‘Sustaining the human spirit through renewal and solidarity in learning’ – our 2025 AGM and Annual Gathering

We began at 15:00 with a warm welcome from our Chair, Professor Rehema White; who set the scene with a thoughtful and inspiring overview of sustaining the human spirit through renewal and solidarity in learning.

Our Youth Co-ordinator, Alyson MacKay, then guided participants through a short ‘icebreaker’ based on the Climate Emotions Wheel from the Climate Mental Health Network: framing these emotions as a model that can be applied beyond ‘climate’ to address all aspects of Learning for Sustainability.

Our Director, Dr Beth Christie, and Development Manager, Cecilia Mañosa Nyblon, then shared an update on the national and global context for Learning for Sustainability – as well as an overview of our activity over the past year.

An in-depth summary of all of our work in 2025 can be found in our 2025 Annual Report.

Story Share 1: Systems-Thinking for Sustainability

Gordon Branston, environmental health, occupational safety and SDG practitioner, shared input aligned to the emotion of ‘Gratitude. He focused on a ‘systems-thinking’ approach to address the current ‘poly crises’ of (un)sustainability challenges in Scotland and beyond.

Story Share 2: Application of the ‘Outdoor Journeys’ initiative

Gary Reid, a teacher from East Lothian, framed his input around the emotion of ‘Hope’. He shared insights into how he has used the Outdoor Journeys model as an accessible way to engage secondary pupils in frequent outdoor learning experiences and connection to their local community and outdoor spaces.

Story Share 3: The Zero Waste Schools initiative

Mary Michel, co-founder and director of Ostrero, shared a contribution focusing on the emotion of ‘Empowerment’. Her work explores how we can embed the Circular Economy across everyday learning through innovative initiatives identified by and co-designed with children and young people.

Story Share 4: Scottish Roots

Eve Armstrong, education and outreach officer at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, structured her input around the emotion of ‘Empathy’. She showed how the Scottish Roots initiative has engaged with over 1,500 pupils across Scotland to document and celebrate their emotional and physical connections with plants.

Story Share 5: Educators for Peace

Jehan Al-Azzawi and Mark Langdon, co-founder/chair and treasurer at Educators for Peace, co-constructed their presentation around the emotions of ‘Inspiration’ and ‘Interest’. They shared more about how this initiative is being used as a catalyst for transformative teaching and learning in both early learning/schools and higher education.

Our Chair, Professor Rehema White, shared her thoughts and reflections on ‘reasons for hope’: sharing thoughts on how Learning for Sustainability approaches can help us to move from a feeling of helplessness and despair to one where we celebrate and enhance the ‘mainstreaming’ of sustainability issues, build on ideas for transformative activity – and move towards a place of hope, solidarity, and positive action.

You can read more about her thoughts on this in the final chapter of the recently-published ‘Perspectives and Practices of Education for Sustainable Development’.

Finally, our Vice-Chair, Sara Smith, shared a summary of the AGM and Annual Gathering. She reminded us of the words of James Gustave Speth who said that: ‘The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy…to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation.”