Schools/youth

Get eco-logical in school or youth groups for SustFest!

The Sustainability Festival 2021 aka #SustFest21 was a 2 week festival of sustainability events across St Albans, Harpenden and the villages. Over 30 schools, scouting and guiding groups took part. Activities range from practical ones, such as tree planting or restoring school ponds, to assemblies and pupil conferences, for example about reducing plastic.

Schools Week for SustFest21 was 24th May to 28th May 2021. Every school in St Albans District was invited to get involved.

Special SustFest21 School Assemblies

Ellie Jackson reads Hunter’s Icy Adventure for our Infants’ Assembly

Enjoy our SustFest21 school assemblies. There are three: for Infants’, Junior and Secondary schools. To access these assemblies totally free, please fill out this form.

See more about the infants, junior and secondary school downloadable assemblies in the Herts Ad story here

Schools activities for SustFest21

To see a full list of schools and youth groups that took part in SustFest21 (not including those that ran our assemblies) please visit our Supporters page

To see the sorts of activities registered for SustFest21, visit our home page, access the programme in PDF or Flip book format, and turn to the back of the programme for the list of private events including school activities.

Join in with the next Sustainability Festival: Resources and Ideas

Please scroll down for ideas of things that have been done for past Sustainability Festivals.

We have a whole Sustainable St Albans volunteer project called Sustainable Schools whose sole purpose is to help schools within St Albans District with their sustainability. We have regular newsletters and hold termly get togethers for teachers and senior leadership teams who are either wanting to teach sustainability in the curriculum or make their school campus more sustainable.

To get ideas about our events, making your school eco, teaching resources and films and to make contact with the Sustainable Schools team, please visit http://www.sustainablestalbans.org/schools/.

Ideas for SustFest Schools/Youth Activities

A whole week or a few students on one activity – it’s up to you how much you do for SustFest but we’d love to have you on board!

Hold an enrichment day/week around….

  • appreciating and protecting nature
  • reduce / reuse / recycle
  • climate change

Debate and Discuss

  • get the students to take the lead – student conferences, debates, strategy meetings and assemblies are all appropriate for older students to run

Grow/Eat Food

  • get parents to come in and dig over the veg beds
  • plant seeds in newspaper pots
  • take a group of children to help at Incredible Edible St Albans community food growing plots.
  • build bug hotels
  • plant a tree
  • explore vegan cookery
  • learn about sustainable fish

Energy

  • monitor lights and interactive whiteboards to see if they are switched off
  • launch a fundraising campaign for solar panels on your roof
  • mount an anti-idling campaign aimed at parents for drop-off and pick-up

Nature

  • explore a local park or nature area and find nature on your doorstep
  • go on a bug hunt
  • make pictures out of sticks and leaves
  • leaf-rubbing
  • pond-dipping
  • bird-watching

Waste

  • have a “waste free lunch” challenge and try to cut food waste for the week
  • do a litter pick
  • build a greenhouse out of plastic bottles
  • mount a campaign to use both sides of paper in school
  • read Duffy the Sea Turtle or Hunter’s Icy Adventrure and other books in the series to learn about plastics and marine life

Don’t forget to visit http://www.sustainablestalbans.org/schools/ to find out more about Sustainable Schools in St Albans District.