Bringing spaceflight to children in northern Italy

SPACE Consortium
3 min readMay 18, 2022

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We take a look back at the second week of the European pilot programme — our stop in northern Italy!

The SpaceBuzz in South Tyrol.

Visiting Gais

School kids in Gais are holding up the Earth.

The first stop in Italy was Gais. In just one day, the SpaceBuzz welcomed some 170 children from elementary schools from Gais and Uttenheim.

Visiting Bruneck

Next up was Bruneck, where the SpaceBuzz would be standing on the school yard of the SSP Bruneck 1 — Mittelschule Röd in Bruneck for the rest of the week. The school is one of the international partners in the SPACE Consortium.

Kickoff in Bruneck

With almost 1,000 children visiting within six days, the pilot programme was absolutely crazy! The local press also had lots of fun experiencing spaceflight and chatting to Stefan Keim, headteacher of SSP Bruneck 1.

School kids in Italy sitting in the SpaceBuzz.

In the past weeks the children completed the first six lessons and did a lot of crafting, drawing and building. Everything they created was related to the lessons of the pilot programme and what they learned about on the way.

The students showed their craftsmanship by building paper rockets.

We also received some peeks into the filled out workbooks. Who wouldn’t like to travel to planet Gugluguglu?

The SPACE Consortium pilot programme has a special lesson to conclude the programme: a Green Day for the school. Together with the entire school, children and teachers will work together to establish a green deal for the school. The green deal will list several activities that the kids and teachers can undertake on a regular basis — just like the EU Green Deal.

The aim is for the kids and the school to become active in environmental protection. To celebrate this, the school will organise a Green Day. During this day, children can follow several activities and workshops to help planet Earth. At the end of the day, the school will sign a green deal where they pledge how they will support our planet going forward.

Everyone will learn how simple, small contributions can help to protect the climate and our environment. Schools can choose from the examples below (which are based on the EU green deal) or add activities themselves.

A self-made Astronaut box and a presentation on climate change’s impact on rain forests.
The school kids event did some gardening!

We are humbled to see the impact that our European pilot programme is having on the children, teachers and schools that we visit.

Next stop… France!

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The SPACE Consortium is a transnational collaboration of education professionals from France, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands and is co-funded by the European Union.

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SPACE Consortium

Virtual Reality education programme co-funded by the European Union, aiming to inspire children worldwide to take action against climate change.