window wanderland

The past three nights have seen the “Window Wanderland” event take place in Bedminster, Southville and Ashton for the first time - and we’ve taken part… with the basement, living room and bedroom front windows featuring a drawing of a rather tall harbourside crane!
What on earth is “Window Wanderland” (I hear you ask)?
Well, the website describes it thus: “an inclusive grassroots event which lights up neighbourhoods with playfulness. It provides a common festive focus and encourages ‘hidden creativity’ to emerge. The displays from each event form galleries which celebrate their diversity and showcase the displays to the wider Wanderland Community, leaving a very positive legacy”. For a flavour of the event, I suggest you check out this video from the BS24/7 website.
Created in Bristol last year by Lucy Reeves Khan, the event saw lots of homes in Bishopston adorned in light-up art displays for the enjoyment of their neighbours and encouraged people to walk around their neighbourhood in groups to see the impressive creations of their fellow locals. 
This is the first year that homes within Southville, Ashton+Bedminster have participated in the event and over 150 houses, businesses and schools are taking part this weekend!

At one stage, I thought we might be able to put together something which incorporated contributions from all our Bristol family members… but, as the deadline drew closer, it became obvious that it wasn’t going to happen (busy, busy people!). So, in the end, I’m afraid it’s MY drawing work - with invaluable contributions from Iris and Rosa and their fat colouring pens!! It was all a bit scary: We had no idea how the image would come across to people walking past… Would it be readable? Would the limited colours be visible enough? Would it all disintegrate when we tried to “hang” the images? Would we be able to find enough decent spot-lamps to illuminate the images?

Well, in the end, our window stuff all seemed to work reasonably well (with a few misgivings)… and without too many mishaps!
All that remains to be done now (the morning after the weekend before…) is to take down all the art stuff, remove all the spotlights and cables… and allow normal daylight back into our lives!
The really lovely thing about the weekend was just how many people participated in the event – whether by producing their own window art or simply by roaming the neighbouring streets enjoying the spectacle… and, thankfully, the weather was very kind to us.
Lots of very happy, smiley people… it was very good fun!

Photo: harbourside crane view from our living room.