Our families-only, village-style camping festival, Starry Village (formerly known as Starry Skies – more on that here!) returned in 2023 after a 3 year, covid-shaped hiatus.
After having time and space to reassess this event, Starry Village now has a renewed and refreshed vision for the future, for the youth, and for people and planet on the pathway to the more beautiful world that we know is possible. You can read more about that ambition, here.
Underpinning this important intention is the data-driven reflection on our efforts as a festival and community, to map our impact – and highlight recommendations to improve and reduce our footprint in coming years.
In 2023, we put together our first, in-depth Starry Village Impact Report to kick off this exciting process – click HERE to dive deep into the whole shebang, on the Starry Village website.
So.. how did it all go?!
Our main priorities were focusing on circular systems of materials and waste, measuring and setting targets for energy use, finding the footprint of our on-site food alongside ethical standards, and exploring how to reduce our travel impact. Here’s how we measured up in 2023.
Starry Village is following in the footsteps of our 23 year old flagship event, Shambala Festival, where we’ve developed some industry leading and pioneering sustainability initiatives.
Some of our key achievements at Starry Village 2023, were:
- Sourcing nearly 60% of drinks from local, sustainable, ethical suppliers
- Eradicating disposable coffee cups and having our crowd bring their own mugs instead!
- Keeping a lower-than-UK-average energy use per person per day at the festival
- Organising land-based regeneration by rounding up our audience to get stuck in and help us plant 200 trees on the beautiful Kentchurch Estate!
In the future, we’ll be:
- Ensuring we are 100% fossil fuel free, using the lowest-impact technologies and fuels
- Deciding whether it’s lower-impact and feasible to implement a reusable serveware programme in our small, village community,
- Developing our food standards with food traders and trucks to use more lovely, local produce on the path towards a majority of plant based options.
- Exploring whether some families and crew members would use shared travel from certain areas in the UK.
If you’re interested in community driven solutions, nature-inspired creativity, regenerative futures, and above all: play and exploration- please feel welcome to join us with your little ones at Starry Village this year between 25-28th July, 2024 in the gorgeous Kentchurch Estate in Herefordshire.