Big Help Academy - Introducing Green Infrastructure
Big Help Academy is grateful for the support given by Barclays Bank volunteers on the 28th September 2023 to help install and upgrade Green Infrastructure (GI) that surrounds the first Big Help Academy complex at Oatlands Road in Kirkby. Their assistance in: removing weed species; cleaning grass regions around the area; and implementing new plants plays a vital role in enabling habitat creation and biodiversity increase in the local region. Big Help Academy is committed to embedding this sustainable development in line with the educational opportunities that the centre is going to provide.
Nieuwenhuijsen (2021) elaborated on the relationship between GI and personal health, citing links to a decrease in air pollution and reduced temperatures during summer months as a catalyst for their introduction. Big Help Academy understands this linkage and provides precedence for the implementation of an enhanced green environment to encourage a closeness with the natural environment. The Barclays Bank volunteers helped with this initial installation, providing a tangible and practical deliverance of the theoretically-charged reasoning for their inception – an illustration of the symbiosis between both organisations in dealing with anthropocentric habitat decay and loss of GI.
As GI becomes ever present in the urban fabric of the UK (Roe & Mell, 2013), it is crucial that organisations adopt the growing green trends of the day to align with the rhetoric and implementations shared from academics and organisations. Big Help Academy takes a crucial step in setting a pace for GI adoption, opening from day one with various species of plants and trees on the premise, enabling a close relationship with the students that share the indoor space, and the nature that occupies the latter. To this extent the progressive upgrade of GI can address a triad of social, economic and environmental facets, e.g., dictating a closer dichotomy between human and nature interaction, attracting investment in the local area, and creating linkage between greenspaces (biodiversity corridors).
Barclays volunteers helping to install Green Infrastructure (GI) at Big Help Academy.
Imperative to aligning closer with GI principles is the incessant ethic that ensures an alignment is pursued. As such; Big Help Academy will feature consistently in Big Help Project’s Eco-Committee meetings on how to: better improve habitat connectivity; support wildlife in the local region, and promote a closer relationship with nature at the Oatlands Big Help Academy locale. Implementations that precede this inaugural planting stage will add to the GI with direction and purpose, unafraid to break dogmatic borders associated with GI planning strategy and their relevant mechanisms of use. 28th September marked the start of a clean-green canvas for Big Help Academy’s ecological legacy - one it is proud to progress and cherish.
References
Nieuwenhuijsen, M.J. (2021) ‘Green infrastructure and health’, Annual Review of Public Health, 42, pp.317-328.
Roe, M. and Mell, I. (2013) ‘Negotiating value and priorities: evaluating the demands of green infrastructure development’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 56(5), pp.650-673.