A series of workshops were recently held at Gżira primary school to teach children how to plant and propagate native Maltese species.
The workshops formed part of the EU-funded H2020 Varcities project, which is working with citizens to implement greening measures that benefit the community. The Varcities team in Malta includes representatives of the University of Malta and local NGO ACT, and enjoys the support of the Gżira local council.
During the workshops, the children learned how to mix compost and planted an oak, pomegranate and Judas tree. They took one of them home to their families and left the others for the school garden.
As one of the project initiatives, the Varcities team aims to create an unconventional playscape at the school. The project hopes to provide an outdoor space where the children can find inspiration from the natural environment and play together with creatively designed structures made from recycled materials.
The garden has been planned to incorporate the ideas of the children and the teachers, and the team has visited the school several times to create the concept together. Using multi-sensory activities, arts, crafts and outdoor games, children were given the opportunity to express themselves and develop their ideas. They wanted more trees, outdoor creative teaching spaces, and colourful artworks to brighten the walls.
While the school’s playscape is still being designed, children in Years 5 and 6 were excited to have the chance to develop their own gardening skills at planting workshops with the Varcities team. They learned more about the species that are native to Malta and what they look like, as well as how to care for their own plants to see growth over a long time.
The workshops also contributed to the research being done by Varcities, which is investigating how to effectively involve local people in co-created greening initiatives. The team wanted to see how the children interact with each other and the teachers in the outdoor space, and how they engaged with the activity and the ethos behind it. The project hopes that by showing that Gżira can be greener, so can the whole of Malta and Gozo.
The project hopes that by showing that Gżira can be greener, so can the whole of Malta and Gozo
During another pop-up engagement that the Malta team undertook, many Gżira citizens expressed a desire to see more plants and trees in the locality. This participatory, inclusive approach is called “co-creation” and is one of the unique features of the interventions facilitated by Varcities.
The project consortium is led by the Telecommunication Systems Institute, which forms part of the Technical University of Crete, and includes another 24 partners, including the University of Malta and the eight municipalities that are the project’s pilot cities. For more information, visit the website below.
The Varcities project is funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme and supported by the Arts Council Malta and Gżira local council.