Our Projects

Encouraging walking and clean air routes with illustration

Pupils in Stoke Newington teamed up with popular children’s illustrator Al Murphy to create a map of low-pollution walking routes.

The map, which highlights the area’s most polluted streets and suggests alternative cleaner routes, was put together by Year 4 children at William Patten Primary School.  It’s being distributed via schools and nurseries to thousands of children in the area.

The children used personal exposure monitors to measure the amount of black carbon present on different routes to schools, nurseries and popular places like the library, leisure centre and parks.  Then, working with air quality experts and Kings College London’s Annual Air Pollution Map, they plotted less polluted routes. Talented designer Matt Appleton of Modern Activity helped pull the map together, even creating a font for the artwork and website from the children's writing.

Pollution Sound Piece

Children at a polluted London primary school have created a moving sound piece about how dirty air affects their daily lives.

Working with artist Jan Cullen, formerly Family Programmes Manager at the National Portrait Gallery,   Sound Designer Rob Szeglia and Artist Angela Wright, children at William Patten Primary spoke of their worries about playing so close to a busy road and with a bus stop just outside the playground where 500 buses stop during school hours.

The Young Lungs Sound Piece featured interviews with local people and whole school chanting of “young lungs matter” and “clean air for kids.”  The children learnt to use professional recording equipment and the piece features the sounds of engines and idling buses, children playing, singing and taking deep breaths.