SuDS Success in Eastbourne!

Nick has over 21 years of teaching experience and is incredibly passionate about the outdoors - making him the perfect man for the job for this recent project. Nick’s teaching career saw him take part as Ten Tors and Duke of Edinburgh Award Manager, Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead at Exeter college and took on a Beaver Scout Leader role. During his time as a teacher he enjoyed incorporating the outdoors into his teaching wherever possible and getting young people engaged with the outdoors.

We asked Nick to tell us a little bit about the work he has been doing in Eastbourne and here is what he had to say:

After over twenty one years teaching I finally get to focus purely on the fun bits.

Our Rainwater have signed me up to work with the Blue Heart Project to deliver a pilot programme to seven schools around the Eastbourne area, creating and delivering exciting and engaging content for children at both primary and secondary schools around flood prevention and STEM topics. The schools will all be retrofitted with sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) or ‘leaky water butts’ that slow the flow of water and capture storm water that would otherwise overwhelm drainage systems. I’m not an engineer and had to explore the topic thoroughly to come up with a meaningful and worthwhile range of activities that could work with a wide range of learners.

We’ve visited and worked with five schools in the area. Children are introduced to the themes, take part in some icebreaker activities that explore water, chemistry, engineering and team work, capturing their imagination and engaging them from the very start. The Wondrous Water, carousel of activities enables children to explore natural flood management techniques, the role water has in our lives and various ways we can use it. They do all of this through self-led play and investigation. Once the issues and solutions have been investigated the project allows the children to design the SuD Systems that will be fitted to all the drainpipes of their school, stopping thousands of litres of water flooding the drainage systems after heavy rain. The children have been incredible at this aspect of the project, coming up with ideas and solutions for their individual schools that have never been considered before- although it may not be feasible to create systems that only spray teachers!