Why Black Mountains College is Important: An Author’s Perspective. By Sir Michael Morpurgo OBE

Over recent centuries we have become ever more separated from the planet on which we live.

We have used it up mercilessly, squandered the precious resources, ignore its needs, forgotten that our survival and the planet’s survival are mutually dependant.  We have forgotten we are an integral part of her, that we belong to her, as much as she belongs to us.  She is a living being, as we are.

We have warmed the oceans, polluted them, over-fished them.  In the name of progress and profit, we have decimated the forests, destroyed half the world, creatures and plants, impoverished the soil that sustains us, and poisoned the air we breathe.

There is in the end only one solution that can repair the damage, that can put us in touch once again with our world, and that is education.  

We have to learn again what earlier generations knew and understood instinctively, that the planet will only look after us if we look after her, that she must be valued, respected and loved.

To create a university where the priority is to educate towards a greater understanding of this critical relationship between us and our planet, is not just necessary or desirable but essential to our survival, and to the survival of the planet.

No educational institution could be more important, nor more urgently needed.