Here's a rundown of festival highlights and the WINNER who will receive a free booth at next year's event!

 

Most Memorable (and highly popular): Growin' Together – featuring the trash mandalas and the Rise and Fall of the cardboard empire. An evolution of castle building and destruction and rebuilding really showcased youth creativity, human nature and how much fun can be had with a bunch of used boxes and some packing tape. 

 

Most Absorbing: Craft table at Magellan School booth

 

Most Diverse Activities for Kids: Whole Life Learning Center – seed balls, face painting and more

 

Most Modern & Snazzy: MW Cleaners with their iPad sign ups and "bowties are cool" t-shirt give-aways

 

Most Organized & Useful Info: City of Austin's Grow Green program

 

Most Unique: BabyEarth.com

 

Most Thought Provoking: Sea Shepherd (producers of Whale Wars). Consider this…10 people were killed by sharks last year. 100 million sharks were killed by humans!

 

Most Useful Give-Aways: Austin Water – microfiber cleaning cloths, shower timers, soil moisture sensors and more!

 

Most Helpful & Fun: Compost Pedallers with their bike rides, free bananas and peel-tossing game. They also helped others with booth load in. Way to go y'all!

 

Most Interactive & Far-Reaching: Sierra Club/Beyond Coal Photo booth

 

Best Tasting Samples and Products: Fair Trade Organic Chocolates from Equal Exchange

 

Most Visually Appealing: Design~Build~Live

 

Most interactive/Informative display: Super Green Solutions

 

Most Beautiful: Blessing Flags

 

Friendliest Booth Workers: H-E-B

 

Making the highly technical accessible: Smart Charge Residential

 

Most Generous give-aways: Home Energy Score

 

Most Useful Products Display: TOPS – Texas Office Products and Supply

 

Most high-tech engaging for kids: The Thinkery

 

Most useful NEW information: the joint Urban Patchwork and East Feast booth. Did you know that solitary bees account for the majority of pollinator bees, yet we focus almost entirely on hive-dwelling honey bees. Paige had some hand-crafted bee abodes designed specifically for these solitary bees. 

THE WINNER (drum roll) went to Green is the New Black. Whether the measure was number of people cheerfully working the booth, amount of effort and energy expended to set up the booth (which included the re-location of Professor Dumpster's year-long home to be on site at Earth Day, or number of activities provided, this crew was a festival leader on each front. 8 Huston-Tilotson students plus Dr. Jeff Wilson spent the day enthusiastically sharing their project, demonstrating low-impact living and providing great photo opps with the dumpster.

   

In the spirit of engagement, their "Message in a Bottle" activity of cardboard notes with ideas for Dr. Dumpster got others thinking about ways to live lightly and brainstorm new ideas for the prof himself. They offered face painting, as well as an activity I've never seen before, "rainbow bubble snakes."  The presentation was well orchestrated, from their matching Professor-style glasses to their enthusiasm. Congrats to Green is the New Black whose focus is engaging Black and Latino students in environmental awareness and action.  

 

 

For my own kids, the Fry's Fun Farm petting zoo which offered nearly unlimited access to super cute animals for three bucks, kept them rapt nearly the entire time they were at the festival.