Glasgow pupils were given a special tour of the Dandelion Festival site today.
The outdoor music and arts festival is taking place within Kelvingrove Park from Friday through to Sunday with a specially curated programme of events.
The free festival is aiming to encourage new ways of thinking about growing your own food, sustainability and environmentalism through live music, activities, talks and workshops for the whole family.
Acts set to appear over the weekend include Newton Faulkner, Admiral Fallow, This is the Kit, Niteworks, VanIves and Rachel Sermanni.
Calum Downey, teacher at All Saints Secondary in North-East Glasgow, told The Glasgow Times it’s been important for his pupils to explore the meaning behind the Dandelion Festival and learn about sustainability.
He said: “The children have been loving it and they find it really exciting.
“It’s something very new to them, and a lot of children are asking to come to this again or if there will be more events like this.”
One of Mr Downey’s students, Kayleigh, 13, said: “It’s actually been really fun.
“I quite like doing things like gardening and I used to grow my own fruit, and it was quite fun.”
Another student, Masyn, 12, liked the idea of growing his own food.
He said: “It just seems more sanitary that you’re growing it and washing it instead of getting it from shops.”
The students agreed that an interactive theatre workshop about a turtle eating ocean plastic was their favourite but described it as “really sad”.
The festival is part of a longer-term project by Dandelion to get children interested in growing, something festival organisers see as an antidote to youngsters being overwhelmed by climate change news.
Jenny Niven, executive producer for Dandelion, said: “After all that we’ve been through, community I think means something really powerful for people.
“And communities come up around growing and around food and around people who are helping those that don’t have enough to eat, so that’s really kind of playing a strong part in what we’re doing.”
She added: “I’ve just watched a whole bunch of kids in front of the main stage listening to three younger women activists who have all been doing incredible things in sustainability and the environment.
“We brought them along to talk to younger children because, you know, sometimes people at the moment feel quite powerless in all the difficult things that are going on environmentally.
“And we’re trying to give people the sort of the hope and the agency to say maybe I can do something about this myself.”
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