The Green Free School - an innovative learning community for empowering the green transition
A former industrial building in Copenhagen is redesigned to house an open learning community, The Green Free School. Focusing on interaction between innovative, traditional and new ground-breaking competences, students develops courage and skills to be a part of creating a sustainable future.
Long innovative learning projects enables students to solve challenges in the real world. Environmental, social and economic sustainability are included in various forms in every learning project.
Local
Denmark
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Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Den Grønne Friskole Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Dorthe Last name of representative: Junge Gender: Female Nationality: Denmark Function: Headmaster Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Strandlodsvej 38 Town: Copenhagen S Postal code: 2300 Country: Denmark Direct Tel:+45 81 11 39 26 E-mail:dj@dengroennefriskole.dk Website:http://dengroennefriskole.dk
In 2014, a group of parents in a local community came together to create a visionary and sustainable school, which had to be green, socially inclusive, and with new, innovative learning methods. The initiative was based on a desire to support the green transition through new learning and innovative approaches to the acquisition of knowledge and skills. A sustainable learning laboratory. The Green Free School has been a pioneering, sustainable learning community in an old industrial building since 2014. The innovative and sustainable didactics and the innovative pedagogical methods for learning together, and in interaction with the local community, are the way to reach the goal; giving students the courage, knowledge, and skills to help shaping the future. The school educates students to become an active part of the green transformation, the transition towards a more sustainable, inclusive, and circularly oriented society.
The school is based on the broad concept of sustainability. Environmental, social, and economic sustainability, are included in various forms in every innovative learning project.
We are giving students a close relationship with nature. That is the reason why learning is outside in the local community one day a week, all year round in all kind of weather. We use learning spaces on the beach, in the forest, in local parks, in our school garden, and other urban nature.
Social sustainability and social economy pervade our inclusive practice of admission to the poorest families without fee, as well as economic and other support for children from refugee families. The school is inclusive on all levels, and we see diversity as a strength. Across gender, age or diagnoses, everyone is part of the community in the innovative learning projects.
Economic sustainability / circular economy is the whole sustainable way of thinking, and we combine the UN's global sustainability goals with the Donut model, inspired by Inge Røpke from University of Aalborg.
Shift of paradigm in education and learning
The broad concept of sustainability
Creativity and innovation
Powerfull inclusive relations
Open and collaborative school
The Green Free School started based on a desire from a group of parents to create a learning environment, a school where children are taught to take care of nature and take part in the green transition. Therefore, biological sustainability, the biodiversity crisis, the high carbon footprints, the climate challenges, and our problematic ways of production in industry and the energy sectors, continue to be important elements in the innovative learning processes at school. This is also evedent in the activities and collaborations we have externally with organizations and individuals locally, nationally - and globally.
Renovation and maintenance of the buildings – the old industrial buildings – is 100% sustainable and non-toxic. We work comprehensively with sustainable procurement and nature-based solutions. With biodegradable clay paint from Germany, with insulation mats made from hemp, with recycled materials, recycled furniture, and other reusable equipment throughout the school.
An important part of the of DNA of The Green Free School is the inclusion of art and craft in all the innovative learning projects. Both with the aim of being able to immerse oneself and find peace in a changeable time, mental well-being. But also with the aim of being able to achieve a more sustainable consumption and a lifestyle that takes the planetary limits into account. The students (and the parents) have helped to restore and decorate the old industrial buildings, right from the beginning of the school. Craft, artistic, and creative competences, are valued on an equal footing with traditional academic competences. Both the artistic and the beautifulness, as well as the fact that you yourself have helped to create and shape your surroundings, is a powerful driver for change.
Dealing with major crises happens together. Learning happens together. Innovation happens together. At The Green Free School, it's not just about communities, but about inclusive communities. We believe that everyone does the right thing if they can. And we believe that all children have special needs and special talents. It's just not the same for all children. That is why there is also room for children and families in the many different versions that exists in our local community. This also means that children who are facing challenges of various kinds, are a natural and welcome part of our school.
Social innovation and social economic thinking pervade our inclusive practice with admission to free places for the most disadvantaged families and economic and other special status for children from refugee families. The school is inclusive on all levels and we see diversity as a strength. Across gender, age, diagnoses and challenges, everyone is part of everyday life and the innovative learning processes.
The Green Free School has arisen on the basis of a group of parents. Parents and other interested parties in the local community were invited to a series of meetings in the start-up of the school with the aim of securing support for the project and also involving different attitudes on how such a school should be framed. The school continues to be run by two groups of stakeholders; the parent circle, which consists of parents, and the school circle, which consist of other stakeholders from the local community. Representatives from both circles make up the school's board.
The local community is constantly involved in the school in the innovative learning projects, which is the way the entire school is teaching. It always involves authentic recipients. The school year consists of five innovative learning projects, in which the students, while acquiring traditional professional skills and innovation skills, must help the authentic recipients solving a challenge.
The authentic recipients are e.g.
Bloom – festival for nature and science https://www.bloom.ooo/festival
Keep Amager Green https://www.facebook.com/groups/199927293517812/?mibextid=6NoCDW
The local utility garden https://nf-sundvaenget.dk
The local activity center for the elderly https://sloejfen-amager.dk/
Kofoeds Skole, institution for socially disadvantaged https://menneskermedmere.dk
The association "For equal terms" https://forlige.dk
Bio Bio, a sustainable film festival https://www.bio-bio.dk
Intugreen http://www.intugreen.dk
Copenhagen Municipality, the Administration for Mobility, Climate Adaptation and Urban Maintenance
In addition, we work with an open-source strategy, so citizen who are interested in our sustainable work, environmentally, socially and economically, our innovative educational methods, the ways in which we include craftsmanship and design, the way in which we maintain and renovate the old industrial buildings, are invited in, and we share knowledge and methods.
Some of the stakeholders are the authentic beneficiaries of the innovative learning process. We are right now working on an innovative learning process in collaboration with the local floorball club and the nearby playground, as well as local actors. The floorball court and the process surrounding its establishment is going to create meetings between people of all ages and cultures within the community.
Other stakeholders are parents at the school, and they are continuously involved in the board's work (there must be a majority of parents on the board). In addition, they are involved in a number of so-called "Parent Academies", which deal with various topics within sustainability and green transition. The parents are all involved in the practical work with maintaining and ensuring sustainable building principles, recycling and upcycling of our physical framework. Shared meals and other events are also organized by the parents, where the local community is always invited.
We have meetings with both local and national politicians, as we are interested in influencing the education policy agenda, and the politicians are interested in our pedagogical and organization as an example of how creation of sustainable education can be done.
We are currently working with two researchers from the University of Aarhus. They are important stakeholders too. The two researchers are in the process of carrying out follow-up research on our current development of alternative graduation tests at the end of primary school. The alternative final exams are designed as an innovative learning process, which has a special design. That learning process must function as a cumulative process, where the students show that they can juggle the sustainable, the innovative, and the artistic skills, and use them to jointly create action in one or more of the well-known current and worldwide challenges, which immediately may seem insoluble or at least insurmountable.
The areas of knowledge we are in are working within are both about learning and knowledge acquisition, but also about sustainable education - or education in sustainability. Underlying these absolutely crucial elements for the sustainable, social and inclusive transformation of both society, industry, mindset and the lives lived together, naturally lie - as in all education - a number of associated disciplines and areas of knowledge. We have a special focus on the new innovation didactics - Design Thinking in a didactic version, as well as on new knowledge areas in primary school such as biodiversity, upcycling and recycling, ecological economics, social economy and business models, art and aesthetics, sustainable construction, circularity and social inclusion.
The consistently innovative learning projects extend over 6 – 8 weeks and are divided into four phases. The knowledge and investigation phase, the idea development phase, the realization phase and the evaluation phase. The didactic model is inspired by the methods within Design Thinking, as well as the work done at Aalborg University (The Creative Platform) and is also adapted to students in primary school.
The organization of The Green Free School in mixed-age classes and with the innovative learning processes as a comprehensive didactic method, is innovative in the true sense of the word; it is a new idea that, when implemented, creates value for others. Work is done in this way throughout the entire school, from 0th to 9th grade. All innovative learning courses are based on a challenge from real life, the authentic recipients.
It must also be described as innovative that the life lived at Den Grønne Friskole is 100% sustainable in the form of reuse and recycling of materials in everything from maintenance and furnishings to educational materials. We also buy organic and plant-based food, and waste is sorted right outside the classrooms. We want to be the good sustainable example that the children are taught.
The open-source strategy, which means that we share our knowledge and the approaches and methods we have developed for free, is also quite unique. In the educational world, the tradition and norm is that large companies make a living by producing teaching materials and pedagogical methods and textbooks.
The initiative with The Green Free School, the ideas behind it and the methods that have already been developed are obvious to replicate in other contexts. Other primary schools are the immediately obvious transfer option. We have also already had visits from schools and teacher training institutions from all over the country - and also from abroad, and we go out as well to schools on request and make workshops and courses.
Our foreign guests both from European countries, but also from e.g. The USA, Australia, go back home and start initiatives inspired by their visit to the Green Free School. In Portugal there is a school which in many areas is inspired by the Green Free School.
Other educational institutions can benefit from working within the mindset and methods we have developed at The Green Free School. Naturally adapted to the specific age group and the specific content requirements. Many youth programs at technical schools and in industry programs would be obvious fields to move into with the methods and the sustainable, including pivot point, that we practice at The Green Free School.
We invite the local community to use our facilities and premises at times of the day when we are not using them ourselves. Voluntary creative leisure groups, e.g. the green music school, and green coding club, NGOs and organizations such as Fridays For Future as well as artists and artist groups are already users of our premises from time to time. In this collaboration, there is also often an opportunity for exciting joint reflections and a transfer of mindset and methods.
The development of the Green Free School is in itself an innovation process. We take our own medicine. The method is inspired by the Design Thinking method, and it is therefore about gathering knowledge and creating new knowledge, about developing qualified ideas, about realizing the best ideas and about evaluating. It all happens in loops of iterations that constantly improve the outputs we manage to create. We also occasionally work with sub-processes in the form of design sprints. Furthermore, as previously described, we work with an open-source strategy, which both opens up the possibility that our ideas can be shared freely, but also that we work inclusively with stakeholders and actors both from the local area of Amager and from other parts of society. Broad both in many parts of society and in many layers of decision-makers
Overall, the way we work at The Green Free School addresses the major global sustainability challenges. Climate crisis, biodiversity crisis, poverty and inequality, food crisis, lack of relationships with nature. But also on challenges with abandonment and a lack of courage and skills to act on the most pressing crises. It is important to give children and young people the belief that they, together with others, can act on the challenges and problems they encounter. We must avoid making a school system that creates - or maintains - climate anxiety and resignation. Therefore, it is important to give children and young people the skills, methods and tools to change what they come across that they want to change. We start small in the small classes, small local changes that need to be created. But we end up in the large global scale with the oldest students, who throughout the schooling process have been equipped with the tools and methods to act and help changing the future.
In general, we experience great satisfaction and well-being at the school. The students express that it is meaningful to work with sustainability and innovation in the learning processes. In addition, it is motivating for the students that it is always about doing something for someone in real life and solving real problems. A parent writes in the latest parent survey; "My child learns to think for himself. Fantastic."
It also gives the children great joy and satisfaction to walk or go by bike past the places in the local area where they have planted fruit bushes or crocus, which are the first food packages for the bees in the spring. It creates pride and cohesion.
The students become really skilled at working in the innovative learning processes, at being investigative and curious, at collaborating, at getting ideas, finding new solutions and at initiating actions. They become socially competent and their way of thinking is largely characterized by altruism – doing something good for others.
Among the parents and other local actors, there is also great satisfaction with what is created in the community and in the collaboration. Both the resourceful families and the more vulnerable or exposed children and parents benefit from the inclusive learning environment and the inclusive communities.
We get really positive feedback from visitors and from those who benefit from our open-source strategy. Teachers, schools and other actors in the sustainability or education field often return and request more sparring, more knowledge or more methods.
The employees who have been developed and trained through the job at The Green Free School are also strong ambassadors in the new workplaces where they are employed afterwards.
The basic pedagogical principle of the initiative is innovative learning processes and projects. We find that the innovative didactics easily enforces the development of courage, knowledge and skills to be part of the transition towards a green and sustainable society - both among students and teachers.
All didactical and practical oprations in the school deals with sustainability - environmentally, socially and economically.
We spead out the ideas to other schools and communities to share the methods and the mindset needed in education and training to succeed with the sustainabil transition.
