The Green Key awarded Kamp Kovačine raises children´s environmental consciousness with interactive theatre pieces. While learning about environmental issues such as plastic pollution or the protection of species, children can express their creativity and understand their key role in protecting the environment.
Last year, Kamp Kovačine´s Eco-Theatre was about plastics, micro plastics, clean or dirty beaches. The animators of the campsite were dressed like dolphins, flowers or birds who were threatened by a plastic bag. During the piece, children had the opportunity to save the species with the help of “decision cards” so that they could become conscious of their possibilities to repair and change the world. In reaction to this “life of a plastic bag” theatre piece, animators have seen sad and angry children wanting to save animators dressed like animals or plants. It helped the children identify with nature and perceive what it is actually going through with plastic pollution and climate change.
Changing people’s behavior about our environment is not simple. Thanks to this initiative inspired by psychology class, children start caring about what they are learning. These feelings will guide childrens´ behavior their entire life and will permit them being emotionally connected to ecology. Creating these memories now is helping them understanding that each action (or inaction) matters.
“We wanted them to feel that they are not just passive individuals to whom everything is just helplessly happening. We wanted them to feel they have to be active in order to repair, to change the world”, according to Kamp Kovačine´s quality manager, Tina Gams-Fučić
In addition to the theatre piece, the animators showed a documentary about plastic waste afterwards and invited the children and their parents to discuss the topic further. At the end, each child got a bag made of recycled material from Kamp Kovačine to start their new life as small environmental ambassadors. The Eco-Theatre was so successful that the campsite decided to repeat this activity in the following seasons.
Kamp Kovačine´s Eco-Theatre plays a key role in involving guests in and raising their awareness about the campsite’s environmental policy. This Green Key and Blue Flag awarded establishment contributes to the prevention of climate change by educating children, showing them that they can and, most of all, have to be active for our environment. It also permits interactions between generations, as kids can talk about this theatre piece with their parents, family and friends.