This week saw the official launch of the Breathe Melbourne project. Kingsville Primary School is one of six schools in the inner west of Melbourne engaging with this citizen science opportunity, led by Deakin University in partnership with Victorian Government Department of Health, Department of Transport, the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) and Dyson.

Breathe Melbourne aims to help children identify actions they, and their local community can take to lower their exposure to air pollution, and to engage and empower them as citizen scientists, capturing important data for their community and for the project partners.

Whilst the official media launch occurred on Tuesday, Kingsville Primary School begun our engagement with the project in 2022. Kate Lycett, the lead researcher on the Breathe Melbourne team, made contact with our school during the middle months of 2022. As the Kingsville Primary School leadership team unpacked the project, we found that this exciting opportunity aligned clearly and strongly with you we are as a school, our values, and how we work to empower our students to take authentic action – “thinking globally, acting locally”.

In December 2022, students from Lauren and Lizzie’s year 6 classes spent a week wearing the Dyson backpacks, capturing air quality data on their walks, rides or drives to and from school. The Breathe Melbourne team luckily brought extra backpacks with them, as both Lauren and Lizzie also took the opportunity to be citizen scientists, collecting data on their journeys to and from Kingsville. This data, which is de-identified and securely stored, is currently being analysed and will, along with the data gathered from the five other schools, help inform the Breathe Melbourne team and their partners.

Students from Lizzie’s year 6 class also spent time with James, a Dyson engineer, in the classroom. This STEAM focused session modelled the work engineers can do, unpacked the technology involved in the backpacks and discussed with the students the scientific inquiry cycle and how this is used “in the real world”.

As the first school involved in the project, two families from our school were also involved in the creation of a range of promotional material to support the project. Sam and Charlotte, two of our ex-year 6 students, eloquently described their engagement with the project, and why they felt it was important for them, and for our community, to be involved. Their siblings also star in the filmed walks to and from school. This video can be seen here: Deakin University | Breathe Melbourne

Kingsville Primary School will continue to engage with Breathe Melbourne through the ‘Idle Off’ project later this year – more information will be shared as we get closer to this.