COSMOS germinated in the 1990s when a group of Welsh teachers began to move towards a more locally based and neighbourhood focused education. This was an uncharted practical route to sustainability whereinterdisciplinary knowledge about making and operating community action plans for sustainability are bound together. This idea was funded by the EC LIFE Environment programme in the late 1990s. The work was organised on the premise that traditional subject based teaching is an impediment to learning about how to function as an involved citizen in a world dominated by cross-subject community issues, many of which require reconnecting with the natural environment.