Black Mountains College, a sustainability institution, hosts several courses, from teacher training to vocational courses in regenerative horticulture.
Now it in the running to win a prestigious award from climate charity Ash den for its innovation in environmental education.
At the college, a series of short courses are on offer, including A New Story which teaches people how to take meaningful action and align their values with their professional and personal life.
Accessibility is key to the college, with subsidies available for short courses and free vocational training and further education through Welsh statutory funding, as well as accommodation for those with disabilities.
Ben, who was a teacher at the University of London and the University of Chicago, decided to start the college after working in Africa for over a decade.
While there, the author and journalist, wrote about the lives of refugees from the biggest camp in Africa for a book, The Horn of Africa, as he witnessed climate destruction first hand.
‘I decided to put my energy into education and a new educational institution that would build new leaders and teach the kind of skills we need for action and adaptation,’ he explains
‘I’ve seen the future in the Horn of Africa, and that future is coming to hit us here. Much, much sooner than everybody realizes. ’
After gaining funding from Breton Beacons National Park and the National Lottery, the college began teaching in 2021 after delays during the pandemic.
Ben’s experiences in Africa were instructive, since he saw directly how the climate crisis exacerbated existing social tensions in Africa, resulting in collapsed governments and conflicts.
We are very good at predicting our science and predicting future environmental situations and conditions, says Ben. But social science is really bad at predicting human futures and how human systems will respond. Africa in this respect is instructive because it doesn’t take very much to jeopardize the normal functioning of political and economic systems. We have seriously underestimated the disruptive impacts that that kind of stress has, like the cost of living crisis – inflation is a natural consequence of climate change.
‘There is an urgent need to educate people with transferable skills for a very uncertain future. Politics and economics are a key part of that because young people need to see hope. Part of hope is having options and seeing that there are alternatives for change. That means we have to understand how power works, and we have to explain that to people, so that they can see viable ways to engage.’
Students at the college can also study the BMC degree, offered in partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University, which is unique as a Bachelor of Arts rooted in ecology.
Just like the other courses available, it doesn’t just study ecology, but evaluates politics and the arts, questions current social systems and invents new ways of living to combat climate breakdown.
Other curriculums, like the government’s recently announced natural history GCSE, neglect significant factors which contribute to climate breakdown, according to Ben.
Ben expects the sector to grow in the years to come, with schools, colleges and universities offering more programs aimed at improving climate literacy.
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