On 2nd October SPARK held a sustainability event at Leeds Trinity University in partnership with the new Director of Sustainability and the Director of Catholic Mission.
A key message from Katie Clegg, Director of Sustainability at the university, was that sustainability will only be achieved if it involves everyone at the university – not just staff looking after the fabric of the buildings.
To facilitate this workshop we had invited John Paul de Quay of the Ecological Conversion Network in Arundel & Brighton diocese. John Paul helped set up and runs the ‘Ecological Conversion Group’. (It’s worth taking a look at their website https://theecg.org/ )
The ’Let us Dream’ bit is part of a quote from Pope Francis asking us to imagine what our future might be like in our parishes and educational institutions once we have achieved net zero carbon emissions.
In small groups, everyone was asked to discuss the questions John Paul posed about net zero and each group had to produce a visual representation of what they thought Leeds Trinity University might be like once net zero had been attained.
For an evaluation we asked people to pick between 2 and 5 words from a list to describe how they felt about the event. The majority chose to describe the session as interesting, inspiring and exciting! Other descriptions included thought provoking, relaxed and fun. Who knows what it might lead to? The photographs below give a flavour of what the event was like, and some of the final artwork.
