Paper short abstract:

We tell the story of an interdisciplinary project involving children in caring for, planting, listening to, and becoming trees in their school grounds. Through this we explore different pedagogies to bring us into closer relations with the more-than-human world.

Paper long abstract:

In Moss Side, Manchester, 2023, eleven children from a primary school council joined an after-school club to learn about the trees in their school grounds. Working with MEEN’s (Manchester Environmental Education Network) Treemarkable project they learned to identify these trees, map them, care for them and plant more. Nested into this was a soundscape research project which involved pupils in deep listening, putting microphones into trunks to listen to the trees, and meditating on becoming the trees.

This paper explores the children’s growing relationships with trees through interdisciplinary working. Taking inspiration from sensory and sound anthropology, the project worked with science such as Simard’s notion of the wood-wide web and practical gardening skills, before being enriched with creative sonic practices taken from Oliveros and Schafer.

Grounded in education for sustainability and the challenges to formal education as presented by Orr and Sterling, we highlight how to work within the current system to introduce transformative educational methods which improve multi-species relations and re-introduce specific forms of indigenous knowledge. We discuss the vitality gained from collaborative working between ethnographic research and education for sustainability, how experiential, response-able and sensory pedagogies support outdoor, place-based learning whilst sharing our observations and the reflections of the children who participated. We consider the potential of creating collaborative spaces for learning outside of formal education which enable reciprocal relationships with the more-than-human to emerge.