Organisers of a Winter Festival in Dumfries say they will continue to make plans for their activities in 2021 even if they have to happen at a later date.
Preparations for the 2021 Carnival which was originally due to be staged in January 2021 as part of the festivals tenth birthday is likely to be staged later in the year, but the organising team will be pushing ahead throughout the winter to bring volunteers from across the community together to create the magical community show which will line the streets of Dumfries in the future.
Volunteers are needed to build the 1200 costumes for school pupils who will get to wear them when the world returns to normal and dance sessions will be broadcast into schools to sustain the momentum until the show is revealed to the world.
The theme of this year’s Carnival is Our Town, which will tell the story of Dumfries since the second world war and has been created by lots of contributions from across the community, some as far as Canada.
The volunteers will become part of the Tartan Army who will work through the winter creating all of the costumes for the 2021 spectacle. Participants will be shown how to make the costumes through online videos, with artists teaching them skills online rather than in person.
Materials will be delivered by local couriers in boxes with instructions and the tools you need to make the costumes and then picked back up again when they are finished.
The project is just part of a series of initiatives that the Dumfries based arts organisation has led since the outbreak of Covid, which has so far included a monthly Lockdown Festival which ran between April and June, and a new interactive magazine show called Dumfries TV which is designed for school pupils in Dumfries reaching audiences of almost 70,000.
Graham Main, Executive Producer of Big Burns Supper said
“This is all part of our strategy to support our community to keep busy during the Winter. We have tried to design a safe community arts project that can be done at home safely whilst volunteers engage in our online community.”
Diane Little-Moss, Community Producer at the Big Burns Supper said,
“Although we may or may not get to stage things when we want to, we’re going to use the time to be creative with our community by creating a magical show that we will reveal to the world once normality returns.”
Every Wednesday we will be running interactive skills sessions with our artists, including our designer Caitriona McGowan who designs the Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin.
Signing up is really easy. Anyone who is interested should log on to www.bigburnssupper.com/carnival and register themselves or their friends or by calling 01387 733717, or they can email Diane [email protected]
Diane added
“You do not need to have experience to take part, anyone who has a couple of hours to spare will be made welcome.”
