme was decided upon by the groups themselves, as follows:

The school sessions were well received, and the assemblies ensured that the sustainable resource use and environmentyal care message was spread as widely as possible within each school. The group sessions were also well received.

The children’s displays were installed in their allocated shop windows in advance of the Christmas light switch on in Chester-le-Street.  The shops/businesses were then placed in charge of the lights – enabling them to have their displays lights on whenever was convenient for them. It was requested that the display lights be switched on for the Christmas in Chester-le-Street event, to compliment the overall event. The ‘Christmas in Chester-le-Street’ event itself incorporated craft activities for children and street entertainment.