Project resources

Explore educational resources from the Young People at a Crossroads project.

'Young People at a Crossroads' creative book

The project team is delighted to present the 'Young People at a Crossroads' creative book:

This book has been collated by Catherine Walker, lead researcher on the YPAC project, and includes original contributions by YPAC Young Researchers, and environmental educators Kit Marie Rackley and Nerida Thompson. It is illustrated by Maisy Summer. The support of the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for the work presented in this book is gratefully acknowledged.

Please note that this book is intended as an educational resource and is not to be sold. If you would like to request a printed copy of the book for teaching purposes, please contact catherine.walker-2@manchester.ac.uk.

Educators’ guide to the creative book

If you’re an educator, then this guide to the Young People at a Crossroads creative book is for you. The guide:

  • Presents a brief ‘setting the scene’ review of research and policy developments to explain how a whole school approach to climate change is both necessary and possible;
  • Takes you through ways of initiating a whole school approach by getting your school leadership and colleagues on board, so that educators working across subjects can teach on climate change effectively and confidently;
  • Presents spark ideas and activities for working with the YPAC creative book. These are designed to be adaptable to different year levels, subjects, and curricular contexts, and will easily ignite your own ideas and variations. Whilst we’ve written this with secondary schools in mind, this guide is easy to adapt to a primary school setting.

Download the eight page resource:

‘Moving beyond the crossroads’ practical guide

The Young People at a Crossroads (YPX) project investigates the intersection between personal and societal ‘crossroads’ in relation to migration and climate change. For young people who migrate, this experience marks a significant crossroads in their personal and family story. On a much larger scale, we are often told that ‘humanity is at a crossroads’ in terms of responding to climate change. 

Of course, we cannot stay ‘at a crossroads’ forever. So, at the end of the project, we invited the young researchers and others from their schools and colleges to join with adults in Manchester and Melbourne to have intergenerational conversations about responding to climate change.

This practical guide for schools and community settings presents visual and textual snapshots from these conversations. It ends with tips on moving beyond the climate crossroads based on participants’ responses. Download the eight page resource:

The guide includes a number of word clouds created using wordart.com. You can access all of the links to the word clouds in the following document:

‘Stories of climate education, action and adaptation’ video

This video presents three stories from the YPX project using animated illustrations by Maisy Summer that were originally commissioned for the YPX creative book. 

The video was produced by Kit Marie Rackley (Geogramblings.com). Narrators of the video are Kit Marie Rackley, YPX participants Rebecca, Edward and Haripriya, and Topo Mokokwane.

To see more of Kit Marie’s work, please visit https://geogramblings.com/

To see more of Maisy’s work, please visit https://www.maisysummer.com/

Interview training resources

Many of the young researchers who took part in the YPX research interviewed one or more parent or grandparent and wrote about these interviews for the YPX creative book.

Before they did this, the young researchers took part in two hours of interview training.

The handouts that we used in training are available to download here:

We have also created a training video that can be can be completed comfortably in one hour. It is based on interview training developed with 14-18-year-olds, however, it is not age-specific.

The training includes a number of responsive activities, and therefore will work best when used in a workshop format in groups of people. However, it could be used by an individual who is interested in learning more about interviews.

Note for facilitators: If you wish to use the training slides without the narration, you can access these as a PDF below.

You may find it useful to print slides 14, 19-23 and 29-33 and put prints under people’s seats before beginning the workshop. Those sitting on seats over the prints can read out the slide content at relevant points and this will vary whose voice is heard in the room.

The training resource has been developed by Catherine Walker, Ellen van Holstein, Adelin Gabriel-Balan, Leonardo Faedo, Kauser Hussein, Diana Rodriguez and Siobhan Stanton. The video is narrated by Catherine Walker.

‘Mind, Body and Soul: Understanding eco-anxiety’ workshop resources

These workshop resources have been adapted and shared by activist and educator Kit Marie Rackley, who worked as an educational consultant to the Young People at a Crossroads project. To find out more about Kit Marie’s work, please visit https://geogramblings.com/

The resources consist of:

  1. Presentation slides (PDF 1.5MB) - will take 45 - 60 minutes to work through, depending on time available.
  2. A transcript of a guided meditation (PDF 44KB) to be read in the ‘Body’ section (slide 17).

The slides feature an interview between Kit Marie and White Raven Woman Candace Lloyd taken from the Coffee and Geography Podcast (20 November 2021). You can listen to this clip and download a transcript at the following links:

Kit Marie originally developed these resources with Kate Russell and Emma Lindsay for the University of East Anglia’s Project Change.