Love Your Climate Secondary School event (Feb 2025)

As part of the 2024/25 Climate Connectors programme on behalf of the Council, on Valentine’s Day 14th February 2025 we held a climate event at Samsung KX, inviting all of Camden’s secondary schools to participate. We were joined by 80 students from 7 schools which was a great turnout. The half-day event was fun, and lively, with young people addressing the topics with care and thought. The participating schools were:

Camden School for Girls
William Ellis School
Parliament Hill School
La Sainte Union Catholic School
UCL Academy
Acland Burghley School
Regent High School School

Love Your Climate invited young people to discuss neighbourhood-based climate solutions. We asked them to gather in groups and mix between the schools. There was one facilitator per table who asked them questions like:

– ‘What climate solutions in their area did they know of?’
– ‘What did they think?’
– Was anything missing?
– What would they like to see?

We then asked them about the 17 recommendations that the Council developed with the Citizens’ Assembly. The event helped Camden Council get a true representation of the youth voice in their next five-year Climate Action Plan.

“One of the highlights of the event was the enthusiastic participation of the students. Despite the fact that the environment was new for most of them, they engaged in various activities and discussions. From interactive workshops to insightful presentations, the event provided a wealth of knowledge and hands-on experiences that captivated the students’ attention” – La Santé Union staff.

Sharing Space Food Mission

What if… businesses and organisations turned to local talent for catering, investing in the people who live and work here?

What if… we could start to address inequality of opportunity by training up talented local women?

What if… more spaces existed for women to develop sustainable food and entrepreneurial skills?

What if… the future of food in Camden was not just about what we eat, but also who makes it, how it’s made, and the impact it has?

Food has the power to bring people together – but what if it could do even more? What if it could create opportunities, build confidence, and empower local women to run their own businesses? That’s exactly what the Sharing Spaces Food Mission is all about.

Born out of Sharing Spaces, this initiative has supported local women in Somers Town to gain food hygiene qualifications, develop business and catering skills, and set up their own thriving social enterprises. From event catering to a weekly cafe, these talented women are developing skills beyond cooking – they’re learning, leading and helping to build a more sustainable community-powered food economy.

Cholo Khā’i Cafe

Ever walked past the Somers Town Community Association and caught the irresistible smell of freshly made parathas, slow-simmered curries, or masala-spiced beans? That’s Cholo Khā’i Cafe – our planet-friendly, community-powered weekly pop-up, where local chefs are serving up more than just excellent food. They’re building skills, gaining confidence, and leading a movement for sustainable, community-led catering.

Cholo Khai (meaning ‘’come eat’’ in Bengali) offers a delicious, seasonal menu of vegan and vegetarian Asian bites, from stuffed parathas to spiced curry and hearty breakfasts. It’s food that nourishes both people and the planet, prepared by women who are training up in navigating a business co-operative, front-of-house service, food preparation and hygiene.

Sharing Spaces London

Think & Do Camden has partnered with climate action charity Ashden to roll out the successful Sharing Spaces model across London. After a competitive application process at the end of 2023, 8 community groups were chosen to start Sharing Spaces in underused venues in their local communities. Throughout 2024, these Sharing Spaces will welcome residents from their local areas, encouraging them to share skills and knowledge around climate action. The aim is to build and strengthen community relationships, resulting in several resident-led offshoot projects aimed at tackling environmental issues in their neighbourhood. Look at the map below and click on one of the locations for more information.

Based on the learnings of the existing Sharing Spaces, Think & Do Camden and Ashden created a toolkit to help other community groups interested in doing this type of work get started. The toolkit is filled with useful information including working with councils, finding a suitable venue, doing engagement work with the community, budgeting, tools, materials and equipment, templates for flyers and posters and more. The toolkit is available to download here.

Think & Do Camden and Ashden are also hosting monthly workshops with the community groups to give them a chance to come together, share their learnings and dive deeper into different aspects of the Sharing Space, such as making your space more visible and applying for future funding. Click on the links below to access each workshop:

This project is done in collaboration with Ashden, and funded by The Kusuma Trust.

Where Does It Come From, Where Does It Go To? game

At a teachers’ Barrier Buster session at the end of 2022, where school staff and governors got together to crowdsource solutions to problems and to discuss ideas, the idea to create a circular economy board game was born!

Where Does it Come From, Where Does It Go To was created by class 8D at Le Sainte Union School after three workshops to create the general design, structure and themes for the game. The game focuses around problems and solutions in the Climate Crisis with thought provoking questions of varying difficulty to collect tokens and work your way into the centre of the board learning as you go!

We have received generous funding from Phoenix Court to print 50 copies of the game which will go out to the students who were involved in creating the game and also to secondary schools and libraries in Camden, as well as in our Think & Do Sharing Spaces. Also a huge thank you to on-IDLE who have worked tirelessly with us to bring the game from concept to print.

If you would like to sign up to a session to play the game as a business, school or community group, please reach out to info@thinkanddocamden.org.uk.