We have had such positive feedback from this year's webinar series, that we thought the best way to finish off the year with our November webinar would be to gather an ‘All-Star’ discussion panel, of speakers from this year’s webinars to discuss the common themes that thread through the series and ‘Actions from the 2023 webinar series’.
Our expert panelists are:
- Mary Colwell, writer, producer and conservationist spearheading the campaign for the new Natural History GCSE and Founder and Director of Curlew Action.
- Dr Ross Buckingham, Head of English at Shrewsbury House School and PhD in Education, concerning ecocriticism and environmental education, from the University of Cambridge.
- Lyndon Howson, Chester Zoo Youth Board representative and third year of study in BSc (Hons) Zoology at the University of Chester.
- Simon Garrett, Environment Engagement Lead at Nature Positive, focused on the fields of wildlife conservation, learning, public engagement and wider communication.
- Brittany Sawrey-Coulson, Licensed Associate Counselor at the Mederi Group, specialising in Vicarious Trauma in Conservation.
- Jessie Panazzolo, Founder of Lonely Conservationists and Sustainability Education Officer at Maribyrnong City Council in Australia.
We will be discussing the following questions:
- How do we move away from simply teaching people about nature to facilitating a deeper, emotional connection?
- Where should we focus our efforts on engaging with young people?
- How do we support different organisations to work together and use their different strengths rather than overlapping or competing with each other?
- How do we reach beyond audiences that already engage with our message and support our cause?
- What are the main barriers to you achieving your aims and what can this and other groups do to help overcome these?
We would love to identify through this discussion some actions to work on as a sector to make a real difference and post-webinar we will write this up into a position statement for the CEC NCUK to support.