The Secret of Trees: planting seeds of activism in Tower Hamlets classrooms

Posted on July 16th, 2024

It’s been a very busy summer so far here at Coney HQ. Our Schools Programme team are just about wrapping up the first pilot of a brand new experience, as part of our Undercover Caretaker Agency (UCA) project series: UCA Episode 2 ‘The Secret of Trees’.  It’s been a joy to see UCA land again in our six partner schools (The Tower Hamlets Six), and to now be able to share more about how it works!

UCA is a series of interactive classroom adventures for Years 3 and 4, providing toolkits for exploring issues voiced by local young people, from youth mental health to climate action. Each episode lands in classrooms, as an escape room-style box containing puzzles and challenges, which are unlocked by teachers, supported by our online platform.

We’ve been delivering Episode 1 for over three years now. Developing Episode 2,  we’ve been especially keen to expand the UCA fiction to create a brand new adventure that could meet the changing needs of local young people.

The process began in February 2023, when graduates of our YCTP (from across the Tower Hamlets Six)  spent half-term digging into their passions and concerns at school. With isolation and eco-anxiety featuring high on their lists, we consulted more students and school staff about these issues, and gathered a team of artists, programmers and designers to develop a pilot experience.  Next, we trained up a brilliant group of local teachers through targeted CPD and soon six mysterious boxes were waiting at reception for curious students across Tower Hamlets to find. UCA Episode 2, entitled The Secret of Trees, focuses on peer-to-peer collaboration, offering a fun and meaningful introduction to environmental activism.

“A really well planned and resourced set of sessions with a clear and valuable theme which engaged and motivated the children to work together and learn about an important environmental issue from key role models along the way.”
– Teacher, William Davis Primary School

Taking the mycorrhizal network (pictured below) as its central metaphor, students investigate the importance of collaboration in grassroots movements. Highlighting the work of Wangari Matthaai (Green Belt Movement) and Felix Finkbeiner (Plant for the Planet), the experience looks at the lineage of environmental activists whose legacies inspire generation after generation, and through this, continue to spark change in new spaces. From Wangari, to Felix, to a young person sitting in a classroom in Tower Hamlets wondering if they could make a difference – when we choose to act we can take comfort, support and inspiration in knowing we’re never acting alone. 

We’ve been busy gathering feedback from teachers and students, and are so pleased to see how the experience of playing is sparking some great conversations on how to make change in schools and in the surrounding communities. Our Playful Activism practice is growing all the time, with each project teaching us something new about how play and social impact are connected. As a result, we know that at its core, Playful Activism works on two levels: (1) developing the emotional resilience of young people and (2) supporting them to realise their agency.

“I really enjoyed undertaking the UCA Ep. 2 experience and more importantly, the kids in my class loved it too! Finding engagement in the learning isn’t always easy, but the Young Coneys team have a knack of making great fun out of detailed, complex issues that affect children…”
–Teacher, Hague Primary School

What’s next?
We’re more convinced than ever that our playful approach, and particularly our box projects, can bring magic into classrooms. As we shuffle the last of this round of boxes back to HQ, we’re diving into fundraising for the next phase in development. This will include embedding the feedback gathered, developing the physical box to make it easily reusable, and building relationships to support a wider release. Watch this space!

“Ideas normally have a moment when you know they are going to push forward and I can remember exactly that moment on UCA Episode 2. During our Young Coneys Graduate week we created a small adventure about trees talking to humans and Ihsan, aged 9 at the time, wrote the line ‘Trees Help Humans Help Trees’. It was utterly perfect and became the core of the small game we made over that week, and subsequently the development of UCA Episode 2. Just over a year on, it’s fantastic to finally see Episode 2 of the Undercover CareTaker Agency out in schools!”
– UCA Writer and Programme Director, Toby Peach 

If you’d like to know more about The Undercover Caretaker Agency, give us a knock.