Schools of Sustainability at IGB

With "S.O.S. - Schools of Sustainability", the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin has initiated a two-year process in which students from two Berlin schools work with teachers, artists and experts from the fields of education, ecology, politics and social sciences to develop ideas, methods and measures for the school infrastructure. The artists Jana Engel and Franziska Pierwoss, together with the students of the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Gymnasium and the teachers Teresa Reichelt and Katharina Horn in Berlin-Friedrichshagen, have undertaken a project on the topics of climate resilience and sustainability.

Starting with water as a resource, concrete plans for sustainable water management are being implemented in connection with the new building planned at the school, and at the same time ecological educational approaches for future years are being integrated into the school's learning and teaching programme. In practical terms, the students experience reactions and action spaces of the water problem within the framework of a re-enactment of the 2017 flood in Friedrichshagen and develop measures for their own school from this. The topic of the Tesla Gigafactory and the water requirements of this large industrial plant also occupies the students.

During their excursion to IGB, they learned important facts about the water balance in the landscape in general and about the location of large-scale industrial projects in a comparatively water-scarce region in particular. Jörg Lewandowski and Christoph Reith gave a vivid demonstration of the topic using a flow channel in which water and substrate can be used to model a landscape and water flows can be observed and traced. In a tour of the site, the students were introduced to other topics of IGB research. They remain connected to the institute through further joint activities, such as the determination of microplastics from water bodies and the analysis of water samples.