Environmental poster competition for schools in Glasgow

Laing O’Rourke are industrial board members of the Closing the Gap project via Scottish Business in the Community. The Glasgow leadership group of Scottish Business in the Community is chaired by Jim Gaffney of Laing O’Rourke. Through Closing the Gap, Laing O’Rourke provide industrial support to Saint Roch’s Secondary School in Royston.

Scottish Business in the Community work with communities and businesses in order to ensure positive and productive changes to society through shared knowledge and expertise.  SBC is a not-for-profit company with charitable status, and is led by its member companies, a prestigious group committed to the promotion of responsible business practice in Scotland.  The Glasgow based Closing the Gap initiative started in 2003 with the aim to “maintain, sustain and develop positive links with education and business in Glasgow for the schools designated by the City Council with a view to reducing the number of young people leaving school to ‘no positive destination”.  The Closing the Gap team are currently working with businesses in 7 Secondary Schools, 7 associated Primary Schools and 2 Additional Supported Learning Schools across Glasgow.

Laing O’Rourke suggested, in conjunction with Glasgow City Council Vocational Training and Scottish Business in the Community, that a poster drawing competition be launched that combined educational, vocational training and carbon energy footprinting elements together. The final display of the posters was to be on the hoardings of Laing O’Rourke’s construction project at 141 Bothwell Street in Glasgow city centre for the duration of the construction phase (until December 2008).

The first stage of this competition involved Laing O’Rourke designing the layout of an A3 poster with six different climate change related theme headings. The topic of climate change was chosen as it complemented both the schools geography curriculum and the Laing O’Rourke Corporate Responsibility Challenge. Given the drawing nature of the competition, S1 pupils from Saint Roch’s Secondary School were asked to provide drawings for the aforementioned themes. In addition, the school community cluster associated with Saint Roch’s Secondary was engaged through the EEO link to the four cluster primary schools, namely St. Stephens, St. Cuthberts, St. Mungo’s and St. Gilberts. Pupils from these primary schools also provided drawings.

 The pupils at the five aforementioned schools drew pictures to depict the themes surrounding car-sharing, use of public transport, cycling to work, switching off lights, closing windows and reducing your personal carbon footprint. In total, 42 posters where chosen, with a first, second and third place winning posters chosen by Laing O’Rourke. The winning designs (in order) were drawn by (first prize) Thurgajani Srikarran & Dagshagini Velnayagan of Saint Roch’s Secondary, (second prize) Declan Shields of Saint Cuthbert’s Primary and (third prize) Jay McLaughlin of Saint Stephen’s Primary.

The second stage of the competition was to build frames in which to house the posters in a water-tight but professional manner. Stow College suggested that the S3 and S4 pupils from All Saints Secondary, who were participating in the Glasgow City Council vocational skills programme, could construct the frames as part of their learning experience. In total, 35 high-quality frames were built over a 6 week period from wood supplied by Careers Scotland at the woodwork workshops at Stow College. The frames were then painted in Laing O’Rourke corporate colours by S3 pupils attending Stow Collage as part of the Soccer Success programme via Glasgow Celtic and Glasgow Rangers football clubs. Supplementary funding was supplied by the UCATT learning fund.

The posters will be displayed on the hoardings at Laing O’Rourke’s construction project at 141 Bothwell Street for the duration of the project.