London's Arcadia Education and Learning Strategy

London's Arcadia and the Thames Landscape Strategy are committed to increasing education, access and understanding of the Thames environment to as wide an audience as possible. As part of London's Arcadia an exciting education programme has been devised and a Heritage Education Officer has been appointed in partnership with Orleans House Gallery.

In addition to the formal schools programme a variety of different media are being developed to roll out the education initiative including interpretation panels, volunteer days, walking leaflets, schools programmes, heritage trails and talks. One of many education projects that has been carried out this year was in partnership with Orleans House Gallery called ‘Natural Talent’. It was a huge success with 50 school children in year 2 involved in a cross curriculum activity over 4 days that culminated in a trip on the river aboard HM The Queen’s Thames Barge ‘The Jubilant’. The children learnt about the river’s wildlife and why litter and pollution damage the environment so much.

The first of three new walking leaflets has been launched complete with children's activity sheet to encourage families to come down and discover the river. To accompany these walking guides a series of interpretation panels are being installed at key locations such as rail and bus stations. Along the riverside, bronze plaques are being placed in the ground to aid the casual walker to understand their surroundings. Each plaque has a unique identification number that will correspond to interpretation boards and walking guides. These have been designed in a way to reduce the clutter of more traditional interpretative panels. It is hoped to roll these out across the TLS area over the coming years.

Jolly Boat Project

London's Arcadia is working with Grey Court School students and expert boat builders from Richmond Bridge Boat Hire to build a Jolly Boat. The finished boat will be entered into the Great River Race in September. To find out more about this project, have a look at the current progress report(pdf, 482KB).