Features / Church Road
Church Road Lantern Parade fundraiser launched
The annual Church Road Lantern Parade has launched a fundraiser for its 2025 edition.
The event which runs through Barton Hill, Redfield and St George will be celebrating ten years.
Organisers Lamplighter Arts CIC have set a Crowdfunder to £5000.
is needed now More than ever
Through its Imagination Fund, Bristol City Council is supporting the event with £10,000 match funding a year over the next two years and The National Lottery ‘Awards For All ‘ is supporting lantern making for those on a low income.
Financially supporting this crowd funder will enable organisers to levy the funds to plan and organise a workshop programme across the area and bring the parade activity back into the heart of the community.
Thousands of people attended the Church Road Lanterns last year, as a result the event needs a lot of traffic management, as well as rigorous health and safety planning.
Lamplighter Arts CIC say they need to request Bristol City Council’s permission for the event 3-4 months in advance showing a rigorous stewarding plan, so it is essential to get the funding going.
Over 600 handmade lanterns were shown last year – photo Lamplighter Arts
The theme for 2025 will be “wild.” The lanterns will support a greater connection to nature within the community.
The theme will both celebrate and explore the wildlife in BS5 and inspire positive community action to build climate resilience. Lantern making workshops will be used as a tool for communities to discuss habitat recreation, aiming to preserve and support the biodiversity of our natural world.
The lanterns will celebrate many parts of BS5’s natural world such as the endangered tawny owls living in St George Park, the diversity of bees on Troopers Hill and raise awareness about plants such as the humble cowslips growing on Netham Park.
Lamplighter Arts CIC hope, that with funding achieved, community art work will begin again across the area in early Spring 2025.
The group have already been experimenting with infusing local wild flower seeds into their lanterns to support pollinators for the last 18 months.
School and community lanterns will be infused with plantable wild flower seeds which they are encouraging to be planted following the parade in Spring 2025.
What a wet but wonderful evening!
Around 5000 people showed up to watch
Over 600 lanterns were carried
160 lantern kits were bought and made at home
100 people took part in workshops
Less than 1 bag of litter was picked up this morning pic.twitter.com/r29C71Z4yZ— Lamplighter Arts CIC (@LamplighterArts) March 26, 2023
Church Road Lantern Parade began in 2014 to create a common celebration along the main shopping and travel route through our wonderful diverse community.
On their fundraiser they say, “The aim then and now was to create a parade of joy, peace and light following negative far right activity on Church Road in 2013. We all know from the riots this summer that this work is more important now than ever.”
The first parade in 2014 created 28 lanterns with 60 children and hundreds of people turned up.
Last year the parade was paired with the Govandi arts festival in Mumbai, India, starting on Morse Road and finished at St Georges Park.
In last year’s parade, of 160 lantern kits that were bought, many of them were made by school children
All photos: Lamplighter Arts
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