Ulverston proudly refers to itself as a festival town thanks to its large portfolio of celebrations each year. The Lantern Festival is one of the favourites and takes place every September. Traditionally, locals create lanterns from willow and tissue paper and a great parade of light weaves its way through the town in the evening.
The first parade took place in 1983 and since then has grown in popularity. Now every year the festival has a different theme, 2017’s being outer space. Impressively, the festival is organised and planned by the community and is always lots of fun. Usually the parade culminates in fireworks and theatrical displays in Ford Park toward the north-east of the town.
This year the festival is shaking things up a bit and four separate parades are converging from different directions on County Square, right in the heart of the town. As many as 600 lanterns are expected for the event and the finale this year will be a huge street party in the town centre. The parades kick off from 7.15pm on Saturday 16th September and there will be fireworks and live music at the street party from around 8.45pm.
The event has a real community feel to it and the weeks leading up to it sees the town putting on little lantern-making workshops and even some of the local shops, such as the Information Centre and the Laurel & Hardy Museum, start to sell lantern-making kits for people to do at home.
If you’d like to get involved in the parades or the lantern-making workshops, check out the website for full information here.
