A month ago we got approached by the Harbour Grounds team which represents a corporate hub focused on the idea of wellness and sustainability. Each year they design a year-long catalogue of diverse events and activations that brings corporate groups and staff members from the following corporations together: Air NZ, KPMG, AT, Microsoft, etc. Harbour Grounds provides a space for networking, recreational and creative outlets as well as engaging educational programmes for the little ones.
Getting inspired by the idea of the Silent Disco Kids Adventures, we worked closely with the Harbour Grounds team to design and produce a brand new kids event series called the Kids Sustainability Tour.
On Friday 14 October we held three event sessions, engaging over 35 children. The event idea got so much potential that the Harbour Grounds is now looking at delivering those audio tours to the general public as part of the School Holiday Programme as well as offering that type of event to school groups who are passionate about the environment and sustainable ways of living.
Our team thoroughly enjoyed the collaborative process on that project too. We got a chance to meet incredible humans and learn about the “ecosystem” of the Harbour Grounds area that we didn’t even know about. That’s how we met Jessie from Bees Up The Top. She is an incredible supermum and beekeeper, who looks after 50 rooftops around Auckland and makes sure that bees stay in good shape and health up there. She taught us about the structure of the beehive and how the honey was made.
Caleb, an Ambassador from the Viaduct Harbour team was another superhero whom we met along our research journey. He introduced us to the innovative idea of the SeaBin and showed the four of those spread out along the harbour. Again, this is something we didn’t even know existed, so we were excited to include The SeaBin in our story.
Finally, we managed to learn about the superworms who live in the Worm Farm that is hidden in the underground car park at the Microsoft office building.
Once we received an outline of the tour with brief introductions of the eco-stops, we started to think about how we can make it interesting for participants. Our goal was to make it an inspiring learning process mixed with humour, music, dance, and a good story.
We transformed the educational knowledge into an interactive script, wrote a story, and produced the audio programme within tight timing.
As a result, we created a new character – a humanlike being who came from another Galaxy to learn more about planet Earth since his own planet, let’s call it Kpax, turned into an Earth-like planet after it got hit by an asteroid. What a drama!
We must say starting our adventure at the Infinity Room at the KPMG office provided us with the perfect background set, so the Kids Sustainability Tour did look very theatrical.
The outer space character joins children on a mission to meet the buzzy friends who live up high, wiggly friends who live underground, and find an interesting object in the harbour – the SeaBin. But as the character got used to having fun 24/7 and learning might be a bit boring, he made a deal with the children. Everything they learn on the go, they turn into a dance or game, so kids enjoy getting silly and wiggly and play themed games along the way.
On a more serious note, we also wanted to encourage children to share their insights and knowledge. So at the end of each tour stop, we had a Q&A session. Guessing the correct answer means receiving a prize, but what we wanted to encourage was participation, so children were engaged and not afraid to share their thoughts. We still remember how one boy answered the question “Why do we need worm farms?” He gently replied: “We need those so worms have a place to live and don’t die.” Isn’t it inspiring, how caring children can be?
The Kids Sustainability Tour reinforced us to take an approach to hands-on learning and provide innovative audio tours, adventures or walks to schools and other kids groups. Breathing the fresh air and listening to the audio story is not only great for overall well-being but also helps children to absorb information and learn new material faster. The outdoor environment as a setting makes the knowledge and learning process more accessible, fun, and engaging.
It also inspired us to dig into the context of SeaBins even deeper and see how together we can raise awareness towards that innovative tool to ensure we can purchase and install more of those bins around the city. We can see the potential of creating a series of eco-walks that would target adults too. The goal of those would be to inspire action – so we can install more SeaBins around Tamaki Makaurau and beyond.
We’d hope to see more initiatives and wonderful collaborations like this taking place in our city of Sails. Our team would be happy to provide the expertise on how to make it possible: from scriptwriting and story development to creating an ongoing events programme for your group.
Keen to chat? Make sure to get in touch with us today!
Photographs by Sacha Aksuk
