Our second GlosGeog (Gloucestershire’s local Geographical Association [GA] branch) event for Term 3 was aimed at students in Years 9 to 13 and focused on ‘green skills and geography‘. This is a hotly discussed theme at present. Our speaker session proved popular as a result, with students and teachers attending virtually from 18 schools across the UK. Jill Mitchell and Jonny Riggall from Aether (https://aether-uk.com/), a company based in London that specialises in data analysis and interpretation, kindly offered their services to highlight to youngsters where geography might take them.
After formally welcoming and introducing everyone, I handed over to Jill and Jonny.
The speaker session was divided into two parts. The first 30 minutes, delivered by Jill, concentrated on ‘climate change consultancy and green skills‘ and aimed to explore what a consultancy is, the challenges that climate change customers and consultants face and the green skills required to address these challenges.
Various questions were posed to teachers and students via Mentimeter, which revealed some interesting responses:
- What percentage of the class know what they want to do as a career? (56.8%)
- How much do environmental issues influence the decisions of those around you? (e.g. school; teachers; friends; family) (28.8%)
- Which types of customers do you think a climate change consultant may work with?
The ten-minute discussion on the challenges that climate change consultants face and the skills needed to address these encouraged participation from the audience too.
Next up was Jonny, speaking for 25 minutes about ‘geographical thinking in the context of climate change‘. He looked at how geographical thinking can help us understand the impact of climate change on our lives and the future. Again, the audience were challenged to a few questions to gain some insight into their views about the future.
We allocated 15 minutes towards the end for a Q&A session. Plenty of questions were added to the chat feed and answered confidently and comprehensively by both Jill and Jonny.
In the remaining few minutes or immediately after the session, teachers were requested to complete an online form so that we could capture pupil and staff voice, as well as gain some indication as to their wishes for support and events for the remainder of this academic year. Now, time for some more planning!
Some of their ‘concluding comments‘ can be viewed below:
Very interesting to see people with a passion for their career and subject background.
Interesting; future; got us thinking!
Informative; interesting; helpful; fun; interactive.
Interesting; opened eyes to different careers.
Looking at future job opportunities.
Informative; inspiring; educational; synoptic; career-driven.
General details surrounding consultancy.
Interesting, but also confusing as students were unsure about lots of the words used.
Thank you very much all.
Thank you very much!
Thanks, Emma, another great talk!
Many thanks to Jill and Jonny for giving up their time to inspire and enthuse so many young geographers. They appear to have gained a lot in a short space of time; an insightful, relevant and purposeful afternoon.
If you enjoyed this afternoon’s event, then why not earmark Monday 24th March 2025 in your diary? (an in situ session with a livestream that intends to delve deeper into the realm of ‘green skills‘). Further details will follow shortly.