Welcome to

MIDDLESBROUGH Environment City

Have you engaged in Climate Action with us?

We’d like to know about your experience and how it’s impacted your awareness or behaviour. Please take some time to complete our impact survey – your kind response will help us to demonstrate how our work is making a difference across Middlesbrough.

You can find the survey here.

We operated a gardening service for several years that ran seasonally from April to October, operated by a pair of highly skilled Garden Maintenance Operatives. The service involved cutting lawns at the front, rear and sides of properties, and were carried out every three weeks.

Boro Active Explorers was a project led by ourselves at Middlesbrough Environment City, and funded by the fantastic team at You’ve Got This, delivering Forest School and outdoor learning activities to schools and community groups across Middlesbrough (with a focus on the TS3 ward)

It was essentially a service available for schools to help teachers, pupils and parents get in touch with nature. These sessions always received positive feedback for the experience provided for everyone. Our hands on training and organised sessions helped children and teachers glean a number of skills, as well as experience a number of activities, in a friendly environment.

From fire-lighting to safely utilising tools, teachers, pupils and their parents alike benefitted from these practical sessions. It helped them to develop social skills, and provided a safe environment in which to meet new friends, united in common interest in the environment. All were encouraged to explore their environment and try new things, helping to boost their confidence. The experience outdoors will also provide an avenue to boost their physical and mental health by getting in touch with the natural wonders that surround them.

The programme included a learning framework to track progress, as well as explorer badges and certificates to celebrate accomplishments.

Led by The Wildlife Trusts and funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, Our Bright Future was a youth empowerment partnership that covered a number of projects including One Planet Pioneers that ourselves, Actes Employability, Tees Valley Wildlife Trust and Teesside University worked on that helped a number of young people earn useful life skills and experience in environmental sustainability.

Ahead of the closing of Our Bright Future, a video outlining the outcomes and the benefits that this wonderful initiative provided has been released, and can be viewed below.

The full report can be read at www.ourbrightfuture.co.uk/about/our-impact

Hearty Beats – The Project

Hearty-BEATS (Better Eating and Activity Through Schools) is a project which helps primary schools run activities promoting healthy hearts and lifestyles to pupils and their family members. This will be achieved through a variety of activities addressing healthy food within the school setting and at home, cooking skills, urban farming, physical activities, and the offer of health checks to family members.

Hearty Beats Forest School

The Hearty Beats Forest School is a service available for schools to help teachers, pupils and parents get in touch with nature. We have run these sessions in the past, and have always received positive feedback for the experience provided for everyone. Our hands on training and organised sessions will help children and teachers glean a number of skills, as well as experience a number of activities, in a friendly environment.

From fire-lighting to safely utilising tools, teachers, pupils and their parents alike can benefit from these practical sessions. It will help them to develop social skills, and will also provide a safe environment in which to meet new friends, united in common interest in the environment. All will be encouraged to explore their environment and try new things, helping to boost their confidence. The experience outdoors will also provide an avenue to boost their physical and mental health by getting in touch with the natural wonders that surround them.

Contact

If you’d like to know more about Forest Schools, please contact Nicky Morgan

By Phone

01642 579820

By E-mail

Nicky.Morgan@menvcity.org.uk

We would like to sincerely thank Ian Paine for this fantastic video covering our Forest Schools project. We would also like to thank the brilliant children and wonderful staff of Caldicotes Primary and Brambles Farm Primary Schools for agreeing to take part in this short film!

Climate Action Middlesbrough (CAM) is a programme which aims to facilitate reductions in Middlesbrough’s carbon footprint and encourage a change towards more sustainable lifestyles. In essence, we hope to increase community action across the areas of sustainable food, sustainable transportation, domestic energy, waste and the natural environment, as well as inspiring sustained changes in individual, community and organisational behaviours in relation to climate change.

Middlesbrough Environment City is working with a number of partners on the project including: ACTES, LINX Youth Project, Tees Valley Wildlife Trust, The Other Perspective, Thirteen Group and Middlesbrough Council. Over the course of the programme, CAM will engage the wider community through intergeneration activities. Young people are at the forefront of tackling climate change.

Climate Action Middlesbrough is funded by the National Lottery Community Fund through the Climate Action Fund.

Aims and Objectives

We have a number of aims and objectives in this project:

• To facilitate reductions in Middlesbrough’s carbon footprint.
• To create a well-informed social movement supportive of tackling the climate crisis, through the combination of education, awareness-raising, increased involvement and connectedness and delivery of practical projects.
• To create a community – led movement for social change towards a sustainable environment.
• To enable communities to have a voice on addressing the changing climate.

Middlesbrough’s Green Strategy

Middlesbrough Council is setting out an ambitious 10-year vision to develop a green agenda designed to rise to the challenge of climate change, as well as support and improve biodiversity in and around Middlesbrough. The green strategy will include measures such as the aforementioned biodiversity, as well as increasing recycling rates, addressing health inequalities, providing and sustaining more green transport options, food security and energy reduction, all based around the ten One Planet Living principles to ensure Middlesbrough embodies them.

In doing this, it sets a programme to meet Government targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and make the town more climate resilient to ensure we are prepared and can adapt to changes in the climate, as well as to minimise the environmental impact of Council services in the future.

Broadly, the Strategy has three key aims to meets its obligations:

1. To make Middlesbrough Council net carbon neutral by 2029
2. To ensure Middlesbrough as a town is net carbon neutral by 2039.
3. To make Middlesbrough a lead authority on Environmental issues