After School Green Clubs in Athens

Unit Lab collaborated with artists, designers and experts from Greece and abroad who work with renewable energies, bio materials, and environmental data collection in order to design six different workshops for the students.

From the 4th to the 11th of May, 80 high school students from three public schools in Athens participated in the After School Green Clubs. In two or three sessions at the schools, the students carried out experiments and created animal shelters, small renewable energy stations and various objects made from recycled materials. They also set up environmental sensors in their schools to collect data.

The aim of the workshops was to build a holistic picture of circularity practice that will give students a practical insight on how our environment could be protected and improved.

Each workshop focused on a different emerging circularity practice:

In “Urban Nature”, students discovered nature and animals in their local surroundings.

In “DIY Renewables”, students made their own micro energy station using solar, wind or hydroelectric energy.

In “Data Collection”, they built IoT devices that can sense and collect environmental data, such as air pollution, rainfall, noise and ambient light.

In the “Waste workshop” they collected plastic waste and transformed it into objects that could be used in the school or installed in the local area.

In “Fix Don’t Buy”, students brought disused clothes and learned how to repair or upcycle them to give them a new lease of life.

In the “Material Futures” workshop, students explored the emerging world of bioplastics with the help of experts.

In the next stage of the project, Unit Lab will prototype an online platform where schools, teachers and students in Greece can share their ideas, projects and data about circular economy with each other. Schools will be given the tools to collect environmental data, students will be empowered to share their ideas and teachers will gain access to a wide range of resources to enrich their classes.

The project will be finalized and presented in Autumn-Winter 2022.