Stewardship and beyond? Young people’s lived experience of conservation activities in school grounds

This article published online (16 August 2021) by Andy Ruck and Greg Mannion, provides ethnographic insight into the more-than-human relationships enacted through young people’s participation in school grounds conservation. It notes that students ‘need not travel to celebrated or protected landscapes to participate in conservation activities. Instead, school grounds and local environs can be readily transformed for the improvement of biodiversity.activities.’ It explores the separation of people from nature and questions about stewardship of nature. It links to a study of the Polli:Nation project – a conservation initiative focused on the creation of pollinator-friendly habitats in school grounds. Loose structure and periods of free play and exploration appear to allow for the development of empathy with the natural world. The authors support conservation activity programmes for young people to facilitate unplanned encounters and collective thinking with nature (the ‘more-than-human world’). However, they argue for not taking too prescriptive an approach, and taking an interdisciplinary approach with links made across the curriculum.