Sustainable Strode

An excellent first two days with Strode college lecturers, Oxfam staff and volunteers and current and former Strode students - at the first Glastonbury festival in three years. This terrific new initiative has been planned by textiles lecturer Alice Bowen as part of the joint charities work to raise attention to the climate crisis. Working with Oxfam, Greenpeace and Water Aid the crew are running workshops with festival goers through the event. Everyone is invited to write climate demands on card placards and waste material strips - donated by Bristol Cameron Balloons - to contribute to a wonderful banner that will form a centrepiece for the climate procession from the Greenpeace field to the park stage on Sunday morning. Wonderful slogans, drawings and other contributions from the many children and adults. The banner will then travel to COP27 in Egypt the autumn.

The Strode sustainability garden is looking terrific at the moment. The plants have been loving the summer rain and sunshine. The biology students have been fishing out some of the plants in the pond so that the water isn’t all lost to the advancing plant swamp. The pond and the garden is full of flowers and life, our own little re-wilding corner of the college campus.

Recycled fabric bunting along the front of C-block preparing for open evening and pre-induction day.

College Campus and wildlife planting all looking terrific for the Pre-Induction days - 23rd and 24th June 2021 -  The art department, led by Alice and Ros, have been making some terrific recycled fabric bunting ( *waste from tents and kites) with the students to add to the festive atmosphere.

Great to see the biology students sampling the pond water and uncovering creatures, including smooth newt tadpoles, which is great news.

The Strode sustainability garden is looking wonderful at the moment.

Great creative recycling in the art department this week in the textiles and A-Level rooms - The students are working with recycled materials, fabrics and plastics - much from the wonderful ‘scrapstore’ - to make colourful bunting to adorn the college for pre-induction day in a few weeks.

The College Sustainability Garden is looking wonderful at the moment. The plants have been loving the spring rain and sunshine and there is so much growth and flowering for the bees and pollinators.

Recycling ongoing - Im still collecting lateral Flow tests for an artwork and lots of staff and students are putting (used and sterilised, negative) LF tests into my boxes around college. Also good to see that the crisp packets are still being collected for the Walkers collections.

The college is back to face-to-face teaching this week and last, as we work through the incredible Covid-19 testing process. 500+ Tests a day and the volunteer and staff team are doing brilliantly in the impressive sports hall testing facility. In a period of many sustainability challenges, so much waste PPE, it was really good to see clever use of drilled pieces of old electrical conduit being drilled and re-purposed as test-tube holding racks - as opposed to buying more plastic.

The first week back in college with the students after months of pandemic lockdown. Here are the first year Creative Practice Art students releasing tadpoles and frogspawn into the sustainability garden college pond on Tuesday. The pond is full of early spring life but there didn’t appear to be frogspawn this year as we move into spring, so we’re giving the garden biodiversity a helping hand.

Up-Cycling / Re-purposing recycled mop heads, retrieved from the skip.

Great artwork this week from Strode Extended Diploma student Kitty - A Croche octopus in a sea of croche corals and waves assembled from repurposed single use covid face masks. #art #artstudent #artwork #sustainability

Terrific ‘sustainable’ - plastic pollution - animation from FAD student Sonia.

Let’s not forget sustainability in the fog of Covid19.

Great RECYCLING Cardboard Action as we start term with the UAL Extended Diploma and Art Foundation Students. Not able to perform on our crowded Cardboard Catwalk as we would normally but we all made cardboard masks and head-dresses in keeping with the aesthetics of the ongoing pandemic. A really creative start to term for the cohort of 2020-21