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Painting of a humming bird

Rio Kids

A web project from 2002 in which young people offered personal, creative responses to the sustainable development of our planet.

RioKids is a great early example of partnership working between schools, digital professionals and a cultural venue that explored the potential of digital creativity in schools and the power of web publishing as an outcome. Created in the summer of 2002, the Rio Kids project resulted in a vibrant online presentation of the thoughts and ideas from children born in 1992, the year of the Rio Earth summit, responding to the issues raised by the summit.

Children from four primary schools in and around Bristol - Easton Primary, Four Acres Primary, Luckwell Primary and Winscombe Primary - spent the second half of the summer term producing work that was to be presented online for others to see and share. They began by researching some of the issues raised by the Rio Summit's conclusions on sustainable development and then went on to make their own creative responses to how they felt about the issues and how they affected them. The resulting, delightful work, presents a ten year old’s view of sustainable development, through pictures, writing, photography and multiple choice quizzes each exploring a variety of issues including recycling of waste and protecting coastal environments and natural habitats.

The site also carried an invitation to other schools and children, both nationally and internationally, to submit work and become part of the project. Children from a school in Japan created work in response to the site and sent their responses back to the riokids site where it was published.

The website was launched online on 25 August 2002 on the eve of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg a.k.a. Earth Summit 2002 or Rio +10.

RioKids was developed by Watershed from an original idea by, and with support from The Pontin Charitable Trust.

Ended in August 2002

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