Aiming to provide opportunities for students and the local community to engage with sustainability in a practical manner, learn about local and global issues and gain practical skills to increase their impact on living more sustainably.
Abertay University Students' Association
Go To WebsiteAddressed Challenges:
- Health and Wellbeing
- Food Security and Supply
- Waste / Circular Economy
- Excessive Consumption
Action Areas:
- Circular Economy
Initiative Purpose:
- Mitigation and Adaptation
The Story
The Climate Cafés were designed to give the opportunity to learn about climate change, sustainability and how to engage with these issues in a practical way.
Café 1
Ele, a DIWC Cooking Class Volunteer, came to talk about how to create interesting meals with only a few ingredients, and on a budget.
Café 2
We talked about how to reduce, re-use, repair and recycle items of clothing in this ScrapAntics workshop. The students who attended learned about the problems in the fast fashion clothing industry.
Café 3
Councillor Helen Anderson came along and talked to the students about Dundee City Council's work across the whole of the city to meet their net zero and biodiversity targets.
Café 4
Dr Rebecca Wade and Laura Young led a discussion and Q&A session on what students can do beyond the 3 Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle).
Café 5
Staff from The Wardrobe hosted a sewing workshop to learn how to give new life to old clothes.
Café 6
Re-Animate Your Wardrobe. The most popular café of the year was attended by 10 students who joined one of the ScrapAntics resident artists for a hands-on sewing workshop to learn how to give new life to old clothes using recycled materials.
Success & Outcomes
Our goal of hosting 6 climate cafes was met. We had the achieved number of students in attendance and gained lots of positive feedback from them!
Advice for others looking to do something similar
Prior to beginning the Climate Café bid, we had hosted some events for students in partnership with local organisations which had been well attended and feedback from students suggested that they would like these to continue. We were aware of other Climate Café’s in the city and felt that we were in a position to attract a different demographic. The Climate Café website was an invaluable resource, as was the support and guidance provided by Jaci Stewart from the Rep Theatre Climate Café.
In the previous year we had made many connections with other local organisations via the Dundee Sustainable Network and we used this network to find guests to come along and host the cafes.
Input from the Sustainability Champions was invaluable in identifying areas of interest to the student body and guided the subjects we covered.
On reflection, more work is required to encourage participation from the student body, however, a survey conducted by the university reported that students would like to be able to access events led by local organisations on Sustainability related issues, so it would appear that more work needs to be done to highlight awareness of the cafes.