"At present, European linear production, consumption and disposal patterns seem to support the myth that we live in a world with infinite resources. We are now aware that we are living on an ecological deficit with the rest of the world, importing almost 4 times more materials than we have exported. As the European Sustainable Development Strategy points out, a change in paradigm is necessary. The change needs to go beyond the current goal of EU waste policy of becoming a Recycling Society; it needs to embrace the reduction of material and energy use in order to turn it into a Zero Waste Society. One of the main focus areas of the ""Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials Challenge"" in Horizon 2020 is waste. There is a Europe wide plea that the waste generated in one industry becomes a secondary raw material for another industry.This transition will generate growth and jobs, while contributing to environmental protection and reducing Europe's dependency on raw material imports. As educators, we believe that the younger generation need to be fully embracing this concept in order to preserve our raw materials and - ultimately - our planet. Our objective is to develop materials for use in primary, secondary and upper secondary schools following extensive and detailed teacher training. The teaching materials will be a valuable resource to aid schools around Europe to learn to reuse, repurpose, reduce and recycle waste items where possible and sell them on in the marketplace. This will require entrepreneurship skills, marketing skills, repairing and manufacturing basic skills. The materials will be supported by a series of short films created for and designed by experts, teachers and the wider community. These films will be used as part of the resources developed during the life of this project. Materials prepared as part of this exciting project will be available throughout to widen participation in all regions. The project needs to work within different countries in order to find a cross reference and collective European approach. We are all both victims and perpetrators of the mounting waste problem we have in Europe. We seek, thorugh this project, to reframe our attitudes to waste products, by looking at where we can reuse items, repair them or redesign them and make something else."

The Ocean Connections project took place against a background of increasing urgency with respect to issues of climate change and completes as the COP 26 Climate Change Conference is due to take place. Young people are increasingly aware of, and concerned about climate change and other issues of environmental sustainability, yet developing their understanding of the fragile balance of the Earth’s systems remains an ongoing challenge. The project drew on expertise from a range of partners in the UK, Denmark and Spain. HEI institutions led the project activity in each country, with overall coordination by the University of Exeter, UK, who also brought expertise in creativity and environmental educational research. VIA College, Denmark brought expertise in educational research into AR and VR. CESGA’s expertise was in the design and development of digital learning tools for education. In each country, the expertise of teachers and aquarium educators in partner schools and aquaria ensured that materials developed in partnership and tested in schools were appropriate and useable by teachers and informal educators. The objectives of the project were to:•Understand the position of Ocean Literacy, creativity pedagogies and digital technology in the formal and informal curriculum in the partner countries;•Summarise the international research literacy with respect to teaching for Ocean Literacy, creative pedagogies and education using AR/VR digital technologies;•Synthesise this state of the art knowledge to develop a set of educative principles to guide teaching for Ocean Literacy using creative, digital pedagogies•Design projects for pupils to learn about Ocean Literacy, drawing on these educative principles•Evaluate these projects to understand their impact on pupils’ knowledge and attitudes and the way in which the educative principles were enacted•Draw on the educative principles and the project outcomes to develop a toolkit for teachers to use creative and digital pedagogies together to enable young people’s Ocean learning .Materials developed were piloted in schools: three pilot projects with pupils aged 9-11, and three with pupils aged 11-14. Overall, 4 aquarium educators (1 UK, 1 Denmark, 2 Spain), 10 teachers (4UK, 3 Denmark, and 3 Spain), and 235 pupils participated directly in the pilot projects (135 pupils aged 9-11; of whom 120 were from the UK and 15 from Denmark, and 117 age 11-14, of whom 101 were from Spain and 16 from Denmark).A State of the Art Review was produced, including an analysis of curricula for pupils aged 7-11 and 11-14 in each partner country related to Ocean Literacy to search for points of commonality and difference in national approaches, an exploration of where and how creative pedagogies and AR/VR digital technologies were used in practice in the partner countries, and an international literature review of research into the three project ‘strands. A unique VR tool was created for use by teachers and pupils. Using 360 images and video from aquaria and the Ocean, using this tool pupils are able to interact with, communicate, and create learning materials for themselves with respect to the Ocean. The Ocean Connections Educative Principles and the new VR tool were used by project partners in each country to design and implement six ‘pilot projects’, three for pupils aged 7-11 (Ocean Adaptations, Plastic Pollution, and Nursing Grounds for Fish) and three for pupils aged 11-14 (Biodiversity, Shoal of Fish and Accessing the Ocean). Each project was evaluated using a mixed methods, case study approach, to produce a case study report on each pilot and an overall synthesis of the findings with respect to key research questions regarding the impact on pupils’ knowledge of and attitudes towards the ocean, pupils’ and educators’ perspectives about the innovative creative and digital approaches, and the way in which the educative principles manifested in the pilot projects. Alongside these, an innovative ‘diffractive analysis’ of the data was undertaken, drawing on arts-based methods and new materialist theory to develop new insights and questions into the nature of learning in these projects. Findings show that many pupils found the use of VR with creative pedagogies engaging and impactful, but that there were some barriers in using the tool due to lack of sufficient bandwidth and, in some schools, lack of experience. Care, responsibility and activism emerged as important themes, with some key areas of connection between creative and digital pedagogies that could be usefully built upon in the design of learning experiences. The educative principles, VR tool, and pilot projects were used to create a toolkit for teachers which can be found on the Ocean Connections website. The project was disseminated via seven stakeholder and dissemination events, newspaper articles, social media, and conference presentations.