The red carpet was rolled out and some big names were in town to celebrate 12 transition year students who are the stars of a television series that looks for ways to tackle the climate crisis. The Climate Challenge is a six-part show, produced by local film maker Declan Cassidy, that sees four teams each create a TikTok with a climate action message in the areas of sustainable fashion, sustainable food, sustainable homes and sustainable lifestyles. Each team of three students was assigned a mentor – owner and founder of online second-hand designer fashion store ‘Offset Fashion’ for fashions, award winning head chef of celebrated Dublin restaurant ‘Etto’ food, interiors architect and author Natasha Rocca Divine for homes and proprietor of Trim-based sustainability store ‘Cult Zero’ for lifestyles. The mentors were in town to see the four TikToks that the students had created and to hand out awards to recognise the responsible role that the young people had played in volunteering to undertake the challenge.
The transition year students of St Oliver’s Community College, under the guidance of teacher Jennifer Winters, began their climate action journey by visiting The Rediscovery Centre, Ireland’s centre for the circular economy, where they were given workshops in sustainability by the education team there. With this knowledge they set about planning a social media campaign that would end in them creating a TikTok with an environmental message on their assigned topic.
The fashion team, with Halloween fast approaching, choose to encourage people to make their own Halloween outfits from old clothes rather than buying synthetic costumes that would probably only be used once.
The food team looked took the humble apple pie and set about showing people how to use local ingredients to bake their own rather than buying commercial apple pies with the long list of processed ingredients that they often contain.
The homes team set about convincing people to swap old energy-guzzling light bulbs for energy efficient LED ones while the lifestyles team promoted the health and sustainability qualities of raw food for cats and dogs over commercial processed foods.
The awards night showed all four clips for the first time to an appreciative audience which included the four mentors, the students, friends and families. Under the creative direction of teacher Ronan McQuillan, the school canteen had been transformed into a theatre with a red carpet, surrounded on either side by black drapes where the students were snapped by paparazzi, and waylaid by microphone-wielding interviewers. Gone, for the evening, were the school uniforms and the glamour rivalled any award show in tinseltown.
Photos and a video charting the journey of the students can be seen at theclimatechallenge.eu where links to the social media accounts can also be found.
“We’re hoping that the wonderful work of these students will be the start of something that will grow,” said producer Declan Cassidy. “We’re asking people to follow The Climate Challenge on Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook or Youtube where they can see the students work and where we’re going to continue posting content that gives people ideas on how they can play their part in the fight against climate change.”
The Climate Challenge will screen, in the new year, on DCTV (802 on Virgin Media) and on the DCTV online player (DCTV.ie). The series was funded by Coimisiún na Meán under its Sound and Vision initiative.