COLOUR, life and music are set to fill the streets next Saturday at the annual winter lantern parade.
Organised by Camden Road Education, Arts and Theatre Enterprise (CREATE), the parade will be held on Saturday February 10 at 5.30pm from Calverley Road.
The traditional route will see the parade form up on the pedestrianised part opposite the millennium clock, turning left in Mount Pleasant and left again into Monson Road, following it through to Camden Road and all the way into Grosvenor and Hilbert Park.
This year’s theme is Dream Destination – think favourite holiday place, an imaginary world like Wonderland or even your bedroom.
Local Scouts and Guides, schools, the Tunbridge Wells Fringe Festival and more will be joining the parade, alongside local businesses.
So far, there have been eight workshops for the public to make lanterns including a pop-up at Royal Victoria Place. Local businesses are also selling kits for £5 to make your own lantern and bring them along to the parade. They can be found at Cook, Manic Ceramic, M. Saltmarsh Artists’ Materials or Whirligig Toys.
One of the parade organisers, Nell Price, told the Times: “The parade is full of music and life at this dark time of year! Plenty of people join in, lots of people get dragged in to carry those bigger lanterns, plenty of people also watch from the sides to see the whole thing going past!
“Bloco Fogo and TS Brilliant keep us marching in time and we all finish at the Grosvenor and Hilbert Park to see the bigger lanterns up close, listen to the music and have food and drink from the stalls there. It really is a festival atmosphere!”
