Shenstone Christmas Festival
Organisation: Shenstone Parish Council & Friends of the Station
Station: Shenstone
The Vision: To bring a festive atmosphere to the station for the benefit of passengers and station staff
Delivery:
The idea for a Christmas Tree Festival came from community colleagues who circulated details of such festivals in the USA and local volunteers decided to create a plan for a festive display of specially designed Christmas Trees.
Using disused timber pallets supplied by a local ‘Repair and ReUse’ community enterprise in Sutton Coldfield, the group created Christmas Tree shapes, which was an idea launched by neighbouring station Wylde Green the previous year.
The community then decorated the ‘pallet trees’ with battery operated fairy lights and advertised the idea of the Christmas Tree Festival in October so that businesses and organisations within the village community would have plenty of time to “sign-up” and the trees could be locally personalised to give the Christmas Festival a truly local flavour.
The village was proud host to over 26 community groups and plenty of interest ensued with each tree having a unique decoration to reflect the diversity of wider society and activities within the Village.
The Shenstone local group were also supported by neighbouring Lichfield Rail Promotion Group who’s help was invaluable in helping to install the trees at the station.
Photographs posted on the Friends of Shenstone FaceBook page received many positive responses such as:
“Looks wonderful”
“Love the variety of trees! I especially like the fairy on the tennis club tree”
“All different, all lovely”.
Local people and passengers congratulated the community group for making the station look so festive and at the end of the project a donation was made on behalf of the Christmas Project to The Railway Children Charity.
A very Happy Christmas all round.