Empowering creativity in schools through butterfly conservation

Tom Delahunt, Senior Lecturer in Nursing, has been hosting reading sessions with young learners and planting butterfly sanctuaries in school gardens as part of his PhD research.

The project aims to encourage expression through positive change to support wildlife, to celebrate the natural world and build a sense of community within schools. The project comes ahead of Tom’s new book The Butterfly Farmer, which aims to explain change to children.

Bridge, Blean and Challock Primary School, St Peter’s Methodist Primary School, Whitstable Junior School and Lady Joanna Thornhill Primary School have been working alongside Tom and the Enchanted Gardens Kent, a family run nursery passion about environmental protection and bio-diversity, and Kent Wildlife Trust’s Wilder Kent Awards, to encourage the planting of seeds.

Tom who has dyslexia, has been passionate about using the power of expression, creativity and art to empower people, following the impact of healthcare politics and staffing burnout during the pandemic.

“I felt there was an urgent need to emotionally nurture and empower people. This project is about transformation. Of becoming, and finding one’s wings. To work with primary school children on planting butterfly farms and to see the children experience the joy of transformation is wonderful.

“I want to help articulate the core messages of his book in a different way. For neurodivergent individuals, the world is not just a series of fixed, quantifiable events, but a dynamic dance of patterns, music, and colour. When safe and valued, these minds have the unique capacity to see, feel, and express the more subtle, intricate dimensions of existence.”

His newest book follows the success of The Wandering Lamb, which sold close to 1,000 copies. It is a children’s story illustrated by Caleb Simmons, which follows a lamb who is wonderfully different. Curiosity leads him wandering from the flock in search for acceptance. But, when a shepherd rescues him by showing him unconditional love, he is set free to be happily different and ready to dream.

Tom also won the Times Higher Education Award for Most Innovative Teacher of the Year 2019.