In 2020, as York endured its first winter of the Covid-19 pandemic, York Environment Week was founded. What started as two-dozen events online has grown over the past six years into a month-long celebration of our city.
Last year we became York Environment Festival. But whilst our name has changed, our core mission remains the same: to showcase the remarkable work of environment groups active in York, help others to get involved, and facilitate a space for community joy, knowledge and change-making.
We are now approaching our seventh year, a number which carries significance in a few different ways. For example, cells in the human body take roughly seven years to regenerate – meaning that technically, it’s an entirely new volunteering team running the festival today!
It’s also inspired us to turn to one of the guiding principles of sustainability: the Seventh Generation Principle, rooted in the teachings of the indigenous Iroquois Confederacy Constitution, which states that the decisions we make today should not only consider the present, but look to creating a sustainable world seven generations into the future.
This is the world that we turn to in 2026: a world that we have the opportunity to shape today.
This year’s theme: a focus on the future
The focus of this year’s festival will be on the future and the power of younger generations to make change. We will wonder; how can we build better for future generations? For our own resilience? For communities? As seven years have come and gone, now is the moment to look back on how far we have come, but also acknowledge the risks of repeating ourselves: of falling into inertia, or even hopelessness.
And so we ask each other, our event organisers, and all those who attend York Environment Festival:
How can a few weeks in Autumn make a difference?
What change will we be able to see this time next year, in seven years, or in seven generations?
How can we challenge ourselves?
And how will we be accountable, both in the present and to the future?
Find out more about how you can get involved with the Festival, here: