Lantern Festival Organisers Beg Crowds to Come With Their Cash

Festival chair, Chris Nelson, issues a statement calling for the local community to make donations on the night to ensure the event returns next year.

Read the full statement from Chris below:

‘Ulverston Lantern Festival is begging local people to come with cash to donate to the event on Saturday September 25th, or there may be no festival next year.

The Lantern Festival relies on the cash collection during the procession and firework finale for up to half the £10,000 cost of staging the event.

But with so many people now paying by card for just about everything, there is a danger that spectators won’t have coins and notes to donate on the night.

Government statistics show that people are hoarding cash at home – www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58421192

Lanterns needs people to bring their cash and chuck it in the bucket.

Lanterns chair Chris Nelson explains: “Just £1 from every adult attending this free event would provide the money needed to guarantee next year’s festival. But more than half the crowd don’t donate, or just throw a few pence in the bucket in return for one of the best free nights of the year.

“People think that the council pays for events like these. But the Lantern Festival is run entirely by volunteers and we have to fund the event with the money we raise from kit sales and the collection. We receive help from a local company CGP Educational Books, from Ulverston Town Council and SLDC, but we have to raise around 75% of the £10,000 it costs to run the Lantern Festival. So we need people to save our festival by bringing out their cash and chuck it in the bucket!”

Thousands of people are expected to fill the streets of Ulverston on Saturday September 25th as a River of Light makes its way up to Ford Park for a firework finale, with lanterns of all shapes and sizes created for the theme ‘My Favourite Things’. That could be anything from animals to superheroes, toys to tanks, submarines to spaceships, insects, flowers, Harry Potter and Star Wars to Game of Thrones and Spongebob Squarepants, fantastical creatures from your imagination or just a cuppa!

Workshops start this weekend on the ground floor of the Parish Rooms on Church Walk, from 2.00pm to 6.00pm on Saturday September 18th and Sunday September 19th, and from 5.30pm to 8.30pm from Monday September 20th through to Friday September 24th.

Lantern kits are also on sale from Appleseeds in Market Street, the Bookshack in Ulverston Market Hall, 14 Moorgarth in Swarthmoor and from Croftlands Launderette. Each kit contains willow withies, masking tape for securing the frame, paper, PVA glue for coating and strengthening the paper covering the frame, wire and a candle – in fact everything needed to create a lantern for the festival.

The Festival committee is monitoring Government restrictions to ensure everyone stays safe on the night of the festival and at the workshops. The event itself is held outside and people can still wear masks if it makes them feel safer in Ulverston’s crowded streets. Those taking part in the procession will be encouraged to give themselves and their neighbours a little more space.

The various processions will start from their normal locations between 7.15 and 7.30pm and will arrive at County Square around 8.00pm. The big firework finale is scheduled to begin no later than 9.00pm.

For more information, visit the Facebook page, or email festival chair chris@trafalgar-pr.co.uk or for materials email Gavin Knott at knottnet@aol.com. Info also on ulverstonlanternfestival.org.’

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