Celebrating Creation with a day of Eco-Fest Fun

The churchyard of St Peter’s in Llanbedr, near Ruthin, will have a festival feel for a day as people gather to celebrate Creation.

Eco-Fest on Saturday 10th September will include bushcraft activities, drumming workshops, mindfulness walks, wild church, as well as stands and stalls. The day is free and is being run by the Diocese of St Asaph to encourage churches and communities to connect with creation.

The Dean of St Asaph Cathedral, Nigel Williams, is one of people organising the event. He said, “Eco-Fest is designed as a fun day to help people engage with issues of climate change and sustainability, offering advice and information on making our churches and our lifestyles more environmentally friendly.

“We hope people will come along to Llanbedr and try out our drumming workshops, have a go at bushcraft and consider how they can connect with God through outdoor church around a firepit. We’ll have stands and stalls offering advice and activities. Across the road, the local pub, The Griffin, will be open for food and serves locally made Chilly Cow ice-cream. Outside the church will be a stall serving Fairtrade coffee and cake. We hope there’ll be something for everyone.”

Eco-Fest is taking place during Creation Time, a church season celebrating creation and offering protection to the natural environment. It stretches from 1 September to the feast of St Francis on 4 October and often includes Harvest Festival celebrations. Eco-Fest has been launched by the Diocese of St Asaph’s Eco-Church group which is working to encourage all 214 churches across the diocese to register as an Eco-Church. So far, the diocese has 10 churches gaining a silver award, and more than 20 with a bronze award. The Diocese itself has achieved a bronze award and is working towards silver but needs more churches to embrace the programme.

Dean Nigel added, “There will be an opportunity at Eco-Fest to find out more the Eco-Church Awards and register your church. This is about embedding environmentally responsibility practice and behaviour into everything we do and what better way to find out more, than to have some fun at the same time.

We need to ensure that caring for God’s creation underpins our faith and informs our way of living.”

Eco-Fest opens at 11am and runs until 4pm. There are a series of timetabled activities, such as wild church and mindfulness walks but other activities, such as drumming, bushcraft, following the labyrinth and taking an eco-digital pilgrimage will run throughout the day. A local band, No Shock Required, will provide music in the afternoon and there will be opportunities to get creative with nature, find out how to borrow tools and equipment and learn about the global impacts of climate change. The event is free, open to all and there’s plenty of parking nearby.