Get creative on climate action – join PEC Pals!
Do you want to use your creativity to respond to climate and energy challenges? Feeling a little lost in the face of it all and looking for some mutual support? Then join PEC Pals.
What is PEC Pals?
We are running a 7 week funded program to help you release your creativity in response to the city’s climate and energy crisis, delivered in collaboration with our friends at the Art & Energy Collective. At the end of the program, funding to continue three projects of £1,500 each will keep your ideas growing!
We have 20 places to start on August 12th 2022. You’ll need to commit to attending all of the sessions to snag a space. The Community Climate Centre in the centre of town is the venue, so let us know if you need help to attend or participate fully. Lunch included.
How we will get creative
Session 1 – Welcoming you and your creativity
Friday 12 August 9:30 - 1pm
Become part of the PEC family, meet the team and other like-minded people to explore the city’s Energy and Climate challenges. You’ll discover where we came from and why we exist, and we’ll start our first make to get creative in response.
Session 2 – Home sweet home
Friday 19 August 9:30 - 1pm
What is energy efficiency and how can it help stop fuel poverty? We’ll look at the scale of the problem, practical ways to reduce bills and cover some key advice. There’s hands-on crafting too as we explore our own understanding of a home.
Session 3 – Community – talking equality and diversity (ZEBRA)
Friday 26 August 9:30 - 1pm
As we get deeper into the city’s challenges, we ask Zebra Collective to help us explore community and what it means to truly enable equality and diversity.
Session 4 – Make a Terrarium
Friday 2 September 9:30 - 1pm
A creative session to explore our world ‘micro to macro’. Make a terrarium to take home with you.
Session 5 – Imagining a better energy future
Friday 9 September 9:30 - 1pm
Here’s where your ideas can really take shape. We’ll bring together what we’ve learnt so far and look at the city’s issues we can respond to creatively. Remember there’s funding to be had!
Session 6 – Make a mini solar home
Friday 16 September 9:30 - 1pm
What could energy be for me? That’s the question this session. We’ll explore homes of the future and you’ll create a mini, solar powered house to take away with you.
Session 7 - Bury the Giant in Moss and Moor
Friday 23 September 9:30 - 1pm
A chance to be creative with wool and fleeces from Dartmoor, to make felted objects that host hope and help keep the carbon underground in the moors above Plymouth. There will also be an opportunity to visit the moor in early October and celebrate our small actions; together making a difference.
Celebration: Exhibition at The Plymouth Community Climate Centre
Friday 30 September
Time – evening TBC
It’s time to look back and share how far we’ve come. Also to talk about what comes next as funding for 3 ideas is revealed.
What have our previous PEC Pals been up to?
Setting up a curtain bank
Kat joined us in early 2018. Really keen to give back to the community, Kat saw PEC Pals as the perfect opportunity to meet new people and to combine her passions for social equality and addressing climate change. After attending the programme, Kat helped the Energy Team to set up a curtain bank. She helps to gather donated curtains, register them on a database and then pass them on to those who can't afford them.
Joining our art & energy project
We teamed up with Art & Energy CIC to explore getting creative with solar. Here's our wonderful PEC Pal, Les, learning how to make an artwork that also charges his phone. Les has been a champion in his neighbourhood, spreading the world of what we can do and encouraging his neighbours to give our Energy Team a call. He even helped us by staring in one of our videos!
Strengthening relationships with other organsiations
We were lucky enough to have Owen, Manager of Plymouth Athenaeum join us in 2018. He kindly took our PEC Pals on a tour of Plymouth's hidden gem, The Plymouth Athenaeum, a charity dedicated to the promotion of learning in the fields of science, technology, literature and art. We now regularly host events in the building and Owen has even joined our Board as a Trustee, sharing his valuable knowledge and experience about charities.
"PEC Pals has made me love Plymouth more!"
Our PEC Pals programme has been made possible by funding from Big Lottery Reaching Communities.