Community Events with Eco Club Program

COMMUNITY EVENTS WITH ECO CLUB STATIONS

When we talk about community events in rural areas, we mean all kinds of gatherings: farm festivals, farmers’ markets, local fairs, summer festivals, annual meetings, assemblies, exhibitions, flea markets… the list is long and far from complete. In this case, we focused specifically on events with more than 100 participants, so that preparing an Eco Club program would be worthwhile.

In 2024, to introduce Eco Club Projects to our wider Bavarian community, we collaborated with local artists. Their farm festival provided the perfect setting for an Eco Club program. We organized a variety of sustainable activities that appealed to different guests and interests, including a Repair Café with individual sewing sessions, a scent-memory game, a small Future Cinema, and crafting sessions where participants built insect watering stations from sticks and shells.

A site map and program overview at the entrance helped everyone find their way easily.

And at our Eco Club Introduction Table, we presented our ideas and asked visitors about their wishes for future activities. The herbal tasting at the table turned out to be a wonderful ice-breaker: a simple sensory activity that immediately sparked conversations.

What visitors appreciated most was that the festival offered something interesting for every age group. Many guests also mentioned how beautifully everything fit together: the farm, the art, the music, and the Eco Club activities created a lively, creative, and welcoming atmosphere.

The decoration and signage received many compliments as well. Everything was crafted from reused or upcycled materials, giving the festival a unique handmade look that aligned perfectly with the Eco Club philosophy. A favorite was the tombola with sustainable prizes, including sunflowers grown from seeds started by Eco Club participants earlier that spring.

During the festival, several Eco Club stations were successfully implemented. The Repair Café was run with the support of the Mühldorf Repair Team, handling electrical and mechanical repairs, while Ieva from Vilnius offered one-on-one sewing sessions and live textile repair.

Naturally, we hosted the festival again in 2025. We were able to implement previously collected wishes, such as the Clothes Swap Station and live 3D printing. We also experimented with several additional new stations. The results were simply wonderful. Participants from earlier local Eco Club projects joined and brought new friends along, making the group wonderfully diverse.

It became the most international farm festival in our Bavarian area, with people from many cultural backgrounds. This included Delia and Mickael from FabLab Cuenca with their wonderful Vibrobot workshop, Carlos and Sara from Buinho who helped improve our repair skills, as well as guests from South America and Asia. Fab Lab Ferdi tirelessly shared his knowledge with everyone, demonstrating different hydroponic systems and offering deep insights into 3D printing.

BASED ON OUR EXPERIENCE,

WE RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING ECO CLUB STATIONS FOR A FARM FESTIVAL

INFO TABLE – to introduce Eco Club Projects and collect wishes for upcoming activities

REPAIR CAFE – supported by the local voluntary repair cafe team
CLOTHES SWAP – with changing rooms, lighting, and mirrors
GAMES – such as a plant tombola, scent memory, and herbal tasting from local gardens
FUTURE CINEMA – showing a repair documentary and a digital plant exhibition
WORKSHOPS – including building Vibrobot bugs and beginner textile repair
LIVE PRESENTATIONS – such as lamp repair, 3D printing of drip-irrigation tools, perfect compost, and painting with plant-based colors

Digital helper:
When planning the details for the festival, one tool proved especially helpful for gathering sustainable design ideas: Pinterest. It allowed us to collect different approaches quickly, and discussing them as a team helped us stay aligned right from the start.