On Wednesday 30th March, a group of twenty five 4th and 5th year students took part in a meeting on how to do a debs sustainably. Facilitated by Sustainability Chaplain, Mr Harvey, they used a unique type of discussion called Open Space Technology in which participants are asked to choose relevant topics related to an overall theme. Then they split into smaller groups to brainstorm ideas on each topic.

As ‘Sustainable Debs’ was the theme, the relevant related topics chosen were: food and drink, dress, transport, decorations and music. After 10 or 15 minutes of brainstorming writing and doodling on flipchart paper in their smaller groups, each sheet was passed to the next group so all groups had an input into each topic.

 Some brilliant ideas came out of the group discussions including:

·      Setting up a website for passing on once-used debs dresses

·      Making your own dress (could be a competition!)

·      Renting or buying second-hand suits

·      Plastic free meals

·      Locally sourced food and drink to reduce food miles

·      Travelling by bus to the venue and enquiring if a bus hire company had electric vehicles

·      No glitter (which consists of micro plastics which end up in the environment)

·      Limit electricity use by having candles or LED lighting

·      Using biodegradable (and no helium) balloons.

Finally, each smaller group fed back their top five ideas to the whole group and a rep from each class group took photos of each sheet and can use the ideas when the time comes to set up their debs committees. The students enjoyed the process saying it was creative and fun.

This is an energising and empowering way for a group of people to come up with ideas or solutions to a problem, guided by a facilitator/teacher, and is sometimes called ‘harvesting the collective wisdom and knowledge of a community.’

Well done everyone and thanks to Fiona Hedderman for organising the event.