Hay Festival Foundation Wood: Thirty Acres

In 2017 as part of Hay Festival’s 30th Anniversary celebrations, we undertook a range of projects in support of our sustainability programme, engaging our audience in activities that aimed both to educate and directly improve their local environment, creating a sustainable legacy.

Partnering with The Woodland Trust, our Thirty Acres project fostered the creation of digital and real-life woodlands across the UK.

The Foundation Wood Project was made up of three individual but connected parts:

• The Virtual Woodland: since 2017, the Woodland Trust have given away tree saplings to Festival visitors and recorded the home postcode data of the location the trees will be planted. This has allowed the creation of a digital map showing all of the trees and creating a digital forest. This featured as part of the Woodland Trust’s plans for celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest in 2017.
• 30 Trees for 30 Schools – 30 anniversary trees were supplied to 30 schools in the area surrounding Hay-on-Wye.
• 30 Acres – a joint project between Hay Festival, the Woodland Trust and the National Trust which has created 30 acres of new woodland on National Trust land across Wales with trees from the Woodland Trust and planted with the help of volunteers from Hay Festival, the National Trust and the Woodland Trust.

For more information please contact Andy Fryers, Sustainability Director, andy@hayfestival.org.