Recycle Rally 2008
Reduce, re-use, recycle was the message people in a packed recycling rally audience took away with them from an entertaining evening featuring pupils and students from schools across Morpeth.
For weeks the youngsters have been working on projects in their own schools to focus their thoughts on the importance of recycling and what that means for their own communities.
All their efforts culminated in the rally organised by Emma Cochrane at Greater Morpeth Development Trust taking place at the town's King Edward VI High School in partnership with Castle Morpeth Borough Council, Northumberland County Council and Morpeth Town Council.
On the 7th November, the audience of some 300 people was enthralled by how the young stars of the show had turned recycled household junk into musical instruments, fashionable clothes and accessories, plastic flowers, planters and vases as well as learning dances and writing new words to favourite old song tunes all around the theme of recycling.
Taking part in the event were young people from King Edward VI High, Chantry Middle, St Robert's, Morpeth First, Newminister and Collingwood schools.
In the weeks leading up to the event the schools along with others from Stobhillgate, All Saints and Abbeyfields in Morpeth, had all been working with a variety of artists incorporating valuable lessons about recycling into their school curriculums.
At St Robert's, for instance, musician Glynis Manning worked with pupils aged eight and nine years old, and set them the challenge of writing songs with a recycling theme using familiar and popular tunes.
So while the Hokey Kokey and children's favourites such as 'Hands, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' had new words written to them for the recycling rally, so did pop and rock classics by the Village People and Queen!
"We looked at recycling and its importance in today's society, and then worked on their song writing and literacy skills to put new words to music in a way that was fun for them as well as being creative," said Glynis. "By the time we came to the performance the children had really taken on board the recycling message."
Pupils and students from other schools used their creative talents to fashion outfits and accessories from waste material, as well as making musical instruments from junk that would otherwise have been simply discarded and thrown away.
Colin Harvey, who chairs GMDT's environmental interest, hailed both the rally and the recycling workshops at the schools a great success. "A lot of people recognise the importance of putting as much of our discarded household material as possible these days to new uses, and the steady increase in the percentages of waste being recycled as evidence of that fact," he said.
"So getting that message across to our young people is vitally important because they are the citizens of tomorrow and recycling has to become second nature to them in the future.
"What GMDT and our partners have been trying to do over the past few weeks has been to make recycling a fun, interesting and creative subject for them and I think we have succeeded in doing that. At the rally and throughout the workshops the young people involved have expressed themselves creatively but also have clearly had fun while learning the lessons of recycling.
"This is a two year programme, and is one of a number of projects which form part of the Castle Woods and Water initiative now being delivered by the Trust.
"Next year we will be looking to build on the success of this year's rally and workshops so that the young people involved can continue to take on board the importance of recycling as well as taking that message home to their families."
Recycle Rally Programme
The GMDT team are currently working on ideas for the upcoming Recycle Rally, which will be a three-year programme. The first Rally was held in 2006, through Castles, Woods and Water funding and the overall aims and objectives from the project were as follows:
- To provide educational benefits to all of the Schools and the pupils to deliver enriched learning and life learning experiences
- Increase public awareness of recycling, waste minimisation and clean environments
- To continue to provide Community Cohesion to strive to encourage and foster increased levels of Civic Pride
- To bring to together many key partners to deliver a meaningful and empowering community project to creating the right Culture within Castle Morpeth.
This was achieved through providing workshops at each of the local schools. The activities at the workshops included; Junk Music making, T-shirt design, Drama and also fashion. All of which concentrated on the importance of recycling and related environmental issues.
The grand finale to the workshops was a showcasing event on the Friday evening in October, at the Riverside Leisure Centre, which opened with the results from the drama and music workshops, and moved into a fashion show displaying results from the t-shirt designs. The event concluded with a fabulous display of work from king Edwards High School who had designed full outfits made from recycled materials.
We want the current Recycle Rally programme to be the best yet. Discussions have begun to build on the previous success of the event and also include a similar showcasing event in October, which will launch recycle rally in Morpeth; this will then be built upon throughout the following years.
We have decided to include a whole range of exciting and fun new workshops again, working with and provided at the local schools. We hope to further increase public awareness of recycling, waste minimisation and clean environments. We also have a great idea to hold 'swishing' events (fabulous clothes swapping) throughout the year. Would you like to be invited? We have plans for a summer swish, a wedding swish, a kid's swish and much more!
Discussions regarding the Recycle Rally are ongoing and your ideas are very much welcomed. For more information of to submit an idea please contact Emma cochrane or Gemma Gadomski.
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