“Today is significant – the 15th March, the Ides of March in the Roman calendar, is a day to ‘beware,’ but it is also a day historically associated with hope and celebration as it signified the new year.

These paradoxical cautionary and hopeful associations are appropriate for the launch of the Academy

The urgency and extent of the contemporary global crisis requires us to ‘beware’, but the Academy is rooted in hopefulness – that through advocacy and action this university can contribute to a more sustainable future.”

– Nicola Kemp, Academy Launch

Three years ago, the Academy for Sustainable Futures launched at Canterbury Christ Church University. In the time since, the Academy has pushed towards its goals of delivering sustainability across CCCU in the areas of community, research, education and environment, while facilitating the development of new sustainability activities and academic content and providing numerous services to the University and its community.

Notably, in 2023, the Academy introduced the inaugural Dean, Obas Ebohon. In 2024, Visiting Reader in Sustainability Stephen Scoffham published Sustainability Education: A Classroom Guide with Steve Rawlinson, winning two awards, a shortlisting and a highly commended in the process. Likewise, the successful 2024 lecture series, Good Education in a Fragile World was based on the book of the same name, edited by Nicola Kemp, Reader in Education for Sustainable Futures, and Alan Bainbridge, Visiting Reader in Education and Sustainability. In 2023, Academy members Bethany Climpson and Laura Hackett developed and piloted a gamified sustainability learning experience, The Climate Escape Room, which went on to become a University-wide challenge.

To celebrate three years passing, we have collated just some of our achievements since the Academy’s launch, to update you on what’s been going on:

COMMUNITY

Annually, the Academy for Sustainable Futures hosts over 50 sustainability opportunities, activities and initiatives, including Potter and Prune, Craftivism, Eco Hope StressLess, the Refillable Van, hop picking and more. These unique opportunities allow students and staff to engage with many aspects of sustainability, including Green Heritage, conscious consumerism, wellbeing and activism, to name a few.

Our most popular events are the now-annual COP celebrations, with COP28@CCCU in 2023 and COP29@CCCU in 2024. These programmes of events span the COP periods and help members of the Christ Church community engage with sustainability.

There have been many engagement achievements in the last three years, including:

• 1000+ staff and student participants across unique sustainability events and activities since the launch
• 100+ participants in the Climate Escape Room across both the pilot year (23/24) and the 2024 staff Climate Escape Room Challenge for COP29@CCCU
• The Student Green Office entering its 13^th consecutive year, producing 15+ projects and initiatives annually, and writing 200 blog posts since the launch

RESEARCH

During COP29@CCCU, the Academy held a Sustainability Research afternoon to discuss research being undertaken at CCCU. Alongside the ongoing research at Christ Church, the Academy has managed many research collaborations with other organisations, including our current collaborations with Bright Horizons Nurseries, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, Froebel Trust, The Harmony Project and more.

Most famous is our collaboration with the Wildwood Trust and Kent Wildlife Trust to enable the reintroduction of the red-billed chough to the area of Dover. The reintroductions began in 2023 with eight birds, and as of summer 2024, the first wild chick for generations was hatched at Dover Castle.

Members of the Academy have also presented at over 20 conferences in the past three years, including the 7^th European Congress of Conservation Biology 2024, the UK-CSR MMA 2024 Symposium on Sustainability, and the COP28 Ukraine Pavilion.

In summer 2022, the Academy also hosted the Social and Environmental Justice for a Sustainable Future Conference at the North Holmes campus.

EDUCATION

The Academy has continued to provide sustainability consultation and guest lecturing to many modules and courses across the University, as well as maintain several yearly collaborations – such as a module with PR & Media students that has been ongoing for 9 years, and another with Tourism, Events and Hospitality that has continued for 12.

The Academy has provided countless one-hour Carbon Literacy introductions to classes across the university, as well as lectures and seminars on the big questions of sustainability, wealth inequality and other relevant topics.

Currently, we are working on integrating sustainability into courses through the curriculum co-design process and working on the upcoming Sustainability Success Module. For staff members, a series of sustainability training modules for StaffLearn are underway.

In the last three years, the Academy has:

• Created 6+ hours of video content to educate on sustainability, including our Introducing Sustainability Q&A series and the Teaching Transformations Podcast
• Engaged 500+ staff and students with both Carbon Literacy Training and the short one-hour introduction session
• Produced 30+ publications, including books, consultations and contributions, such as Sustainability Education: A Classroom Guide and Good Education in a Fragile World

ENVIRONMENT

Canterbury Christ Church’s North Holmes campus won Gold in South & Southeast in Bloom’s Business Landscape of the Year 2024. Maintained by the hard work of the Grounds and Gardens team, the campus is full of native and heritage flora and fauna, as well as fresh fruit and vegetables.

Outside Moore, the Academy has spent a decade maintaining the hops garden that grows four heritage varieties which make up our yearly CCCU Ale; behind Johnson, the Wellbeing Garden is a mostly-untamed wildlife haven for an assortment of creatures and minibeasts. In 2022, 50+ staff and students planted up the banks outside Verena Holmes with native hedgerows for the Queen’s Green Canopy and since the beginning of 2024, The Greenhouse Project Society has started a greenhouse and taken over a series of allotment spaces across the campus to grow fruit and vegetables to donate to the Students’ Union’s Student Hardship Pantry.

Since the launch, there has been three major projects on campus:

• Across 2022 and 2023, the lottery-funded Medieval Animals project, led by Dr Diane Heath, saw the construction of The Becket Dragons on the lawn outside Becket. Over 50 staff, students, international students and local volunteers – including a Scout group – built two dragon sculptures to engage SEND children and their families and teach them about Canterbury’s Green Heritage.
• In 2023, to celebrate the reintroduction of the red-billed chough to Dover, local artist Greg Stobbs painted a mural outside the University Bookshop and Touchdown Café called Choughs over the White Cliffs.
• During the summer of 2023, the Roundhouse was built on Anselm Lawn as a permanent outdoor space for events, activities and relaxation. The Roundhouse was donated from UKC and consists of wood harvested from their woodlands.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS

Finally, during the last three years, there has been over 10 awards and recognitions for members of the Academy and the Academy’s work, including:

• Wilder Kent Awards, 2024: Silver
• South & Southeast in Bloom Business Landscape of the Year, 2024: Gold
• USwitch Green Universities, 2023: Gold
• Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy: Adriana Consorte-McCrea
• The “Climate Ready” programme of events received BERA recognition
• CCAP Climate Action Awards, 2023: runner up in Sustainability Innovation
• The People & Planet League Table, 2024: 38/149

A massive thank you to everyone who has collaborated with us over the last three years – these sorts of achievements are hard to make a reality without help and support from all across the University!

We’re very excited to see what the next few years bring – if you’d like to get in touch, or work with us in future, you can do so via sustainability@canterbury.ac.uk. We’d love to involve you in future projects and initiatives.

By Bethany Climpson, Sustainability Engagement Assistant