SustFest Schools Week

The Sustainability Festival (SustFest) is an annual festival of sustainability events across St Albans, Harpenden and the villages. Each year, it features a SustFest Schools Week – schools, children’s and youth groups register to take part by running an event or activity of their choice.

Activities range from practical activities, such as tree planting or restoring school ponds, to assemblies and pupil conferences, for example about reducing plastic. Check out our resources below including ideas, assemblies, activities and ideas from previous years too.

SustFest Schools Week 2023 is 12th to 16th June. To join in with SustFest Schools Week 2023, simply plan your activities and then tell us what you are doing. All participating schools will receive a certificate to display.

You can register here or, alternatively, drop us a note via the contact form on our main Schools webpage and someone will be in touch.

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Ideas for SustFest Schools/Youth Activities

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

Hold an enrichment day/week around….

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

Debate and Discuss

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

Grow/Eat Food

• Ask parents to come in and dig over veg beds ready for planting
• 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 books on eco-subjects including Duffy the Sea Turtle or Hunter’s Icy Adventure and other books in the Wild Tribe series to learn about plastics and marine life

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SustFest Assemblies

Preparation: Please note some of the assemblies have links to internet sites, including You Tube videos. You will need to ensure your firewall does not prevent you from accessing these resources – we recommend a dummy run!

Teachers’ Notes: There are Teachers’ Notes you to download. These include information on the content as well as links you can use to further develop your pupils’ understanding of climate change and how you can take action within school.

Fliers for Parents/carers: We would be grateful if you would send our fliers to Parents/Carers after watching the assemblies with your students. There is a flier for Primary here.

If you have any problems, please do contact us.

For Primary Schools

We have two assemblies for primary ages, with links below. Both of these can be supported by notes for teachers and a flier for parents and carers.

The Infants Assembly – suitable for Reception, KS1 and lower KS2

Download the video to your local machine via the link above or click the image below to watch on YouTube.

The Juniors Assembly – suitable for KS2

The Juniors Assembly takes the form of a powerpoint presentation to be delivered by teachers or, possibly, students. You will see that there are a number of notes against each slide to help you know what to say.

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Inspiration from previous years

Participants from previous years

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