Engagement
Climate Action Week
Queen Mary’s annual Climate Action Week brings students, staff and the wider community together to learn about climate change and take practical action.
In 2025, more than 150 people took part in 15 events covering climate policy, environmental justice, sustainable finance, waste, biodiversity and community action. The programme combined discussion with practical activities. Events included Beyond COP29: Turning Talk into Action?, From Carbon Footprints to Systems Change, the BIG Green Canal Clean, planting activities and a clothes-repair workshop attended by more than 20 students and staff.
Participants also visited a materials recovery facility to see what happens to Queen Mary’s recycling after it leaves campus, while the Letters to the Earth Workshop gave people a creative space to reflect on the climate crisis and consider individual and collective responses. By combining research, discussion, and hands-on activities, Climate Action Week gives the Queen Mary community different ways to understand climate change and take local action.
Responding to climate anxiety
Climate action also means helping people respond to the uncertainty and anxiety that can come with the climate crisis. Queen Mary’s Critical Hope Collective explores how people can respond to climate change, environmental destruction and uncertainty without ignoring the scale of the challenge.
Its work includes climate grief, climate anxiety and eco-anxiety, particularly among children and young people. In October 2024, the Collective held a session focused on anxiety in climate-change education and how teaching can help people respond constructively to difficult environmental futures and adapt mentally to environmental change.
The Collective also supports wider discussion through reading groups, seminars and teaching activity, helping connect climate education with the emotional and social impacts of environmental change.
Letters to the Earth
As part of Climate Action Week 2025, Queen Mary hosted a Letters to the Earth Workshop. The session invited participants to reflect on the planetary emergency, express their concerns and hopes for the future, and think about individual and collective responses to climate change. The workshop added a creative strand to Climate Action Week, giving participants a different way to engage with climate anxiety, responsibility and action.
Giving the public a voice in climate and trade policy
Queen Mary also creates opportunities for people to take part in climate-policy discussions. In 2024, we worked with the Trade Justice Movement and MutualGain to deliver the world’s first Citizens’ Assembly on Trade and Climate. This was an opportunity for people to learn from different groups affected by climate change, understand the risks and inequalities they face, and consider how trade and climate policy can respond more fairly and effectively.
The Assembly brought together 59 members of the UK public, who spent 35 hours hearing evidence, considering different perspectives and developing recommendations on how UK trade policy should respond to climate change. Recommendations covered issues including greener public procurement, stronger environmental considerations in trade policy and greater international cooperation.
Teaching communities about pollinators and climate-resilient urban spaces
Through Plants, Pollinators and People, Queen Mary trained 12 undergraduate students in entomology, science communication and habitat creation before they delivered three community workshops on pollinators and urban biodiversity.
More than 60 participants, including school pupils, St John Ambulance cadets, adults, and older local residents, learned how to identify insects, understand the habitats pollinators need and create practical features such as bee hotels. The programme helped communities understand how greener, more biodiverse urban spaces can support ecological resilience in the face of environmental change.