🔔 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
First Hand
Professional Training and Coaching
Open, place-based and community connected workplace learning
About us
First Hand turns real-world places into live learning labs, accelerating understanding, connection and the capability for sustainable change. Our community platform shares these ideas and practical tools to start the open learning revolution we need. 🌐 Our sustainable future relies on transforming the way we work. Alongside formal qualification and learning pathways we need new and inclusive ways to share ideas and practices. It’s time to shift gears, to share new ideas, reskill, upskill and connect. 💪 We're building capacity for change by going directly to the places and people on the front line of change – the factories, markets, farms, warehouses and more – using place-based learning approaches to share and exchange critical knowledge and skills. 🤝 And we're supporting changing practices, developing and sharing practical methods and tools, and convening and collaborating with those who recognise the need for transformation. ⚙️ Our green skills programmes and learning ecosystem have emerged from an in-depth, systemic design process, supported by Innovate UK Creative Catalyst and the EU Horizon LEVERS project. 👉 Follow us here to track our progress (or message us - we're open!).
- Website
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https://firsthand.tours/
External link for First Hand
- Industry
- Professional Training and Coaching
- Company size
- 2-10 employees
- Headquarters
- London
- Founded
- 2023
- Specialties
- Green Skills Development, Climate Action Skills, Sustainability Management, Systemic Design, Learning & Engagement, Sustainability Leadership, Climate Curriculum, Research & Innovation, Green Transformation, Manufacturing & Production, Collaborative Partnerships, Learning Ecosystems, Place-Based Learning, Real-World Learning, Open Learning, Food Systems, Change Management, and Climate Education
Updates
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🏁 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
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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
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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
Between April and July of this year I had the pleasure of participating in, and obtaining a certificate from, the Bildung Climate School 🎓. I was lucky that the second edition of the programme in Rotterdam focused on fashion, a topic that became the starting point of my broader interest in sustainability 🌍. It confirmed for me that sustainable fashion is the field where I see myself professionally, especially in connection with regulations and policy. Bildung was exactly what I was looking for, not just theory but hands-on work. My group tackled “ultra-fast fashion,” researching its impact and then designing a garment from scratch using reusable materials, with the goal of sending a message about the horrifying face of the industry that too often remains unseen. The photo below shows my friend Emily Reschke presenting our piece at the fashion show, which we had the pleasure of sharing with the students from Albeda Fashion College as they presented their own work. I am very thankful for the hands-on part, as it gave me the chance to gain experience working with materials, measurements, and design ✂️, skills I am still eager to develop further. My goal is to combine this practical side with the regulatory and political dimensions of fashion, showing through my own example, both in my future professional career and my personal everyday life, that we can bring back uniqueness to fashion and reduce its negative impact. Huge thanks especially to Ginie Servant-Miklos, the mastermind behind the whole programme, who pushed us to confront the reality of the industry while equipping us with creative and sometimes unconventional tools to stay resilient and take action in the face of today’s global challenges. Lastly, I am still tempted to share more about the concept of the Bildung School, as it is such a unique approach to learning 📚. But since this post would become far too long, for those interested you can already get a glimpse through the trailer of the upcoming documentary about our programme, which sheds more light on the concept, https://lnkd.in/dUdbiSEv 🎥, as well as a short article by the Erasmus University: https://lnkd.in/dStXMB2S
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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
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
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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
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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
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Join us for an immersive workshop and Thames boat trip in October. We’ll look at the roles people play in driving systemic change, and the skills that support them - evidenced by the complex urban systems all around us. More info and sign up 👇
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First Hand reposted this
Last Friday First Hand organised for 18 professionals from industry, retail and academia to visit New Covent Garden Market for a walking tour and discussion on how organisations navigate complex change. The group explored the Market’s existing and new units, its award-winning recycling facility, and then gathered at Mission Kitchen to share perspectives on cross-sector challenges and opportunities. First Hand’s site visits open up conversations that don’t sit in reports or classrooms, but in real-world practice. #CrossSectorLearning #ChangeInPractice #PlaceBasedInsights
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