Events and Activities in Harpenden and the Villages

Our Harpenden Quiz of Quizzes, an ever-popular event staged in St George’s School hall, on a Friday evening in March, regularly attracts 30 or more teams of six people.  

As well as giving some 200 quiz enthusiasts an entertaining evening it allows us, through the bar and a raffle, to raise funds for charity. Since the first Quiz of Quizzes was staged in 1996 more than £60,000 has been raised. 

Classics on the Common is our flagship event. Since we took over organising the show in 2009, ‘Classics’ has become one of Britain’s biggest mid-week classic car shows and is ranked as one of the top events of the classics calendar.

More than 1000 classic 4-wheel vehicles and motorcycles, with over 10,000 admiring spectators, fill Harpenden Common on a Wednesday afternoon in late July.

Charities have benefited, too. In 2019 the show raised £33,000 and since taking on the event we have raised and distributed £263,000 to needy causes.

Each October we supply up to 10 local junior schools, Guide and Scout groups with specially made Rotary shoeboxes which the youngsters, with their parents’, teachers’ and leaders’ help, fill with toys and household goods to bring some Christmas cheer to orphans and elderly people in Eastern European countries.

As with most of our international giving, the money or goods are handled by Rotarians in the UK or who are based in the receiving countries. That way, we know our aid will reach the people who need it.

A choir drawn from 12 local junior schools provides the music at A Concert for Christmas which we hold in early December each year at High Street Methodist Church.

Performing before an audience of parents, the choir alone renders some modern carols, interspersed with several favourites to which audience can add their voices. A collection is taken for charity. 

Drawing on our members’ experience of being interviewed for university or a job and, in the
course of their careers, interviewing others, we offer school leavers a 20-minute ‘mock
interview’ with a further 10-minute review of their performance.
Two years ago we began giving mock interviews to participants on The Prince’s Trust’s 12-week programme designed to help 16- to 23-year olds make something of their lives. In that time the positive outcome for those completing the course has risen from 65% to 86%.

Rotary Youth Speaks, another long-standing nationwide competition run by Rotary across the country, aims at giving young people an experience in public speaking that will benefit them forever.

Teams are drawn from senior schools and, depending on their age, compete in junior, intermediate or senior categories. Each team has three members - chairperson, proposer and opposer - who have 15 minutes to debate a subject of the team's choice.

Imagine having to design, build and test a coin sorter with only wooden dowel, card, square-sectioned wood, rubber bands, modelling material and Sellotape to work with. And you have only fours hours in which to complete the job.

That's the sort of task facing more than 120 students from Harpenden and St Albans secondary schools taking part in a Rotary Technology Tournament held at Marlborough Science Academy, St Albans, each March. We run this event in association with the three St Albans Rotary clubs, with sponsorship from local businesses.

Our Young Citizen Awards honour teenagers from Harpenden’s secondary schools and organisations like scouting and guiding, who have been outstanding in reflecting the Rotary motto, Service above Self.

The award winners, chosen by the school or organisation, gather with their parents at a dinner we host each May, to be introduced by a senior member of the school or organisation. 

Budding young photographers have the opportunity to enter their work in the Harpenden heat of Rotary’s country-wide Young Photographer Competition.

The competition is split into three age-defined sections: junior, intermediate and senior. The judges, drawn from Harpenden Photographic Society, have no knowledge of the identities of the competitors. For further details see here