Just imagine putting on a climate musical with 125 British 7th grade students in a day. No problem for Inside the Greenhouse.  Beth Osnes, co-founded of Inside the Greenhouse, is recently back from London where she got help from 19 amazing University of East London students to do just that. Shine is an original Inside the Greenhouse musical for youth-led community engagement for resilience planning. It weaves climate science and artistic expression into a funny and powerful story that spans 300 million years of geological time to convey how humanity and climate are interrelated. London students rehearsed their own unique version of this original new musical that is being performed by local youth in select cities across the world that are part of the 100 Resilient Cities Initiative (which includes London and Boulder). Rehearsing each part of the musical leads participants through different aspects of science, from dancing the various phases of photosynthesis, to drawing the ways in which their city utilizes fossil fuels. This performance experience is a great match for active and creative youth motivated to engage both their intellect and their creativity in solving the defining challenge of our time: resilience in the face of climate change.   

 
After Osnes led a week-long residency for University of East London applied theatre students, they in turn facilitated a performance experience for 125 secondary students at Riverside School in East London for a public performance with students, parents and city officials on January 22, 2016. Our host teacher at Riverside, Soren Ramsing, had multiple classes all focusing on the scientific, historical and civic issues surrounding the issue of climate change in preparation for our performance. The art teacher engaged all her classes in creating elaborate costumes and properties for the show—from a dinosaur head to ancient plants and animals.

     
The end product was outstanding—if a little rough around the edges. The final show was performed twice at the school so that hundreds of kids got to view it. The entire experience was completely exhilarating. I’m sure I can only do this kind of work because I am the youngest child in a family of ten and was always the pied piper for all my nieces and nephews. One of my favorite memories of this show was witnessing the commitment of a young female student as she represented the River Thames being polluted and then cleaned up by other students in her skit. I just don’t think she’ll ever look at the river in the same way now that she has portrayed it in front of her entire school. That’s what fascinates me about this project—getting youth into their bodies to invest every part of themselves into communicating ideas for local solutions to climate change.