SENSE

There is a critical link between low educational attainment and reduced access to nature and the outdoors for children living in poverty.

The environmental challenges of the day mean it’s never been more important to engage children with nature. Yet, many in the UK grow up with little or no access to the natural world.

We seek to develop technologies that foster greater interest in and appreciation of nature and the outdoors.

We emphasise school grounds as spaces that can be developed through wildlife-friendly gardening practices as equitable spaces for encounters with nature for all pupils, and develop a citizen science project to observe nature in such spaces. 

We seek to amplify the capacity of school pupils, from diverse backgrounds, to influence and participate in scientific inquiry and conservation action.

Our project develops technologies that encourage pupils to touch and feel, in order to provoke different scientific questions and inquiries and to help connect with nature. Why is a bumblebee so much hairier than a wasp? Why do oak trees have a rougher bark than beech?

The key aim is to enhance, rather than distract from or replace, experiences of and curiosity about nature. We expect the touch interfaces we develop to be useful for:

• drawing attention to nature, e.g. a child may have access to real trees but not be minded to touch them or question why they have different barks;
• making the untouchable tactile, e.g. through touching images of a badger;
• playing with scale, e.g. feeling images at microscopic (e.g. leaf veins) or macroscopic resolutions, or comparing textures of leaves over seasons; and
• continuing explorations of nature even when indoors, to sustain interest.