Get Involved with Walton Heritage Festival
A date for your diaries, Saturday 18 September 2021 will see the return of the annual Walton Heritage Festival as part of the wider UK Heritage Open Days events. This is of course subject to all social distancing restrictions being lifted, but we are progressing with planning in the meantime.
The event brings together the whole community to celebrate the town’s heritage with a key focus on its connection to the river. As in previous years, we are hoping to hold a street fair in Bridge Street, a dog show at Walton Wharf, a duck race on the river, abseiling from the top of St Mary’s Church and a whole host of other activities to keep families entertained.
For businesses in the town, such an event can offer a great marketing opportunity to highlight your business to new audiences, whether they spend with you on the day or come back another time.
We are inviting all Walton BID members to get involved with the event through the following opportunities:
Having a stall at the Bridge Street Fair
The Bridge Street Fair is a classic village-fete-style fair with fun games and entertainment for families to get involved in. We’re looking for businesses, community groups and charities to take a stall at the fair that includes a fun game for people to play. Things like hook-a-duck, tombola, guess the number of sweets in a jar etc. Having a stall for the day also provides a great opportunity to promote your business or sell products and services.
Sponsor a duck in the Duckathon
A fun part of the day will be a duck race on the river where a number of plastic ducks will be released onto the Thames and a prize awarded to the first one over the finishing line!
People on the day will be encouraged to sponsor a plastic yellow duck and given a number – If their duck is the winner, they’ll win a portion of the cash raised.
If there is sufficient interest, we’d also like to run a second duck race with larger ducks for businesses and groups to get involved in providing a great opportunity to get involved with the local community and a bit of teambuilding for your staff on the day. Businesses will be able to sponsor a duck and even decorate it beforehand in their company colours /branding /uniform. Proceeds will go to a local charity and a prize awarded to the winning team.
Donating prizes for competitions
The whole day is intended to gather the community together with some much-needed feel-good fun. We’d like to run various competitions and giveaways throughout the day and we’re looking for businesses to donate any prizes or items for goody bags such as pet products for the dog show, dinner or drinks vouchers, physical items for prizes. This can be a great way of promoting your business and products to local people.
Incentives on the day to entice customers
In previous years, the Heritage Days have attracted hundreds of people into the town which provides a great opportunity to highlight your business to new customers. To encourage people into your venue on the day, if you’d like to offer a special menu or discount, we will promote this to people attending the event.
If you’re interested in getting involved with the event through any of the above opportunities, please get in touch with kelly@waltonbid.co.uk to discuss further.