One Ocean Roadshow
The One Ocean Roadshow is an exciting Ocean Literacy project in the north of England empowering local communities and schools to rediscover the ocean, its fascinating marine inhabitants, and the important role we play in protecting the ocean’s health.
Ocean Literacy
For many of us living inland, the sea can often feel out of sight and out of mind. But our behaviour is having a harmful impact on the sea. It’s time for a change. It’s time to reconnect with the sea, learn all that it has to offer us, and what we can offer in return.
Credit: Billy Barraclough
What is Ocean Literacy?
UNESCO states the term Ocean Literacy as the ‘understanding of the ocean's influence on us, and our influence on the ocean’.
What is the project?
The One Ocean Roadshow is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Access Group Foundation, The Buffini Chao Foundation and others. Thanks to our funders, between March 2025 and December 2027, we'll be working closely with a broad range of communities across the north of England to grow ocean literacy and raise participation in volunteering for 10,000 people across the region.
What we will do?
Through 250 co-designed workshops, we’ll introduce schools, youth groups and community organisations to the wonder of the ocean, tailoring sessions to issues facing communities and protected areas. We’ll build awareness of marine citizen science programmes that upskill people, while supporting health and wellbeing through access to blue and green spaces.
Our aim is to support transformational change; creating a region of ocean-literate teachers and young people, plus leaving a legacy of community-wide behaviour change, driving benefits for local people and our ocean.
Why is it needed?
Natural marine heritage across northern England is facing multiple urgent threats from pollution, development and our changing climate. Worryingly, many communities in our project catchment, which covers 20% of England’s most deprived areas, are disconnected from their coastline. Capacity for delivering ocean literacy and outdoor learning is also critically low in schools and community organisations. We are passionate about working with vulnerable and harder to reach communities across England to offer them the valuable skills and opportunities to connect with and protect our ocean and wider environment.
By empowering thousands of people to develop their ocean literacy and take action for their marine environment through citizen science and behaviour change, our project will begin to mitigate risks to our natural heritage.
What is Citizen science?
Citizen Science is ‘scientific work, for example collecting information, that is done by ordinary people without special qualifications, in order to help the work of scientists’.
What areas will we be working in?
Why does ocean literacy matter?
Research has shown that spending time by the coast and sea brings real benefits for our health and wellbeing, and that people who connect their wellbeing with the coast and sea are more likely to want to look after it. Coastal areas hold strong personal histories and heritage for communities too.
Caring and connecting with the ocean is important for many reasons:
Fostering positive connections with wildlife and the environment
The One Ocean Roadshow project sits within many key protection areas for wildlife. In the East, towering chalk cliffs, submerged sea caves and underwater boulder reefs form Flamborough Head Special Area of Conservation (SAC). Its nearshore reef habitats are considered to be the most diverse in the UK. Flamborough and Filey Coast Special Protection Area (SPA) houses the UK’s largest mainland breeding seabird colony. On the west coast, Mersey Estuary SPA’s intertidal flats and saltmarshes provide feeding and roosting sites for internationally important populations of waterfowl. During the winter, the site is of major importance for duck and waders. Liverpool Bay SPA is also home to wintering red-throated diver, little gull and common scoter and in summer breeding populations of little and common tern.
We need the ocean to survive
The ocean produces around 50% of the Earth’s oxygen.
The ocean supports our economy
The coastal and marine environment is a great natural asset, contributing £6.5 billion to the UK economy and supporting more than 750,000 jobs.
Schools and Youth Groups - Book a session
Our FREE marine education sessions cover topics such as: climate change, litter and pollution, ocean protection and local marine wildlife. Sessions last up to 1 hour and include an interactive presentation and activity.
If you are a school, or group that works with young people, and would like to request your FREE session please use our booking form below.
Community Groups (Adult) – Book a session
If you’re a community centre or a community group and would like to arrange a session we would love to hear from you.
From our personal histories and heritage, stories of migration and language, industry and work, to our emotional wellbeing and health, there are many ways to explore our connection to the ocean.
Please contact Lorna to start a conversation [email protected] / [email protected].
One Ocean Focus Group
Can you help us steer the One Ocean Roadshow project, ensuring it shifts and changes to reflect the diverse needs of our unique towns, cities and communities across the North?
Each year we will invite a small, representative group of people who have taken part in the One Ocean Roadshow in the past 12 months to take part in a focus group. This will help ensure the project compliments existing marine programs in the region and is community led, with decisions informed by the local people living and working in the area. If you’d like to express your interest in taking part in a focus group, please contact [email protected].
Feedback
Meet the team
Lorna Donaghy, One Ocean Roadshow Project Officer
Our project officer Lorna lives in Leeds. She has spent the last 12 years working closely with local communities across Yorkshire as a community engagement worker, with a background in mental health and education and a love for the water and marine life.
Lorna is passionate about the One Ocean Roadshow supporting underrepresented communities to be heard, be empowered and make positive change for themselves and their marine environments.
Contact us
If you have any questions or want to get in touch please contact Lorna Donaghy at [email protected]. To book your free marine education school session, please use the booking form - Book now
About our funders
National Lottery Heritage Fund
The National Lottery Heritage Fund is the largest funder for the UK’s heritage. Using money raised by National Lottery players we support projects that connect people and communities to heritage.
The Access Group Foundation
