This week has seen Eton celebrate our natural world and raise awareness of its vulnerabilities with ‘Eton Environment Week’. The Eco Board, in collaboration with current pupils and OEs, organised a wealth of activities across the school, ranging from art exhibitions to bird walks, and from vegetarian meals at Bekynton to talks from some of the world’s top climate scientists and experts on carbon footprinting, including Mark Rose and Mike Berners-Lee.
If you were walking around Eton this week you may have noticed senior pupils sporting special waistcoats made from recycled cotton and polyester. As well as contributing to the diversity of school dress, they also helped to raise awareness of the ubiquity of plastics in everyday items and garments. You may also have noticed that the famous Eton phone box (converted a few years ago into a community book swap) has turned green for the occasion, with Banksy-style art decorating its sides and dotted around the rest of the school for the discerning eye to spot.
In the Art Schools there was a selection of pieces from George Butler’s ‘CoExistence’ exhibition, which focuses on the ‘increasing overlap between the human and animal world’ and nature being driven into cities as traditional habitats face decay and decimation. If you are visiting London soon you might spy an installation of 100, life-size Indian Elephants parading in front of Buckingham Palace, created by Adivasi indigenous communities in India, which accompanies George’s exhibition. Visitors to the Art Schools this week were lucky enough to see some of the plans and drawings of this mammoth project, which you can read about here https://www.georgebutler.org/pages/next-exhibition
It is a been a particularly eventful week at Eton for the Environmental Society and has given pupils, staff and the wider Eton community the chance to learn more about our local environment and issues facing our planet today.
