The Varcities team at the University of Malta have a vision for a greener Gzira, and who better to help enact it than its youngest and most excitable citizens? In collaboration with local NGO ACT and supported by the Arts Council Malta and the Gzira Local Council, the team ran a series of workshops where local children were taught how to plant and propagate native Maltese species.
In the workshops, each child learned how to mix compost and planted an Oak, pomegranate, and Judas tree, taking one home to their families and leaving the others for the school garden. The conclusion of these workshops is another milestone in the EU-funded , which is working with citizens to implement greening measures that benefit the community.
As one of its initiatives, the Malta team will be creating an unconventional playscape at the school. The project hopes to provide an outdoor space where the children can find inspiration from the natural environment and play together with creatively designed structures made from recycled materials. The garden has been planned to incorporate the ideas of the children and the teachers, and the team have visited the school several times to create the concept together. Using multi-sensory activities, arts, crafts and outdoor games, children were given the opportunity to express themselves and develop their ideas. They wanted more trees, outdoor creative teaching spaces, and colourful artworks to brighten the walls.
During other pop-up engagement the Malta team performed, many Gzira citizens expressed a desire to see more plants and trees in the locality. This participatory, inclusive approach is called “co-creation” and is one of the features that make the interventions facilitated by Varicities so unique.
While the playscape is still being designed, years five and six were excited to have the chance to develop their own gardening skills at planting workshops with the Varcities team. They learned more about the species that are native to Malta and what they look like, as well as how to care for their own plants to see growth over a long time. The workshops also contributed to the research being done by Varcities, investigating how to effectively involve local people in co-created greening initiatives. The team wanted to see how the children interact with each other and the teachers in the outdoor space and how they engaged with the activity and the ethos behind it. The project hopes that by showing that Gzira can be greener, as all of Malta and Gozo.
VARCITIES is a project funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme. Telecommunication Systems Institute (part of Technical University of Crete) leads the consortium together with other 24 partners including the University of Malta. These include also the eight municipalities which are the Pilot Cities of the project. For more information please visit the .
This project is supported by Malta #schoolplayscapeproject
