Green Capital Student Capital: Working across institutions to deliver value to the city

Wilmore, C; Longhurst, James

Abstract

Bristol is the European Green Capital for 2015. To support this, the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol are working in partnership on a joint project – Green Capital: Student Capital funded by Hefce. This project seeks to place students at the heart of Bristol’s year as European Green Capital. It aims to achieve 100,000 hours of student engagement in sustainability activities across the city region. The award of European Green Capital 2015 to Bristol represents a unique catalytic opportunity to harness the power of students from all disciplines and all backgrounds to support the transition to a more sustainable city. For the two Universities there is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to develop, test and embed the processes, relationships and culture that will enable this and future cohorts of students to become the urgently-needed, sustainability-enabled leaders, entrepreneurs and citizens of the future. For the universities it is an opportunity to further embed inter and intra institutional partnership working for the benefit of the city-region. Working collaboratively the universities will synergise, build on and enhance existing curricular enrichment activity and develop and deliver new and highly effective models of volunteering and other practice-based learning.
The project enables a large cross-section of the HE student population to engage in sustainability action in the business, public and voluntary sectors. It seeks to demonstrate the capacity for HE students to play a transformative role in business and community organisations and in the relationships between the communities/businesses and Higher Education institutions. It seeks to capture the imagination of city-leaders, businesses, communities, policy-makers and Higher Education institutions around the globe. The universities wish to share our learning and to inspire open debate about the most effective models of practice-based learning. The project is and will continue to transform sustainability literacy within H.E. whilst scaling up the degree to which cities benefit from the sustainability creativity of their students. A key part of the project is devoted to measuring and evaluating the impact of the changed relationship upon the sustainability of the city and the engagement of students with sustainability. A critical outcome is the embedding of the successful outcomes in the long term approaches of the partners to ensure this is a culture change not a one off event.

• Presentation Conference Type: Presentation / Talk
• Conference Name: Learning from the Sharp End. Implications for Sustainability in HE
• Start Date: Sep 6, 2015
• End Date: Sep 8, 2015
• Acceptance Date: Sep 1, 2015
• Publication Date: Sep 7, 2015
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Green Capital Student Capital, Bristol 2015
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/828511
• Publisher URL: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiZXlvbmRlc2R8Z3g6NTU0NTE2ZmUwOGRmMDFhMA
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : Learning from the Sharp End. Implications for Sustainability in HE