Three months of planning for Halloween
One of the biggest questions we hear from the public for our Halloween events "Is this on again tomorrow?". We thought it would be nice to make a blog to highlight the extent of work that goes on behind the scenes by volunteers to plan and prepare for the three free nights of Halloween. In August with no funding for Halloween or Christmas, as a committee, we had to decide if we could even find the funding in time or had the energy to do it, usually a project would need a bid and then at least two months to hear back if we could receive funding, we reached out to Paula the Area Forum Co-ordinator for Bolton Council that signs off an approval from Breightmet Councillors Mike Tucker, Sean Fielding and Rob Morissey. As chairman for Bolton NEWT, I'm a very strong believer in being transparent about our grants and always seeking best value for money, which is why I'm taking the unusual step to share our grant bid.
Thankfully our local Breightmet Councillors approved the bid and then the work began;
The Pirate Ship and El Cielo was kindly painted by Simon and Jan.
Two retaining walls along a new access path by the forest was built and installed.
New grave stones created with local teenagers and painted predominatley by Angelica
Two truck loads of wood chips scattered across the site
Sam working non-stop strimming the site, tidying it up and putting new flowers out in pots.
We had an agreement with a local company to provide us with 30-40 volunteers to help make 200 wands but at the least minute, after we had bought the products they cancelled on us. So we did it ourselves with Becky helping in creating the wands by twine wrapping them, but it still took 12 hours to just glue them.
Becky, myself and Elliot spending an afternoon cutting back willow, harvesting it and creating wands with willow salvaged from Leverhulme Park that also was used for our new Willow Arch. Followed by carrying three large bundles of branches back to the Garstang Hub.
22 shops in Breightmet kindly took our bundles of 35 leaflets for the event, Red Lane and St Catherines took a bundle for each class and the remaining was delivered to local homes over many many hours.
A new karoke stage was created for Simon and Jan to perform for the crowd.
Removing an entire dead hedge, installing a new dead hedge along a fence line and building a new shelter side to El Ceilo.
The lads helped build a brand new crypt and a new small fence for the graveyard.
A last minute joining of the Breightmet Scarecrow Festival.
Then the risk assesment for the three events, ensuring the site was safe public access, that we had enough lighting followed by gathering; six gigantic boxes of Halloween props, masks, four smoke machines, floodlights, large cut out Halloween pumpkins, costumes, a brand new El Cielo day of the dead themed shack, planning and buying all required stock such as 4 giant Aldi bags of just bread for the hotdogs, car batteries and convertors, kind support from local neighbours for electric, creating a site plan and layout of where everything will go and who can attend and where they can volunteer. The first event went off without a hitch, broom making attended by 50 people but come Saturday the 24th the storm hit and we had to reschedule for the following Thursday, which meant some people who had been able to volunteer could no longer volunteer with us. We'll post tomorrow a blog about the actual events but I hope this snapshot into the crazy level of planning, preparation and how this is entirely done by volunteers with kind support from the local community helps people to understand why we're only able to do three nights of Halloween. A final say, did we go over budget, yes, did volunteers contribute to the event out of their own pocket, yes, but we did make a total of £13 in donations so we must be doing something right. lol
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