Design your dream Scout badge

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Take a look at our guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.  
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers. 

Planning and setting up this activity

• Scouts are running a competition for young people to invent and design a new badge.  The winning badge entry will be used to create a new occasional badge that members will be able to buy and wear on their uniform.
•  Find out more about the competition and how to enter your group's ideas on the Scout Website. 
• You may wish to ask people to bring their badge blankets and/or badge books.

Running this activity

1. Gather everyone together and give everyone pens and paper.
2. Ask everyone to think about the Scout badges. You could at some badges on people's uniform or blankets, in a badge book, on a poster, or you could download some badge images from the brand centre [link] This could be a good opportunity to get someone from another section to talk about the badges they do or have done. They could even use this towards a requirement for another badge or challenge award.  
3. Everyone should divide their paper into four. They could do this however they like.
4. In the first box, ask people to write or draw what their favourite Scout badges are.
5. In the second box, ask people to note down which badges they'd like to do that they haven’t done yet.
6. In the third box, ask everyone to think about the badges they didn’t like doing or wouldn’t want to do, as well as the reasons why.
7. Finally, ask everyone to think about the topics the badges cover, such as cooking or gardening, and note this down in the fourth box. Are there any patterns or similarities? Do they remember doing similar badges in younger sections? Do they think anything is missing?
8. Explain that Scouts are running a competition for people to design a new activity badge. The winning badge idea will be used to create a new occasional badge that Scouts can buy and wear on their uniform. Tell everyone that they’re going to take part and invent their own badge.
9. Now, ask everyone to look closely at the designs of the badges. Ask people what they think about what the badges look like, such as their style or the colours used. Ask everyone what new activity badge they'd like to create. and what it may look like.
10. When everyone’s ready give out copies of the badge competition template  and ask  people to design their badge. Remind them they’ll need to include:
    
    
    • The Scouts fleur-de-lis somewhere on the badge
    • Circular shape (the badge will be 7cm diameter)
    • A maximum of eight colours
    • 'Nunito Sans’ font for any text,(if you’re designing the badge online)
    • The name of your badge 
11. Anyone that finishes early could add what you would need to do to achieve their new badge onto their sheet.
12. Collect all the badge designs together. Use the badge competition page [link] to find out how to submit your entries.