Comenius Leadership Fellowship for The Bildung Climate School

These are extraordinary times. The climate is warming, ecosystems are collapsing, wars are rampant, and inequality is endangering democracy. Yet the formal education system does not support the development of personal and collective resilience, democratic engagement, and the professional skills and knowledge needed for rapid post-fossil transitions.

With this Fellowship, Ginie Servant-Miklos will further develop the “Bildung Climate School”. This “School” offers an inclusive, holistic sustainability education program for MBO, and higher education students who study and work together in an immersive environment. By “holistic,” the program means helping students develop with their hands, hearts, and heads through embodied, practical, artistic, and scientific learning activities. The program is inspired by the Bildung holistic personal development philosophy of Folk High Schools in Scandinavia and the place-based learning of Microcolleges (U.S.A.).

The holistic learning experience of the BCS is designed to enable students to find meaningful solutions to environmental problems in urban centres. At the same time, students develop personal resilience and a sense of community. The program addresses ecological issues through a toolkit of pedagogical methods. These include combinations of work experience and projects using issues from community partners, such as green energy cooperatives, regenerative farms, and circular fashion projects. Learning and reflection take place through artistic practices, accessible interdisciplinary classes to understand global issues, and various hands-on sustainability practices (e.g. repairing old clothes). Because this is a highly innovative approach to education, they are developing a new form of teacher training with the NIVOZ Foundation to support the program.

Incrementally implemented

Work on this program is being done incrementally. In 2024 and 2025, the team conducted two part-time extracurricular pilots at the Hef House with 25 MBO and Higher Education students around the themes of food and fashion. Students worked in project groups on a documentary on the food industry and a sustainable fashion show while participating in classes on personal well-being, stress resilience, community building, artistic expression and understanding global sustainability issues from an economic, political and ethical perspective. A third part-time pilot will be conducted in spring 2026 with support from the Community for Learning and Innovation before being transformed into a 10-week full-time minor in 2026-2027 and a 20-week minor in 2027-2028. This project will involve collaboration with Albeda MBO and a partner in the applied sciences. An on-going research and evaluation process will allow the team to gauge the program's outcomes, showing the workability of the concept.  If it proves successful, the program will be permanently embedded in the participating institutions. In addition, the teacher training will be rolled out nationally, and the research results will be published and disseminated so that it can be scaled up further and in other places.

Ginie Sevant-Miklos works closely with Prof. Rutger Engels in this program. Together they founded the Bildung Climate School in 2024. Engels will remain involved in its further development and is taking the lead in developing the project's evaluation (research) component, while they continue to work jointly on strategic issues.

About Comenius Leadership Fellowship

The Comenius Leadership Fellow grants 2025 (NRO/NWO) of €500,000 have been awarded to four projects (two from WO and two from HBO). The Comenius program gives an impulse to educational innovation and improvement in higher education. The budget for the fellowships is made available by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. The Comenius Fellows join the Comenius Network of the KNAW.