The blob in the box
What was the first animal in the world?’ said the small girl to the nice man whose smile looked somehow familiar. ‘It was a blob,’ replied Sir David Attenborough after some thought. Then he explained how some blobs had evolved into all the animals we see in the world today, while other blobs had evolved into plants. And the person who discovered all this was a chap called Darwin, born exactly 200 years earlier.
The place was St Jude’s, a socially and ethnically mixed primary school in South London. The occasion was the launch of the ‘Great Plant Hunt’, an audacious bid to reach every state primary school in the UK with Darwin-inspired experiments. And the project was a partnership between Kew and scientific foundation, the Wellcome Trust.
All the educational resources of the Great Plant Hunt were free and online. This was 2009, after all. But they also took a physical form, which arrived along with a mini seed bank, a plant press, a plant identikit, a Darwin storybook, a stack of stickers and more… all enclosed in a magnificent cardboard treasure chest. Known at St Jude’s simply as ‘the box’, the chest was a piece of theatre, made by Kew out of a unique blend of educational philanthropy, science and creativity.
Today there are some 23,000 treasure chests in the UK. Each has captured tens if not hundreds of imaginations. The Great Plant Hunt is now being adapted for use in India, where it will reach thousands if not millions more children. Meanwhile in St Jude’s, the school’s three-year plan to put science at the heart of the curriculum was achieved in just six months, thanks to Kew and the Wellcome Trust. And it all started on the day David Attenborough let the blob out of the box.
The Breathing Planet Campaign will seek support for the creation of a new family landscape and education centre at Kew Gardens.
- Print friendly
- Send to a friend
-
Send to a friend Close
- Spread the word
-
Spread the word Close
- Blog this
- Donate
Kew seeks to raise £100 million
Stories of the Breathing Planet
Offer your support
Call us on
020 8332 3248
to offer your support
Campaign objectives
Explore our Work
More featured stories
The student
Kew offers work experience for students - enabling some of them to become leaders in their own field.
The iron miners and the golden daisy
Kew is participating in a new vegetation survey, for the construction of a railway from the mining are to Guinea's capital and port.
People of the Breathing Planet
