Greenhouse Pioneer: Jess Gold, Big Green Machine

Jess Gold is a singer songwriter with a mission to inspire and create the next generation of sustainability savvy young people.

Jessco-founded the Big Green Machine, creating songs and multi-media content that contain simple yet powerful themes which inspire children and adults to make more sustainable decisions day to day. Project Earth Rock is a Key Stage 2 multi-media scheme of work for sustainability.

Project Earth Rock – Singing Sustainability from Project Earth Rock on Vimeo.

Tell us, in 20 words or fewer, about Project Earth Rock – what’s your mission?

Project Earth Rock is a multi-media resource for schools that makes it fun to learn about climate change and sustainability.

What motivates you?

My frustration about climate change ignorance and the capitalist use of natural resources.

What is your greatest achievement to date?

Completing this very large and complex schools resource and selling our first five copies!

What are the challenges you face?

Penetrating the education market in a significant way with an educational product that is pretty offside in the eyes of most headteachers

What are you working on that’s getting you fired up and excited?

I get excited when I do concerts in schools or when I write new songs.

Where do you want to take Project Earth Rock next?

We have been in this long startup/creation stage (over five years!) and we now want to start actually getting the resource into schools and starting to see/hear evidence of children learning our eco songs. Having done our England launch on Monday it would be good to launch it in Scotland sometime soon.

What can we, as individuals, do to make a difference?

Commit to things that we believe in and find people that share our vision and beliefs who can collaborate/help keep us going when the path gets difficult.

If you were Prime Minister for a day, what would be the first thing you’d do?

Cancel all subsidies on fossil fuels and transfer them to the green energy industry.

What’s the coolest project or product you’ve come across, and inspired you?

Friends of the Earth won their campaign for a climate change law in 2008, a very visionary and ground-breaking campaign, ‘The Big Ask’, that has had a global impact ever since.

Can you recommend a life- or game-changing book for our readers?

It is a little old now but I enjoyed George Marshall’s Carbon Detox, as a campaigner I found it very insightful.

What do you listen to when you’re cooking dinner?

Radio 4, although I always feel I should be listening to music!

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

‘Life is all about making decisions’, that was from my dad.

Can you leave us with who’d be your Eco Hero?

Probably Al Gore, a little bit weird to say in light of his high carbon lifestyle, but he stuck his neck in 2006 with ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, hmm quite a lot has happened in eight years!

Find out more about Project Earth Rock.