Children at St Julian’s Church School, Wellow, have recently spent a week learning about the impact of single-use plastic and trying to raise awareness of this amongst their parents and wider community.

This was all tied into their annual Arts & Creativity Week.

Since the launch of their Erasmus project, ‘Respect, Reuse, Recycle’, pupils of the school have been looking at ways to raise awareness of the issue of single use plastic, especially in schools. The children’s Arts Week was a chance for children to leave traditional lessons to one side and learn through creative means.

On Monday, the chief timpanist from the Welsh National Orchestra visited and led the whole school through ‘junk modelling’ percussion workshops, culminating in a whole-school performance on the paddock for parents. The piece had a catchy rhythm and message – “single use plastic is not so fantastic!” – reinforced through the lyrics and the recycled plastic instruments each child had made. 110 children on percussion playing in unison was a very effective way to spread this message far and wide!

Children engaged in a number of art and music activities over the week, including making giant turtles and jellyfish from recycled materials and making their own ‘plastic’ wraps from fabric coated in beeswax to be used instead of cling film. Children sold these to parents after listening to an inspirational talk given by one of the producers of Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall’s BBC documentary, War on Plastic.

Jackie Stone helped raise the children’s awareness of this issue and witnessed the Year 3 and Year 4 children in Beech class launch their campaign: #ourplasticfeedback.

As part of an international ‘Plastic Free July’, the pupils of Beech Class are encouraging people to return their single use plastic packaging to supermarkets in an effort to raise awareness with large corporations about this important issue. They are starting with a visit to Sainsbury’s in Bath this week.

Year 5 student, Ophelia, said: “I want to be part of this because it is said that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish!”

Year 6 student, Wilf, said: “Plastic will eventually destroy the planet we live in and will also do damage to humans as much as any other animal as it seeps into our food chain.”

To further investigate conservation issues, children in the school made a number of visits during the week. Years 5 and 6 visited Lyme Regis to see first-hand the evidence of coastal erosion. Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 visited Longleat to find out more about animals and their habitats, and children in Years 3 and 4 visited Leigh Woods to take part in litter picking.