First Hand

🥸Specifically *not* a photo of the demonstrator house. Because it’s someone’s home. This is a photo of half the visitors waiting to go inside the house and check out the bio based retrofit measures. 🍁Part of the learning yesterday was visiting the home of one of the neighbours who had consented to our eager eyes taking in the handiwork of the Neighbourhood Trade Crew. 🫟Is retrofit disruptive? Yes. Didn’t this family mind? Well, no actually. They were excited about the improvements that were happening to their home. The removal of the condensation risk that was causing mould, and does to thousands of homes across the neighbourhood. 🤩And they were excited by the process. They’d been involved right from the genesis of the idea of the neighbourhood approach to problem solving led by WeCanMake and happy to be part of a project that was actively skilling up local people. ✍️Sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with this and other projects like it National Retrofit Hub

The climate emergency is moving faster than our learning institutions can. Are you interested in alternative pathways for the learning and skills we need? Join our Open Learning Design Day for serious play with emerging ideas and likeminded people: - Connect across sectors and contexts around our collective learning and skills challenge - Hear about brilliant projects already working to widen access to the skills we need - in nonformal and informal contexts - Find other changemakers who are building capacity for sustainable futures - Steal practical ideas to bring back and test in your organisation, sector, discipline or community. The full speaker line-up will be released on 3rd November. Expect learning innovators and disruptors in #food, #sharingeconomy, #retrofit and #energy. 🗓️ Friday 28 November, 10:30am - 3:30pm 🌍 3Space International House, London SW9 7QE 💚 Free, with lunch and social to close the day 👉 Pre-register here https://lnkd.in/egE63eZs LEVERS #climate #sustainability #climateaction #openlearning If you missed it, our database of examples #OPENWORKS is our new field study of place-based and open learning projects that - like our own First Hand - turn real places into learning labs for climate action. Link in comments!

💡 Sick of talking about climate action on zoom? Want to learn-by-doing where you are? We’re (co)creating #OPENWORKS - a resource and (eventually) playbook for #open and #placebased learning for climate and community. We need you to get involved: - Get inspired by what other people are doing. Browse the database 👉 https://lnkd.in/eybt9_3C - Add your examples. The more we have the more we can learn - we’ll share insights and best practice 👉 https://lnkd.in/eJ8C_pyS - Do something. Build your own action learning project. Or call us! We’re open to collaborations, commissions and conversations. 👉 Message us via LinkedIn or email [email protected] We’ll be sharing more as we build #OPENWORKS in the coming days and weeks - showcasing the work, building the field and making the case. We’re also continuing to do it ourselves of course - our work with First Hand tests what it takes to learn, collaboratively, in action. Follow our page for more!

🔔 Workshop alert - this one is for teachers, educators and shakers in educational institutions and facilitated by our colleagues at UCL Climate Action Unit Kris De Meyer and Jonathan Mille. You’ll explore 3 insights from #neuroscience and #psychology that can help you to understand how to build #climate and #nature action in #schools. Learn about: - Navigating the growing polarisation of climate action - How do people change - or not - How to bring people along on the journey of whole-institution approaches to climate and nature action? 🗓️ Tuesday 18 November 🕛 19:00-20:30 GMT 👉 Sign up: https://lnkd.in/dVWXAkfT We also highly recommend reading The Seven Insights by UCL Climate Action Unit hosted on the LEVERS website https://lnkd.in/edK6NS6N #ScienceCommunication #LeversForClimate #ClimateAction #sustainability

🏁 Today we’re excited to unveil #OPENWORKS - a field study of how #open and #placebased learning is working for #climate and community. OPEN WORKS is an open database of real-world projects that - like First Hand - turn places into learning labs for climate action. We’ve been seeding these ideas and exemplars here already, sharing examples like Rural Radicals (Soil Association, Organic Research Centre), Bildung Climate School, Hubbub, North London Waste Authority (Edmonton Ecopark House) and Ashden - and there’s more to come. In an emerging field, good ideas can stay local or isolated - connecting them means we can find patterns and act faster with better chances of success. These examples have helped inspire and inform us as we built #FirstHand. From today, you, your colleagues and your communities can explore and contribute to the full database. Our next task is to make it useful - curating the resource as it grows and extracting a playbook to accelerate action. It’s a work in progress and we invite you to be part of it: 🔸 Learn from what’s already working on the ground. Browse the database and find out more about what ‘exemplar’ means here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eybt9_3C 🔸 Share existing projects so others can build on them. If you know projects which are building capacity to act on climate, we’ll include them 👉 https://lnkd.in/evfF4ngR 🔸 Planning something in this field? We’re open to collaborations, commissions and conversations! Get in touch 👉 via LinkedIn or email [email protected] We’ll be sharing more insights in the coming days and weeks. Follow our page for more. #GreenSkills #ClimateAction #OpenLearning #sustainability #LeversForClimate LEVERS

From the Tideway tunnel to a multi-borough recycling hub, this morning’s Thames tour turned London’s infrastructure into a living lab for climate learning. A dozen changemakers from local government and community organisations, working across clean energy, retrofit, finance, design and local climate action took up our invitation to look afresh at the city. Someone actually said “I’ll never see what’s around me the same again.” We’re not making that up! But that’s what happens when learning happens in place. Complexity stops being an abstract idea and becomes something you can feel - in the river as infrastructure for travel, waste flows or clean heat, the pipes under our feet, the hard decisions at work for the things we take for granted. Across the group we noticed three things: 1️⃣ Openness to seeing the world differently: to acknowledging the interconnectedness of everyday systems and finding ways to work with it rather than ignoring it. 2️⃣ A clear agreement that #collaboration is essential to make that work: some are already succeeding, some are blocked for various reasons, all have something to learn from each other. 3️⃣ A commitment to new ways of working - including growing curiosity about how #skills shape our ability to work in #complexity and to respond differently to new challenges - creatively and collectively. This was the last walk of this edition. We’re not done for the year yet though - watch out for an event in late November - we’re brewing something bigger, connected, creative, action-oriented and of course open to all. #sustainability #ClimateAction #GreenSkills LEVERS Western Riverside Waste Authority Debra Trayner

We urgently need new pathways to access climate knowledge and skills. And as we compile examples for our #OPENWORKS database, it’s good to see bigger institutions experimenting with alternative formats for learning. The Bildung Climate School in Rotterdam is a good example: an experimental collaboration between schools and universities, creating hands-on and direct experiences which combine research/knowledge and understanding with #creative and #collective action. Thanks Natasza Ciepał for sharing about your experience 💚 In their programme earlier this year, participants explored real-world sustainability issues through the lens of fashion (and much more - do check them out): 🔷 They combined research into the impacts of ultra-fast fashion with #hands-on making 🔷 Teams designed garments from reusable materials to get practical and direct insight revealing the hidden costs of the industry 🔷 They presented a fashion show to a local audience, in the process creating a learning opportunity for others. 👉 Why this matters: Open and place-based learning approaches like Bildung Climate School create spaces where learners confront real systems, build their knowledge and capacity to act through practice, and experiment with alternatives in a collaborative environment. We’re excited to include Bildung Climate School in #OPENWORKS, a growing field study of 70+ initiatives experimenting with new formats for climate learning. Which other climate learning experiences have you seen blend hands-on practice with systemic insight? #ClimateAction #GreenSkills #Sustainability LEVERS Erasmus University Rotterdam

Last chance to join our immersive workshop this Friday 10 October. 💚 Free to attend 📍 Itinerary: Blackfriars to Wandsworth via Thames Clipper (details below) 🔔 09:30-12:15 👉 Sign up https://lnkd.in/eMhcBKzz #ClimateAction #GreenSkills #sustainability #LeversForClimate LEVERS

How do networks unlock change (rather than chat)? We’ve been looking at some high achieving examples as we develop our #OPENWORKS database. Innovative Farmers ticks all our boxes - a network that’s creating momentum, measurable impact and pooled resources through learning together: 1️⃣ Community of Practice: In 2018, a group of organic farmers in north-east Scotland came together through a Rural Innovation Support Service group to share knowledge around one question: could oilseed rape be grown here as an alternative to imported #organic soya protein? 2️⃣ Study trip: A year later, the group travelled to Sweden to learn how large-scale organic oilseed rape was being cultivated in practice. The results: ✅ The confidence and the credibility to attract Scottish Government funding in 2020. ✅ The infrastructure for collective action in the form of farm trials, which by 2021 had produced a successful 35-tonne harvest. ✅ Today, the producer group has expanded to 20 members, quadrupled their acreage, and launched the UK’s first organic rapeseed oil. 👉 Why this matters: The harvest was the outcome, but the Community of Practice and Place-Based Learning came first, creating the conditions for funding and practical change. Which other examples have you seen where networks turned ideas into action? Read the case study: https://lnkd.in/ea4-Y9mq Innovative Farmers is part of the Duchy Future Farming Programme, and includes a programme of Field Labs. More info: https://lnkd.in/eGUKsPX7 #CommunityOfPractice #ClimateAction #GreenSkills #PlaceBasedLearning LEVERS Organic Research Centre Soil Association

Join us for an immersive workshop and Thames boat trip next Friday with a group of 15 changemakers to explore how systemic change happens. What are the roles and skills that drive it? What we’ll do to find out: 🧭 Learn from London’s infrastructures: from the Tideway London super sewer to the Western Riverside Waste Authority recycling hub, with the Thames as living infrastructure in between 💡 See complexity up close: exploring how scale, time and collaboration shape major projects 🌍 Build green competencies: especially navigating complexity as a skill that connects directly to your work 🔗 Exchange perspectives: connect across local policymakers, educators, community and business networks 📍 Meet at Blackfriars at 09:30 - Ends in Wandsworth at 12:15 Last places available. If you’re working on climate, skills or social value agendas sign up: https://lnkd.in/eMhcBKzz #ClimateAction #GreenSkills #PlaceBasedLearning #LearningByDoing #OpenLearning LEVERS