The GreenWave project involved taking two groups of North Manchester residents, from the Higher Blackley and Charlestown Wards, through a series of CO2 awareness workshops. The workshops covered a different aspect of environmental concern each week and invited guests would talk to the group about food, energy saving, recycling and climate change. The group would then use this information in improvisational drama sessions to build scenes for use in a film script, which would be written by a professional scriptwriter.
A further requirement for this project was an improvement in intergeneration cohesion and engaging participants from as wide an age range as possible was essential.
The GreenWave script begins in 2080 in a World free from pollution and with a stable climate, a change partly brought about by the GreenWave Movement. We are introduced to the origins of the GreenWave through an interview with an elderly couple, Mary and George Todd. Mary is the Daughter of John Tyler, the founder of the GreenWave Movement.
We are then taken back to 2010 to see the lives of the Todds (environmental luddites who live only for now), and the Tylers, led by the meter reader John Tyler, who, concerned by the wasted energy he sees daily, sets out on a mission to save the planet.
Frustrated by the disinterest of the Todd’s and other members of the Community, John searches for something that will boost his eco mission. On a suggestion from his mother-in-law, Nana Pat, John visits a local day centre to talk with some of her elderly friends. What John learns transforms his one-man mission into a movement.
‘Looking to the past to make a better future’. The Community Elders tell John how their generation had to make less go a long way and as a consequence, wasted very little. This ‘make do and mend’ philosophy becomes pivotal to GreenWave’s success and the movement gains followers in the Community and in the World thanks to a video made by Mary (John’s daughter) and posted on the internet.
The increasing popularity of the movement is seen as threat to the business interests of the unscrupulous CEO of Hexegen Energy Corp, Sir William Moody, who attempts to bribe John into dropping his mission but John refuses to be bought. As an alternative Sir William pays Barry Todd to discredit John and the GreenWave Movement.
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Watch the 'Making of the GreenWave'
Read the CLASP report on the GreenWave
Read the GreenWave evaluation
Download the project carbon footprint
