CORE’s Award Winning song aims to champion stormwater education in schools and local communities

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Centre for Organic Research & Education (CORE) has been awarded “Excellence in Policy and Education” by Stormwater NSW’s 2016 Awards for Excellence. This award was presented to CORE by NSW Co-President Keysha Milenkovic for the musical composition, “Stormwater’s Going Down the Drain”. The lyrics, lead vocals, extra instrumentation, arrangement, recording and production were all performed by Eric Love, Chairman of CORE with backing vocals by Helvi Love (members of the Get Waste Band).

The song was written with the purpose of increasing community awareness about how better stormwater management can lead to an improved quality of life and a more sustainable community. The words are designed to bridge the gap between the community and the technical and philosophical ideas, concepts and practices of the stormwater industry.

This song has original lyrics that depict key elements of stormwater management. It uses a well-known melody (Raindrops keep falling on my head) to aid listener recognition. The lyrics are designed to stimulate awareness in stormwater management by introducing terms and concepts to the community that encourage listeners to further explore their specific meanings. Awareness concepts include flood plains, retention, turbidity, pollutant removal, contaminant identification, water quality, harvesting, treatment trains, biofiltration, catchment hydrology, modelling, GPT’s and WSUD.

CORE is planning to use the song as a platform to develop educational resource kits to equip teachers with improved knowledge about stormwater management with the aim of encouraging school children to learn all about stormwater management. CORE will roll out of this community-focused initiative as part of its existing national awareness and education programs.

Knowledge about stormwater practices by the younger generation and the community will draw attention to the cause of stormwater and ultimately accelerate the uptake of stormwater management practices in the mainstream”, says Mr Love, “We wish to draw attention to the significant sustainability benefits the improved management and reuse of stormwater offers to the future of our society.

Mr Love added “Music is a fundamental part of society and a great media for communication. This form of spreading the stormwater message is innovative and distinct from typical approaches to education in the stormwater sector. We believe this unique approach can enable stormwater messages to cut through the clutter of other communications already aimed at the community.”’

CORE would like to acknowledge the support of Karaoke Version (www.karaoke-version.com) and Tency Music (www.tencymusic.com) for providing licensing approval to distribute the song.

You can listen to the song here. Contact us on info@core.asn.au if you would like to download a copy.