38 pupils from 17 schools attended our first International Pupil Council of the new academic year at Priory Primary School. After a welcome and warm up/ice breaker activities we discussed how there are currently 8 billion (8,000,000,000) people in the world. Some countries have much greater populations than others as this infographic shows. This number of people, and all many of the things that Humans do, is putting pressure on our planet. The United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals in New York City in September 2015. These are aimed at tackling the problems that our world has.
There was an introduction to the ‘Get Creative with Art Online’ programme and then we looked at the work of Arnaldo Pomodoro - Sfera n.2 was shown to IPC reps explaining that this is a sculpture in Gilded Bronze and it was completed in 1963. POMODORO’s sphere reminds us of a terrestrial globe, with great imperfections and damage caused by mechanisation and human actions. He wanted to draw attention to the results of our effects on our world so that we can start to think about how we can fix things.
Our IPC reps had pictures of a globe, the SDGs and stationery equipment, including pencils, felt tips, glue sticks and scissors. They were told they could draw, cut, stick to create their picture of a world that needs help. They were reminded to think about the SDGs - could they show how different SDGs are affecting the world?