Get eco-logical in school or youth groups for SustFest21!
The Sustainability Festival 2021 aka #SustFest21 is a 2 week festival of sustainability events across St Albans, Harpenden and the villages. In the last festival over 30 schools, scouting and guiding groups took part. Activities ranged 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 will be 24th May to 28th May 2021. We are inviting every school in St Albans District to get involved!
Registering
Please do register with us so we know you are taking part in SustFest21. There is no cost to schools – it’s really about saying you want to join in with this great local community festival and showing your students that you care about sustainability.
Simply click here to visit the SustFest21 registration page.
It’s very quick to register – school events do not tend to be public events so you just need to give a few details about what you plan to do and who you are.
After the week, we’d love to hear how your event went so we can share photos of what all the schools got up to – see the SustFest photo gallery and search schools to see past photos of schools’ activities.
Resources and Ideas
Not sure what to do for your activity or project for SustFest21? Please scroll down for ideas of things that have been done in the past.
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 and other books in the series to learn about plastics and marine life
Don’t forget to visit www.sustainablestalbans.org/schools/ to find out more about Sustainable Schools in St Albans District.
