Helping people walk healthier routes

Woman standing in front of a primary school assembly. There are children sitting on the floor. Some with their hands up. the woman delivering a presentation about air pollution is talking to the children. The projector is showing a slide asking "How do cars make pollution?"

Tailor-made air pollution workshops

We’ve been working with Brent Council on their air quality education and monitoring programme, helping people walk healthier routes.

Our education package is called Breathe Clean. Whether we’re in a London borough, Manchester or Birmingham, we can tailor the air quality education tools that we have developed over the years, to each borough’s needs.

Through Breathe Clean, we educate school children about local air pollution and what causes it. We also talk to them about what they can do to minimise their exposure to dirty air and discuss with them what is in their power to help improve the air quality where they live and go to school.

Brent schools work with our Breathe Clean team

Watch this video and hear from a teacher and children at Kingsbury School in Brent about our air quality work in their school.

Creating resources for teachers

We have developed a variety of resources for schools to use. These include:

  • Healthy walking maps
  • Community walking maps
  • Assembly presentations
  • Lesson plans
  • Breathe Clean website showing borough-wide walking routes
  • Progress reports for parents and teachers
  • Posters for classrooms

Breathe Clean website for Brent

Brent Council commissioned us to develop a specific Breathe Clean website for them. All you need to do is write in your school name and the walking map for that school pops up.

This makes it easy to find the healthier walking routes to take to and from school.

Thank you for the assembly and all these fantastic resources to share with children and families –

PHSE and Wellbeing lead, Oliver Goldsmith Primary School

Developing healthy walking maps

We conducted geospatial air quality analysis using GIS software and London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (LAEI) data.

We also carried out a street audit by bicycle of the entire borough, looking for safer crossing points, areas that could be dangerous for pedestrians and poor pedestrian infrastructure to make sure our walking routes were suitable for a child’s walk to school.

Once we had all the information to create a map showing healthy walking routes, we worked with our designer to create the Breathe Clean maps.

School engagement

We invited students to take part in an art competition, giving them opportunity to have their artwork featured on the map.

Schools booked air quality assemblies with our team. The focus of these assemblies was on the causes, impacts and ways to reduce air pollution.

We provided schools with Breathe Clean posters to put up around the school. Other resources we provided included lesson plans and presentations for teachers to use in the classroom.

Contact us

We’ve worked with thousands of school students and teachers on air pollution and what we can all do to make our air cleaner. We would love to bring our Breathe Clean resources to a school near you. Contact us to arrange an initial chat: info@mpsmartertravel.co.uk