tunbridge wells winter lantern parade
On the lower part of Camden Road in Tunbridge Wells, beyond the traffic lights,
there are no Christmas lights. A group of local volunteers got together to
organise a parade of light from the town centre, all the way down to the bottom
of Camden Road as a way of lighting up the street and celebrating the diverse
community that exists within the road itself. The community play ‘The Vanishing
Elephant’ had taken place a couple years before and the local volunteers where
keen to keep the creative and community spirit alive through the arts and so,
CREATE (the community group behind organising the parade) and the Tunbridge
Wells Winter Lantern Parade was born. In 2015, our long-running grant was axed.
We now fund the parade ourselves with the support of generous local individuals
and businesses like you. To help with our fundraising efforts, in 2019 we
started making lantern making kits for people to buy so that they could either
make their lanterns at one of our workshops leading up to the parade or take
them away so they could make one in the comfort of their own home which couldn’t
have been made possible without the help of local crafty volunteers to help put
the kits together and wonderful local businesses that agreed to sell them on our
behalf. To find out how you can support the Winter Lantern parade, please visit
our ‘Support’ Page. What started as a fundraising event for a community theatre
production has now become a staple part of the Tunbridge Wells community events
calendar!
