All Edinburgh residents aged 8+ can vote for the projects that they want to see happen as part of Edinburgh's Community Climate Fund.
Positive Imaginings is Rowanbank's Creative Climate Education Programme, which artistically presents children's imaginings of a positive future in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Given the opportunity to explore the twin themes of climate and biodiversity, set in their own neighbourhood, what are your children’s ideas for where they live? What future would they choose? What are their positive imaginings?
This funding would enable us to continue to bring our 'Cycling Climate Circus' to Edinburgh Primary Schools and local parks and woodlands, collecting children and young people's positive imaginings, and inspiring change and promoting climate justice. Schools and community groups can apply to take part, and we will prioritise working in low income areas, and with communities that have limited access to the arts and green space.
Please tell all your friends to vote for us too, and share our posts on social media! Thank you, we so appreciate your continued support.
A Winter Hello - Rowanbank Newsletter
Below is Our annual newsletter which has just gone out, with a recap of 2022 and our plans for 2023. Sign up to our mailing list to be the first to hear our upcoming plans
A Winter Hello
At this dark and cold time of the year we thought we'd share some Wintery magic with you; and a selection our favourite things from 2022, and our plans for 2023.
The Children's Fire is one of the guiding principles of our Positive Imaginings Creative Climate Education Project:
"No law, no decision, nothing of any kind will be agreed that will harm the children of this generation, and seven generations to come."
The Children's Fire is a mindset, culture, philosophy and design principle shared with us at Shambala Festival, informed by the teachings of Elders from indigenous communities from America, and shared by Tim 'Mac' Macartney.
- The Positive Imaginings Creative Climate Education Programme has been touring Edinburgh Primary Schools by bicycle! Our aim is to address climate anxiety and create opportunities for young people who encounter barriers to participating in climate action, to get involved, and feel inspired and empowered. The programme includes: woodland workshops; teacher training; and a promenade performance through local woodlands. Our vision is to share the programme with schools throughout Scotland and beyond, empowering teachers and other educators to take Positive Imaginings as inspiration and develop it to work within their culture and community. The children’s positive imaginings from our 2022 school programme can be listened to here: https://www.rowanbank.org.uk/news We're looking for sponsors, so please get in touch if you would like to support Positive Imaginings. For more information visit our website, where you can watch our short documentary and listen to our soundscape.
Positive Imaginings showreel
- Girls Forest Circus, Edinburgh - we’ve teamed up with our friends at Think Circus to deliver weekly outdoor sessions with P6 and P7 girls in Craigmillar. The sessions are designed to be fun, help improve self esteem, build resilience and learn new outdoor and circus skills. We are very grateful to Young Start, our funders, for believing in our project and enabling us to develop it over the next 3 years; and to the National Lottery’s Community Fund for funding our successful pilot project.
- Natural Power and Fred Olson wind farm community open days - we love designing and performing windy activities. Renewable energy is our thing, so please get in touch if you have any renewables events that you would like us to add sparkle to!
- The Burrell Collection re-opening, Glasgow - we were delighted to provide a team of 12 of our best performers for this spectacular event - aerialists, musicians, stilt walkers, fortune tellers, hula hoopers, natures sprites and more!
- We were back delivering Seasonal Celebrations with our friends at The Woodland Trust.
- Malls Mire, Tory Glen, Glasgow - we were honoured to be part of the celebrations to open this incredible community greenspace. The area has been transformed from derelict and vacant land into a woodland designed for and with the local community to support outdoor health, wellbeing and natural play activities.
- We performed and facilitated workshops as part of WILDHOOD children’s festival, Fringe by the Sea, Shambala, Kelburn Festival, Edinburgh Climate Festival and Findhorn Bay Arts Festival.
- Our Climate Circus stilt walkers joined forces with Global Justice Now to march and protest on the streets of Edinburgh. Collaboration is key to effective climate action!
- Creative outdoor learning teacher training - we continue to develop and deliver our popular teacher training programmes.
- Creative Carbon Scotland - Creatives in an era of Climate Emergency. Lucy was one of four leading experts brought together to discuss what role the creative industries play in the Climate Emergency, how to inform our practices and what should we be aiming for as a community.
- We’ve been very fortunate to be part of Outrage + Optimism’s Civic Imagination Lab, facilitated by Crossing Borders Education, the first stage of a three-year programme which is being developed in partnership with the Cisco Green Team, Outrage & Optimism, Purdue University and UNESCO-Education for Sustainable Development.
- We took part in We Make Tomorrow, led by environmental arts charity, Julie’s Bicycle, designed to mobilise and connect a creative climate movement, empowering artists and cultural professionals to take action on the climate and ecological crisis, with impact, creativity, and resilience.
- In March we’re running off to join No Fit State Circus for a week of professional development, specifically looking at performance protest in relation to climate change.
Don't forget to follow us on social media to hear more about our exciting work.
Last but not least we would like to say a huge thank you to: our very kind funders and supporters (Vegware, Creative Scotland, Sustrans, William Syson Foundation, Scottish Forestry, The Woodland Trust, NatureScot, The City of Edinburgh Council, The University of Edinburgh, Young Start, Nairns and John Lewis); our clients, board members and amazing team of artists, environmental consultants, workshop facilitators, project managers, creative communicators, photographers, filmmakers, fundraisers, administrators and volunteers.
Enjoy the snowdrops!
Best wishes,
Lucy, Arran and the Rowanbank team
Rowanbank Environmental Arts & Education is a not-for-profit Social Enterprise incorporated as a Community Interest Company. Rowanbank specialises in site-specific performances, ranging from community events in urban woodlands to shows at international festivals. We facilitate innovative workshops, run forest schools and teacher training programmes. Our aim is to make outdoor learning and creativity, with their many benefits, accessible to all, and to use the arts as a catalyst for change and climate justice.
www.rowanbank.org.uk
Positive Imaginings Soundscape 2022
We are delighted to share our new children’s voices soundscape from this term’s Positive Imaginings Creative Climate Education Programme. It’s a heart warming listen on a cold mid-Winter day. Our Sound Designer, Nik Paget-Tomlinson (www.nikpt.com), has weaved together a selection of the P5 - P7 children’s positive imaginings from Balgreen, Bruntsfield, Bonaly, Sciennes, St Peter’s and Castleview Primary Schools, Edinburgh. We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we do!
Positive Imaginings - Autumn term bookings now open!
We are delighted to announce that we have secured further funding from Creative Scotland for our Positive Imaginings community outreach programme. We are inviting all Edinburgh primary schools to apply to take part in the Positive Imaginings Project. We have a small number of subsidised spaces available. Email us with an expression of interest here.
The Positive Imaginings Creative Climate Education Programme for CfE Level 2 includes: an outdoor show, woodland workshops and teacher training.
Positive Imaginings film launch!
✨We are very excited to announce the launch of our Positive Imaginings films!! ✨
Positive Imaginings is Rowanbank’s Creative Climate Education Project, which artistically presents children's imaginings of a positive future in the face of climate change, and includes: A Cycling Climate Circus; Woodland Workshops for primary school children; Teacher Training; Children's Voices Soundscape; and associated films.
The aim of this project is to create opportunities for young people who encounter barriers to participating in climate action, to get involved, and feel inspired and empowered.
Our 2 minute film takes you on a wee tour of our Cycling Climate Circus!
If you would like an insight into the whole project, including the workshops and show development process, our short documentary (9 minutes) is a brilliant watch!
If you are on social media we have a favour to ask - please like, comment & share our film.
Happy New Year!
Lucy and the children of Craigmillar were on BBC Radio Scotland with Cathy MacDonald on January 2nd discussing climate change, the work we’ve been doing to ease and prevent climate anxiety and the steps needed for climate action.
If you missed it you can listen back on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001319l
(Lucy is on 45 minutes into the programme)
Positive Imaginings - Climate Circus
Our first work in progress showings of Positive Imaginings Climate Circus were a great success! While world leaders and decision makers gathered in Glasgow for COP26, the children of Craigmillar and beyond gathered in the forest to learn about the climate crisis and voice their ideas, dreams & positive imaginings for a future they would choose. We wove stories of The Dreamer & The Dream Weaver, sang songs, twirled from the trees and held a children's climate assembly. As the audience were led out of the forest they listened to Castleview Primary School children's Positive Imaginings soundscape. This soundscape has now been listened to by over 100,000 people from all over the world, and played at COP26 as part of RSPB's Glasgow to Globe festival, on the radio, and on the world's most listened to climate podcast: Outrage + Optimism (hosted by Christiana Figueres!!!)
We are taking a wee break and will be back in December to develop our creative climate education teacher training programme and and organise our 2022 Positive Imaginings workshop & show tour!
Our plan is to secure further funding and support to take the show back into development in early 2022, so we can incorporate all the feedback we have gathered from our first audiences. We are hoping to re-develop the show to take account of what happened at COP26, and to incorporate new research on climate science and psychology, with a special focus on young people’s rising climate anxiety and the lack of adequate climate education in schools.
Here's some feedback from one of the primary school teachers that we've been working with on the Positive Imaginings Project:
"Completely Awestruck! It is hard to put into words the magic that you created today in our wonderful Craigmillar Castle Woodland. Dealing with matters as big a climate change and empowering our children to speak out was so powerful. Every element of this production was so skilfully executed which created this unique outdoor experience. Connecting the audience with nature and the core themes ensured not only our heads but our hearts were engaged. Thank you for bringing this incredible work to Craigmillar! My Positive Imagining is that all children in Scotland get the opportunity to engage with this incredible work of art. Truly empowering."
Thanks again for supporting Rowanbank's work, we couldn't do it without you!
Photo credit: Polifilm
Positive Imaginings work in progress showing
If you would like to book free tickets to the work in progress showings of Positive Imaginings in Craigmillar Castle Park, Edinburgh, please email info@rowanbank.org.uk.
Show times:
Friday 12th November 2pm
Saturday 13th November 11am
Saturday 13th November 2pm
Soundscape - Children's Voices
With only 1 week to go until COP26 we thought it was time to update you on our Positive Imaginings climate project. The show is in rehearsal and will be performed to the children of Craigmillar in early November. AND our children's voices soundscape is ready!
Can you spare 1 minute to listen & share?
https://soundcloud.com/user-225507108/positive-imaginings?si=1bb42efb5ab940e28b15bb9e230a3a53
This soundscape is a collection of children’s positive imaginings in the face of climate change from one of the most disadvantaged areas in Scotland.
It’s intelligent, intuitive, imaginative and inspiring!
Through a series of play-based woodland workshops we gave children the space, time and support to imagine a positive future. This soundscape was recorded during these workshops.
We want to tell these children that their voices are being heard all over the world!
Can you help give these children’s voices a platform? If you're on social media, please like and share our soundscape posts. If you have radio/podcast contacts, can you ask for it to be played? If you have a space at COP26 - let us know!
Thank you, from The Positive Imaginings Team
Positive Imaginings
As most of you know, Rowanbank Environmental Arts & Education has been working on a big project this year called Positive Imaginings. It is all about inspiring positive climate action, through empowering children from disadvantaged areas with climate knowledge, and helping them to believe that their voices and imagined futures can (and should!) be heard and listened to! Positive Imaginings has been creating hope and optimism in our younger generations about what the world could look like in the future - and how they can help and join in on the action for a healthy and protected planet to live on!
At the core of our Positive Imaginings Project is a drive for climate justice and widespread accessibility to high quality and creative climate education. We designed the project to be built collaboratively in the runup to COP26, starting with children’s woodland workshops in Craigmillar in Edinburgh, collecting children’s positive imaginings about their futures in the face of climate change, and using their voices to inform the creation of a Climate Circus show, which will be performed around central Scotland during the weeks of COP26.
The show is a combination of circus, theatre, music and climate science and psychology, and aims to empower and inspire confidence to tackle the anxiety and insecurities that many of us hold about our future and turn them into optimistic, solution-based actions.
We have an idea we need your help with!
We have been thinking creatively about how to best enable the children’s voices from our Positive Imaginings Project to be heard at COP26. We are in the process of building a beautiful soundscape with recordings of their voices talking about their positive imaginings for our planet. The soundscape will be 1 minute long, and our amazing sound designer is working on it as we speak!
The challenge is how to get it played at COP26!?
Any ideas you may have to help us with this challenge are welcome! Are you a creative action genius? Do you participate in climate actions? Are you somebody who has access to influential people at COP26? Are you attending COP26? Are you an environmental influencer?
ALL IDEAS WELCOME - no idea is too wild for our Cycling Climate Circus!