WAF Goes Green!

L-R: A GREENER PICTURE WORKSHOP AT JOHN BURNS PRIMARY SCHOOL, 
THE GREAT PEBBLE DASH, FOREST TALES HUNTING FOR THE WILD THINGS

Here at Wandsworth Council, we've declared a climate emergency, setting the targets of being a carbon-neutral organisation by 2030.

In 2021, a wealth of WAF events are celebrating our environment and highlighting the climate emergency in a creative programme spanning sculpture, photography, painting, walking tours, outdoor games and workshops.

WHABB Studios’ Citizens of the Climate is a collection of personal written stories and audio recordings from Wandsworth residents on how they feel climate change is affecting the environment in which we live.

Woodfield Pavilion’s Trees at The Woodfield uses Tooting Bec’s trees as an inspiration for a range of creative activities including painting, movement, creative writing and narrative therapy.

A Wandle Wonder Wander is an augmented reality walk made especially for Wandsworth Arts Fringe by XAP. Audiences are invited to wander at leisure along the banks of the river Wandle, from Merton Abbey Mills to the Thames, using a mobile device to summon up sights, sounds and animated artworks, and revealing over 80 wonders of the Wandle’s rich heritage.

A Greener Picture: Photography and Climate Change is an exhibition of artwork made and photographed by 670 young people from 15 primary schools in the borough, in a collaboration between Wandsworth Council and the Royal College of Art. The project aimed to inspire climate change awareness through the use of art and photography, with pupils creating sculptures and cyanotypes which they then photographed. The photographs can be seen online at www.agreenerpicture.com, as well as on physical display on railings around Wandsworth Town Hall.

Featuring students from Griffin Primary School, Forest Tales, Hunting for the Wild Things is a Forest School-inspired creative storytelling session. The session is led by the school's Deputy Head and Forest School Leader, Louise Black.

Meet and Make Spaces teach us how to make trees out of recycled materials in a fun family workshop at Woodfield Pavilion forTooting’s Carnival of Trees. The trees are then displayed at the Pavilion for everyone to come and enjoy, and Tooting residents are invited to film their favourite tree in Tooting as part of an event on Zoom.

Finally, The Great Pebble Dash is an outdoor game for all ages and abilities. Players follow visual clues posted on Facebook and Instagram to match shapes, textures and patterns in the landscape to find tiny ‘pebbleface’ artworks by Raysto, hidden in plain sight around Heathbrook Park.

And that's not all!

In addition to eco-friendly events and exhibitions, we're going green behind the scenes, with biodegradable seed cards replacing our traditional paper surveys. Visitors and audiences scan the QR codes to access the digital WAF audience survey, then they can plant their card to grow a crop of summer wildflowers. The aim of this initiative is to reduce waste paper and littering in our streets and green spaces – and perhaps increase the bee-friendly wildflower population around the borough as a bonus.

WAF also produced 200 re-usable face masks for staff and visitors, to reduce the use of single-use face coverings at indoor events.