There were various suggestions of other things that the Bonfire Committee could get involved in since deciding to not do any more bonfires.  There will, of course,  still be Panto’s and Mummers plays and various other things I’m sure, but one idea that was mentioned was to add a lantern procession to the Winter Festival.
This is an event that happens every year in Ellesmere at the end of November.  It is the evening that the lights on the Christmas tree are turned on and there is late evening shopping with mince pies and mulled wine on offer in most of the shops.  There is usually some sort of singing on the streets and music and stalls in the Market Hall.  All in all it’s a lovely evening in small market town kind of way.
With this, Cathy and me both really liked that idea and so got involved in making the lantern procession happen.

As we were proposing a community event we were granted some funding by the ‘Ellesmere Area local joint committee’ and so the idea was to have community workshops to get families to build lanterns and then have some large sculptural lanterns too.  There were six workshops in all, two in Welshampton at the Parish Hall which Tony Boys and Rosemary Drake ran and two in the Market Hall in Ellesmere which Cathy, myself, Tony Lewery and Mary Lewery ran.  Finally Cathy had suggested we get in touch with Lakelands School to see if they wanted to get involved.  After a brief meeting with Andy Richards, the art teacher there, we had another two workshops.

Cathy had decided to to make a Pike lantern.  This would be no little Pike though, it was to be a 12 feet long three sectioned pike.
As for me, for some time I’ve fancied making a backpack puppet and so planned to make a Jack frost puppet.
Originally I was planning to cover and clothe the puppet and make a paper mache head.  He would carry glowing lanterns but would be a mostly ‘non-lit’ puppet.  Once I had started the planning and drawing stage Cathy suggested that I make it as a withie and tissue lantern puppet.  Initially my reaction was “Nahhh, I don’t really like working with withies” but the seed was then planted…
Over the next few days of going back and forth between “Oooooh a walking lantern, that’d be good” and “Doing a puppet as a lantern adds wayyyy to many problems” I decided she was right, it would indeed look good as a walking lantern puppet.

And so the building began.  Soon it was withies and tape everywhere and the living room and dinning room became overnight workshops.  There was much ‘Googling’ of Pike’s and muttering about legs and hinges…

Between us there were a few problems to think about.  The glassy glowing eyes of the pike were solved by cutting the ends off of two wine bottles and fixing LED’s and tin foil behind them but how to fix the three sections of pike together remained an ongoing issue. There was also the slight issue that the pike had now grown to over 13 feet long.
I had several issues with how to make hinges work and how to light the puppet.  Due to the slender limbs it had to be LED’s but there was still the issue of how to fix in around 20 LED’s and be able to turn each one on and off…

Meanwhile in a workshop just outside Ellesmere Tony Lewery had been creatively busy…
He had created a beautiful elegant Swan, the very emblem of Ellesmere, in his interesting and busy workshop.  I dropped in to see it before it was covered and have to admit it left me feeling that the bar has been set very high!
I cannot praise Tony and Mary Lewery highly enough for their enthusiasm and time given.  Tony led the adult instructional workshop and they both helped us with all the other workshops.

And so before we knew it, time was pressing on and it was time for some outdoor testing.  Cathy’s pike was looking good once the sections were all together.  She had now decided that it would be three separate pieces that would flex rather than joining them to make a solid one-piece lantern and there was also a working jaw.
Jack Frost on the other hand had a few problems of his own…
As soon as the idea of doing this became a real possibility I knew I wanted to build a large Jack Frost, and that he had to walk.  I have for a while wanted to build a backpack puppet and liked the idea of building legs that move and walk as the person wearing it walks so that it is a fully moving figure.  Once this puppet became a lantern puppet it made a few things a little more interesting as you can’t hide the messy stuff away with a withie lantern but the main problem I had was making the legs move in the right direction and way.  At first I had hinged the knees so they could only move at a right angle but this was not enough and so I had to make another flat, right angle hinge at the ankle.  This meant fixing a wireframe to a pair of old shoes and the legs attaching to them in a rigid, one-directional way.  With the ankle and knees only being able to move in one direction it meant the hip joint could be a simple suspended joint as the legs now couldn’t go in any other direction.

And so with only a few days to go we were onto skinning the withie frames.  This is a very satisfying, but also time-consuming process.  I found myself still glueing and sticking at 4.30am the day before the event but I’ sure that’s pretty normal for this kind of event.
Very soon Cathy’s pike became a solid, real thing with moving jaw, glowing eyes and teeth and Jack Frost became a solid figure.

And so the day of the event came.  If I’m honest, both me and Cathy have said that if we were to organize this again there would be a few things we would do differently.  We were a little chaotic during the evening build-up but Tony Boys was wonderfully helpful with his Van and Peter Cartlidge had been faultless and admirable in his role of gatherer and leader of musicians for the procession.  I also want to thank everyone that gave their time to help make this happen.
And so we were off!
All built, all done, and with nothing but the marching music and the lanterns to lead us forward we go…

I would also like to thank Phil Barrett and Christine Corfield for there photo’s.

So, here’s to next years lantern procession  😉