We’re really pleased to share this blog from the Energy Saving Trust Foundation, reflecting on our Youth Climate Action Fund-supported project.
Over two years, we brought together children from three Tameside primary schools, members of our Hearts & Minds group and talented local creatives to explore climate change through storytelling, music and imagination. Together, they co-created episodes of Armchair Adventures exploring plastic pollution and sustainable fashion, giving children the opportunity to share their ideas, learn from different perspectives and see how their voices can make a difference.
The project is a great example of our approach at Made by Mortals: using creativity to bring lived experience to life, share knowledge and help people engage with issues that affect them and their communities.
A huge thank you to the Energy Saving Trust Foundation for their support and for being such a great funder to work with! We’re proud of what everyone involved has created and grateful to have had the opportunity to bring generations together around an issue that matters to us all.
Read the Energy Saving Trust Foundation’s blog below to find out more about the project and what we achieved together.
“If you want to create change, you begin with a story,” says Tess Keeble, Relationship Manager at Made by Mortals. “Stories rooted in the lived experiences of children, and older people, have got truth riddled all the way through them; stories through music and drama, for example, are so impactful. If you want your message out there, the arts is absolutely the way to do it”.
Made By Mortals CIC brings lived experience to life through immersive audio stories, films, music, theatre, and interactive workshops co-produced by diverse local people from University researchers and charities to health and social care partners, artists, older people and children who share their lived experience to improve the lives of others.
With support from the Youth Climate Action Fund, Made by Mortals has worked with 180 children in three Tameside schools over two years to ignite some creative climate action across Manchester and beyond. Together with children from Millbrook, Arlies and Oakfield primary schools, they have co-created four episodes of the podcast, Armchair Adventures, which explores global issues such as plastic pollution and sustainable fashion.
Armchair Adventures is an interactive podcast for children aged six to eight which whisks audiences away on an adventure. Made by local children in collaboration with 60 older people and 25 local musicians, scriptwriters, producers, designers, filmmakers and actors, the podcast follows the journey of protagonist Connie and her crew as they explore climate change.
“Our oldest participant is 96 and our youngest is six years old which demonstrates our ethos of being an intergenerational community of creative citizens,” says Tess. With hundreds of thousands of listeners worldwide, the award-winning podcast is consistently ranked in the top ten children’s podcasts in the UK, and is the first in-flight children’s podcast broadcast by Virgin Atlantic. “For these children to know they had an idea for a story, and then they can see their story being made into a podcast lets them know ‘I’ve got a voice in this.’ Part of the magic is that it goes out globally, it’s a worldwide podcast made by children for children who are talking about global issues from the perspective of what they’re seeing and experiencing locally here.”
Julia Roberts, a Year 4 teacher at Millbrook Primary who has worked with Made by Mortals for several years, explains that numerous factors significantly impact how children perceive these issues.
“How we do our work in our area is dependent on demographics in terms of money, poverty, awareness,” says Julia. She points out that even traditions like ‘own clothes day’ have been phased out in some schools and many families don’t have access to an abundance of clothing. “Now, when I talk to my Year Four class about sustainable fashion, we’re not just talking about buying expensive eco-brands, but about the value of second-hand clothes and understanding where they actually come from.”
Julia explains that initiatives like Park and Stride (Living Streets Travel Tracker) are active in local schools including Millbrook, encouraging children’s parents to park a distance away and walk to school or to use public transport to reduce the carbon footprint of the school run. However, the daily reality often involves heavy car usage, highlighting the gap between classroom learning and community-wide practice, a gap that Made by Mortals aims to bridge through storytelling.
“After a workshop on plastic pollution with a local artist called Caitlin, the children weren’t thinking about the end of the world”, recalls Tess. “They were looking at the labels on their clothes to see if they were made from plants or plastic. They were learning that there are several types of plastic and that recycling isn’t just about the bin. They could identify plastics and also their place in the story of those items of clothing. Some of Julia’s students even wrote to the school headteacher to ask that the school become a plastic-free space. And you can hear them on the podcast audio talk about how you can make plastic into art, that recycling isn’t just putting something in the recycling bin and then it comes out as a bottle.”
“These workshops really bring the curriculum to life,” says Julia, recalling an image of children swimming around in plastic scraps and bottletops during one workshop. “It gives them that freedom to explore deeper, ask questions. We call it going down a rabbit hole. It allows you to explore a particular element of a topic in more detail, like looking at microplastics in the oceans.”
The impact of this approach, of continuing down the rabbit hole for as long as it remains interesting, is proven by the children’s retention of information. Julia found that even children who typically struggle to retain information were able to talk about the dangers of microplastics to different animals weeks after the workshop.
“If they’re not engaged and interested, the chances of it going into their long-term memory are really slim,” she says. “But after just one workshop, they were still able to talk about all of it when we revisited it”.
Chris Brett, Made by Mortals’ Senior Creative, says that co-production is key to creating work that resonates with young people. Instead of adults deciding what the children need to know, the children themselves are supported to shape explorations and narratives.
“We use play or drama or creativity to make climate change more safe to talk about,” explains Chris. “Everybody brings their expertise and knowledge to create something. The children are the experts in what six, seven and eight year olds know about recycling or what they’re worried about. That’s the magic of it all.”
This process creates a profound sense of ownership, he says. When the children hear their own voices, ideas and see their local Stockport murals reflected in a global podcast, it reinforces the message that their views and ideas matter. This approach, he says, levels the playing field.
“The children know then that they are as valuable as the older people, as valuable as a writer, as valuable as an audio producer. Everybody is of equal value, inputting from a place of strength and imagination.”
Julia observed the transformative impact of Made by Mortals’ co-creation approach take root in her classroom beyond their work on the project.
“It built the confidence and the descriptive speaking skills of the children in general,” she says. “We had young people who were amazing at recording on the podcast but don’t normally speak out loud often in class.”
“I can’t quantify the confidence increase,” adds Chris. “But just because you can’t report on it in a traditional sense, it doesn’t mean it’s not massively valuable. Schools have no money, so if you fund an arts organisation to come in, you’re providing arts provision as well as climate education to young people who might not otherwise have access to it.”
“And it’s ensuring that our children grow up to be politically aware adults,” adds Julia. “We are teaching them how to think, to know how the system works, and how to make their own informed decisions. If you’re building those blocks of knowledge at a young age, you’re catching them early, and mixing creativity with geography and science just works really, really well for activating children in that way, giving them that time and space to really dive into a subject much deeper than we can offer in a one-off lesson. On top of that, it’s really fun, and that is so important.”
You can enjoy all four episodes, plus two special ‘Unpacked’ episodes of Armchair Adventures co-created by the children of Millbrook, Arlies and Oakfield primary schools at the links below.
A Super Sustainable Fashion Adventure
A Magical Mural Adventure
About Armchair Adventures
Armchair Adventures is a multi-award-winning podcast for kids – aged 6-8. It’s super-fun, educational and interactive – meaning it’s packed with sing and move-along activities!
Each episode is a new adventure of your imagination with Connie her gang of explorers – including you! Adventures include exploring a superhero lair, ballroom dancing and diving into a coral reef! Every episode also has an educational message for our mini adventurers like climate change, racial equality and recycling.
Armchair Adventures won Bronze at The British Podcast Awards 2022, has been profiled on BBC Radio 4’s Podcast Hour, in Podbible, featured on Podcast Radio, commended by HRH Prince William and is the first kids podcast available in-flight on all Virgin Atlantic flights!
Looking for ways to bring lived experience into your work?
Sign up for our Members Area to access audio stories, training materials, and workshop guides—all themed around key health & social care topics. Start exploring today!
For more information about how Made By Mortals can support your project including a quote, please email admin@madebymortals.org or call 0161 804 2078
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Looking for ways to bring lived experience into your work?
Sign up for our Members Area to access audio stories, training materials, and workshop guides—all themed around key health & social care topics. Start exploring today!
For more information about how Made By Mortals can support your project including a quote, please email admin@madebymortals.org or call 0161 804 2078