Blue LightS
Blue LightS is a project for more sea and water in schools. February 2024 marked the start of a three-year EU Blue LightS project in which the Swedish Institute for the Marine Environment is one of 16 partners.
The purpose of Blue LightS is to increase marine awareness - knowledge and commitment to the sea and water - through an initiative aimed at schools in Europe. The focus is on highlighting the sea in education and developing methods to do this in a good way.
For the Swedish Institute for the Marine Environment, it is specifically about getting more Swedish schools to integrate the sea and the marine environment into their teaching.This also applies to schools that are not located on the coast, as the project is based on a source-to-sea perspective. The EU's "Blue schools" initiative will be an important part of this work.
Work in three areas
The Marine Environment Institute will primarily work in three areas, known as "work packages" (WP).
Together with eight other countries - Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Greece, Romania and Croatia - Sweden has been designated an "experimental country". This means that within WP3 we will study and develop methods for how "blue" teaching can be developed in Swedish schools. Together with the other experimental countries, we will develop strategies and action plans to ensure that the sea and water are given more space in education, and to some extent also in a broader context. The work will begin with a description of the current situation in order to be able to follow developments going forward.
WP4 focuses on the development of projects and challenges for EU Blue schools.
The aim is to broaden the network of EU Blue schools. One way to do this is to engage the schools in so-called "blue challenges" - common challenges to encourage the schools to increase their activities and involvement. A particular focus is directed towards engaging schools in the hinterland as well as primary, vocational, adapted primary schools and schools in socially disadvantaged areas.
WP6 is about support, governance and evaluation of how the whole project is implemented and developed in the different participating countries. All countries participating in the project are involved.
Opportunity to apply for funding
All schools that are or become certified within the EU Blue schools network have the opportunity to apply for funding to finance various activities. In addition to Blue LightS, two other EU projects, ProBleu and SHORE, are running almost in parallel and are also eligible for funding. As soon as information is available about when the applications for BlueLightS open, we will post information about it here. Links to the other projects can be found in the link boxes.