Be part of a creative festive period!

We are working with Firstsite, the Mercury, Our Colchester BID and CBC to promote creative evening programming over November and December as a way to bring more people into the city centre to enjoy everything our cultural venues have to offer – as well as benefitting shops, restaurants and bars of course.

The Festive Light Parade – from Mercury to Firstsite, with creative activities on offer at both ends – will take place on 16th November; there will also be late-night openings with screenings, tours, workshops and painting parties at Firstsite on the Friday 25 November, Saturday 26 November and Thursday 1 December; and the Christmas Open Evening at Colchester Museum on 7th December.

We can help align and publicise any activities, events or special offers that can be aligned to either the Light Parade or the other late opening evenings. We want to help make the city centre as buzzing and interesting as possible for these evenings – and if this approach is successful, we hope to be able to build on this for regular evening activity coordinated by Creative Colchester in 2023.

Please upload any city centre events to the BID’s InColchester website at https://www.datathistle.com/update/event-listing/?org=incolchester. (Please note, this is only for events within a mile of the city centre) and contact Sam Lepard (Sam.Leppard@colchester.gov.uk) and Rachel Skillen (rachel@firstsite.uk) to ensure you are included in other publicity.

Firstsite are also offering space to groups who would like to put on activities on these evenings but lack a venue of their own. Please contact Sally Shaw (sally@firstsite.uk) and Rachel Skillen (rachel@firstsite.uk) if you are interested.