Prestigious awards win for ground-breaking sustainability project from York St John University
Living Lab’s campus food project honoured at the UK and Ireland Green Gown Awards 2024
York St John University is celebrating a second Green Gown Awards win for its pioneering Living Lab initiative. The Living Lab is a unique network of students and staff from across the University, collaborating to investigate real-life, local ecological justice issues.
Living Lab Feeding the Campus: Social and ecological justice in the York St John food system was an expansive and ambitious project for students to research and improve food systems on campus. It was named the Student Engagement category winner at last night’s prestigious UK and Ireland Green Gown Awards 2024 at Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh.
Now in their 20th year, the awards recognise outstanding and exceptional sustainability initiatives being undertaken in the post-16 education sector across the UK and Ireland. This year’s awards saw 133 projects from 83 institutions shortlisted, with 22 winners.
The Living Lab is an interdisciplinary network based in York St John University’s Institute for Social Justice. It brings together students and staff to collaborate with local organisations and policymakers to investigate and tackle real-life local problems. The first Living Lab project, investigating air quality in York, was the winner of the ‘Tomorrow’s Employees’ category in the Green Gowns 2022.
The Living Lab then turned its attentions to a new project Feeding the Campus: Social and ecological justice in the York St John food system. Over 1,000 students have participated in Feeding the Campus through course modules, hundreds have attended or volunteered at Living Lab events, and approximately 30 have gained work experience. The project has also supported four paid interns and five paid student researchers.
The work has covered a range of themes including campus and community gardening, growing food and sharing it through a student-led pop up cafe. It has also expanded to city-wide community garden networks, making gardening accessible to all, including using wheelchair-accessible planters.
The team collaborated with the University’s onsite Catering team to achieve Food for Life Silver accreditation for healthy and sustainable food. With a focus on ethical food procurement, Business students researched and presented supplier recommendations. Students also produced the YSJ Cookbook which gathered simple and affordable recipes from the York St John Community and is now available for free to every student. It further evolved into the YSJ Food Stories Magazine, curated and edited by Publishing and Creative Writing students.
Commenting on York St John University’s entry, the Green Gown Awards judges said:
“An excellent initiative which embodies cross-disciplinary engagement and has good reach across the institution including curriculum, research and estates. Great to see emphasis on student skills and employability. Particularly strong social element to this initiative – including focus on widening participation and paid roles for students. Great to see wide dissemination of the project, and the outcome of a funded PhD is commendable.”
Professor Karen Bryan, OBE, Vice Chancellor said: “With co-production at its heart, I’m so pleased to see our Living Lab recognised at this year’s awards. By bringing together students and staff, we can inspire and empower one another to create meaningful change. This award recognises the effort from everyone involved and will energise our ongoing cross-university work towards becoming a more sustainable society.”
Co-leads of the Living Lab, Dr Cath Heinemeyer, Senior Researcher in Ecological Justice, and Dr Vicki Pugh, ISJ Project Manager, said: “Through the Living Lab, we aim to offer new opportunities to students in the field of ecological justice – to be leaders, activists, and knowledge makers. So, we are absolutely thrilled to be recognised in the Student Engagement category. The Living Lab is built on the energy, openness, and commitment of our cross-university team, which brings different expertise and experiences to the table. The variety of projects nurtured within the Living Lab highlight the power of creativity and its essential place in facing environmental challenges. For all those teams and individuals involved, we are hugely thankful.”
Psychology student Hayden Costello started work with the Living Lab through the Students as Researchers programme: “It’s through the Living Lab that I found my passion for cooking and making sure that everyone had good quality food that was affordable. With some funding from the University, I was able to start my student-led Garden Cafe which provides quality affordable food for everyone.”
Chey Salisbury from the York St John Grounds team was in Edinburgh to collect the award. He said: “We were delighted to win and genuinely surprised because of the calibre of the other brilliant projects and universities that we were up against. Working with our fantastic students on Wild Wednesdays is such a highlight of my role at York St John. Being able to expand our community gardening and seeing what energy the students bring and what joy they get out of it is really special.”
The Living Lab team are now turning their attentions to Climate Resilience and have just announced a 2 year project Resilience in a Changing Climate. So watch this space!
Find out more about the York St John Living Lab https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/research/institute-for-social-justice/research-themes/ecological-justice/living-lab/
Take a look at these short films to hear from our students about their work with the Living Lab https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/research/institute-for-social-justice/research-themes/ecological-justice/living-lab/living-lab-films/