

Join Sir Tim Smit and a panel of educators and experts as they explore the improvements needed to equip students for the future. They’ll be discussing a range of different approaches with positive results which aim to empower students to become part of the solution.
Sir Tim Smit
Sir Tim Smit is best known for his achievements in Cornwall. He ‘discovered’ and then restored ‘The Lost Gardens of Heligan’ with John Nelson, which is now one of the UK’s best loved gardens having been named ‘Garden of the Year’ by BBC Countryfile Awards (March 2018). Tim is Executive Vice-Chair and Co-founder of the multi award-winning Eden Project in Cornwall. Since its opening in 2001, over 22 million people have come to see a once sterile pit, turned into a cradle of life containing world-class horticulture and starting architecture symbolic of human endeavour. Tim is also Executive Co-Chair for Eden Project International which aims to have an Eden Project on every habited continent by 2025.
Richard Dunne, The Harmony Project
Richard is Founder and Director of The Harmony Project. In his previous role as Headteacher of an Ofsted graded Outstanding School, he has developed a curriculum of learning, inspired by Nature’s principles of Harmony. These principles inform the way a Harmony curriculum works, providing a coherent framework through which learning objectives can be delivered.
Richard believes passionately that the best way for students to be motivated in their learning is when it makes sense to them and they have a key role to play. By applying subject skills and knowledge to purposeful project-based enquiries, students develop their own vision of how they want their world to be and what they can do to make it happen.
Matthew Shribman, AimHi
Matthew is a scientist, climate communicator and environmentalist focused on projects for the future of life on Earth. He is Co-Founder and Head Teacher of AimHi Earth, the education-to-action organisation on a mission to activate a billion nature-first thinkers to combat the climate and nature crisis. he has taught students in 130+ countries, working with thought-leaders from Jane Goodall to Sylvia Earle. A TED speaker and Patagonia Changemaker, his online videos have over 25M views and his environmental campaigns have been backed by Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney. He holds a 1st Class MChem from Oxford.
Immy Kaur
Throughout her decade-long career, Immy has focused on convening and building community, the role of citizens in radical system change, and how we together create more democratic, distributed, open source social and civic infrastructure. Immy is a Co-Founder and Director of Civic Square, a public square, neighbourhood lab, and creative + participatory platform focused on regenerative civic and social infrastructure within neighbourhoods. Immy’s work has been recognised with a series of notable honours and awards. In 2018, Impact Hub Birmingham, of which Immy was a Founding Director, was named a NESTA New Radical. For her services to the city of Birmingham, Aston University’s School of Life & Heath Sciences granted Immy an Honorary Doctorate in 2019. And in 2020, Immy was awarded a prestigious Ashoka Fellowship.
Sam Kendall
Sam leads all of Eden’s work with schools, young people and their teachers and has done so since 2010. She’s been a member of Eden’s Education Team since the project opened in 2001, establishing Eden as a must-go school visit destination for schools across the UK and maintaining a focus on high quality teaching and learning across Eden’s learning programmes – at Eden and online. Her passion is sharing Eden’s Mission with children, young people and their teachers. She qualified as a primary school teacher, with science specialism, in 1997 and worked in schools in Bristol, Cornwall, Karachi and South Africa prior to joining Eden in 2001. She’s recently completed an MSc in Environment and Human Health.
Alejandra Arias, Force of Nature
Alejandra is a tech-philosopher, climate-activist, creative strategist, and the communications & marketing Director at Force of Nature; a youth non-profit mobilising mindsets for climate action. Alejandra specialises in developing progressive brands through an intuitive art direction and an eco-conscious approach to marketing. She has consulted across industries in Arts, Environmental, Fashion, Technology, and Wellness implementing regenerative principles into creative strategies. Alongside Force of Nature, Alejandra is an ecosomatics researcher & educator working at the intersection between technology and nature. She is the Founder of Nowadays On Earth, a platform advocating for our earth body & connectedness to the natural world as a response to our global deprivation from nature and the need for access to green spaces.