We The Curious
Nine ASDC member organisations have been awarded grants to co-create youth-led programmes from August 2025-February 2026. Read their programme summaries below for more information on whatt hey pan to deliver.
Centre for Alternative Technology
Centre for Alternative Technology's (CAT) programme will convene and develop a youth panel, working with Reaching Wider and existing school contacts alongside the wider community. We will work with young people from Y8 and Y9, age 12 to 14 years.
Our focus is on climate change and climate awareness. We will explore what the young people already know about climate change, how they feel about it, what impact they have seen in their own communities and what they would like to see for their communities in the future. We will look at skills they will need to make their vision a reality, exploring the role of environmental science in future study and work, identifying barriers and looking to solutions. Cocreation with the young people will underpin our project, we will adapt the programme to their needs and interests.
Research highlights rising climate anxiety among young people, with many feeling powerless to address the crisis (Save the Children, 2022). Through this project we want to help young people to have agency and feel that their actions and career choices can have impact. We plan four engagements, two in school, one at the Centre for Alternative Technology and one at a Welsh university.
Dynamic Earth
Dynamic Earth will partner with Multi-Cultural Family Base (MCFB), an Edinburgh-based organisation aiming to enhance the lives of vulnerable and disadvantaged children, young people, and their families/wider influencers. This will be a valuable opportunity to build upon previous work with MCFB, strengthening our relationship with them and the young people they support, amplifying the voices of their young members on critical climate science issues, informing future strategic planning of our galleries and programming, and inspiring positive action from programme participants and everyone who visits us.
We will co-create a programme of 5 in-depth, in-person interactive sessions with a focus on polar and marine science, and geosciences, tailored to the interests of the young people taking part.
We intend to work with members of their groups aged 8-12 and 12-14 Young Ambassadors, who are particularly interested in advocating for anti-racism and positive change. We expect 10-15 young people to take part.
Exeter Science Centre
Exeter Science Centre is partnering with SPACE Youth Services, to co-develop a youth-led programme exploring environmental science through the lens of young people’s interests and lived experience in Northern Devon. Focusing on Bideford and Barnstaple youth centres - close to the proposed site of our first physical science centre - this programme will support us in ensuring our centre is developed inclusively, reflecting local needs and interests.
Northern Devon faces pockets of high levels of deprivation, very low progression rates to higher education and poor access to informal science learning. Through this programme, we’ll engage small groups of 11–15 year olds in creative, participatory sessions designed to build their agency, aspirations, and connection to environmental science, research and researchers. Sessions will explore themes such as land use, biodiversity, food security, and climate change, drawing from previous NERC-supported resources, the interests of the group and connecting with local expertise and themes.
The Next Gen Earth project allows us to deepen that relationship, shaping both our own youth engagement practice and the development of our long-term youth advisory board. The young people will help to inform and steer the development of our first centre as well as our upcoming major project work on land use with North Devon Biosphere.
Above all, we aim to create a meaningful, lasting connection with these young people and their youth leaders — offering them a platform to share their views, building a sense of their belonging within science and helping us learn how best to serve them through environmental science engagement and education.
National Space Centre
We will work with students across the city of Leicester that are actively part of our after-school space clubs to create a youth voice forum. The participants will take ownership over a green area on the space centre ground and look at how we can best create a sustainable environment for biodiversity. The group would need to look at what is sustainable, works for the local area, cost effective and impactful for our local residents.
The project will run over 12 weeks of interactions covering school 2 terms. The first terms work would focus on the options available and also speaking to experts in the field, such as National Centre for Earth Observation situated in Leicester and NERC funded researchers. From this research the group would put forward a proposal to be agreed by the participants. The second terms work would concentrate on putting their ideas into practice. The participants would need to work with members of the National Space Centre teams to get their ideas initiated from budgets, and finance to building and gardening we would bring in members of the various teams to support and create and area based on the ideas and designs of the students.
Oxford University Museum Natural History
Oxford University Museum of Natural History has an extensive programme of activities for young people. The museum’s experienced youth team develop and deliver opportunities that encourage young people to feel part of the natural environment, hopeful about the future and able to share this hope and agency with their peers and museum visitors.
The youth team have identified a group of 16 to 19-year olds from the existing programmes that are keen to work more collaboratively with the museum. These Next Gen Earth Advocates will be supported by the youth team to devise a series of action-focused sessions for 14 to 16-year olds. This series will draw on the museum’s special relationship with Oxford University departments. Academic expertise will form the basis of each session. The response and the nature of activities will be directed by the advocates. It is anticipated that this response will begin in the museum and extend into local schools, community groups and spaces for nature.
Royal Botanical Gardens Kew
The Youth Council at RBG, Kew is looking to host a series of events across the month of November for young people interested in a future in the environmental sector. Young people between 13 and 18 will participate in various activities themed as a ‘green zone’ around Kew’s annual Model COP event which this year will host over 100 young people on Saturday 22 November, simulating the events in Brazil at COP30. Participants will be encouraged to attend multiple events for maximum impact, but it will also be possible to attend any single event based on interest and availability.
These green zone events will be co-created events by young people, for young people. The Youth Council currently has three working groups focussed around Social Media, Events and Youth Outreach. Working within these committees, the Youth Council will identify youth groups, coalitions and young people with interest in attending such events, as well as reaching out to the current Youth Programme at Kew, which reaches over 400 young people between 14 and 17 each year, and has over 60 long- term young volunteers. These young people will offer advice to the Youth Council on their needs and interests, and the Youth Council will then draw up plans incorporating these ideas.
This will be the first time that the Kew Youth Programme has facilitated a fully youth- led series of events, and we believe this structure will be particularly impactful at extending our reach to new audiences whilst also providing valuable skill development, agency and ownership for both our Youth Council members and Youth Programme co-producers.
Techniquest
The programme will be co-created with young people and delivered in partnership with our community partners- ACE (Action in Caerau and Ely), FERN, and the Youth Parliament. These community groups are essential to ensuring that underrepresented voices are heard. By working with our partners, we will provide young people with the knowledge, confidence, and skills needed to express their views and actively participate in shaping future initiatives.
This initiative not only strengthens community ties and environmental literacy but also amplifies the voices of young people from underrepresented communities—placing them at the centre of the conversation about our shared environmental future.
It will include the following key stages:
- Introduction to NERC Environmental Science
- Recruitment of Youth Panel Members
- Research Project Development
- Data Collection and Analysis
- Presentation of Findings
- COP30 After Hours Youth Event
The Eden Project
As an educational charity, a long-term aim of Eden Project Cornwall is to create an equitable youth board to incorporate meaningful youth consultation and participation into our work and help steer future development. This will widen access for young people to STEM and NERC science, and engagement with our mission: ‘inspiring and demonstrating positive action for the planet’. Crucially, it will help provide members of the next generation with a sense of agency to tackle the many, interconnected environmental and social challenges we face today. Rather than assume what form the youth board should take, we would like to ask our local young people - to ensure the board functions with their values at the centre and is meaningful and sustainable.
The Next Gen Earth programme offers the ideal opportunity to carry out an initial phase of co-creation and R&D for a youth engagement strategy and board. In parallel, it will allow us to help a group of marginalised, local young people develop skills, confidence and connections to existing projects at Eden, careers in STEM/the environment sector and see themselves as advocates for change.
We will carry out four engagements with the same group; circa eight young people, aged 14-17, who will have opted to participate via The House youth centre in St Austell (run by Young People Cornwall) local to our Cornwall destination. These will include a conversational, activity-based workshop at The House, two daytrips to the Eden Project including a specialist-facilitated, creative project – the opportunity to share something that has inspired them whilst at Eden, via a film or photography or other creative output, all co-designed. We will showcase the output, support them to share it elsewhere (e.g., at The House or their school) and share it with the executive and charitable leadership of Eden Project Cornwall.
Xplore! Science Discovery Centre
Xplore! will deliver a six-session, youth-led, environmental science-focused programme in Colwyn Bay, North Wales — an area ranked within the 10% most deprived in Wales. The programme is being co-created with a youth group formed by Jodie James, the Children’s and Families Worker for the Methodist Church Circuit. By placing young people at the heart of the process, the project aims to break down barriers and open pathways to opportunity through hands-on science engagement, community connection, and skills development.
This initiative offers a timely and meaningful focus to bring the group together, engaging young people aged 7–14 — many of whom have strong connections to local faith communities — in creative, values-driven exploration of environmental issues.
The programme will empower young people to connect their lived experiences, identities, and beliefs — including faith-informed views of care and stewardship — with urgent environmental topics like climate justice, biodiversity, and access to local green spaces. Through co-creation, they will explore questions that matter to them and shape outputs that reflect their priorities and voices.
Running from late September 2025 to January 2026, the sessions will be delivered in trusted local spaces within the Methodist circuit and led in partnership with Jodie, who brings over 25 years of teaching experience and deep community relationships. The format will combine discussion, storytelling, hands-on creative methods (such as zines, video, or visual art), and engagement with scientists and creatives.
Each session builds towards a youth-designed public sharing event, showcasing their work and sparking wider community dialogue. Along the way, participants will develop confidence, skills, and agency in exploring how environmental science relates to their everyday lives and future aspirations.
To further elevate youth voice, we’ll collaborate with More Than Minutes, a live illustration organisation, who will visually capture one of the sessions in real time — turning young people’s words and ideas into an artwork that both reflects and honours their perspectives.
