The All Saints Parish Church sits within a few yards of our offices. The Church celebrated a milestone in December with their 10th annual Christmas Tree Festival. This time the event was hosted a bit differently, and it's sparked a campaign to make the Festival accessible for all...
Every year Loughborough's All Saints Parish Church hosts a special event to bring people together during the holidays and raise money for the Church. The Christmas Tree Festival brings light and laughter to those across Loughborough, as it houses over a hundred dazzling Christmas trees in the pews for a week.
For the past few years, we have joined in with the Festival, which happens just across the road from the Chesterton House office. We even made a video about the event in 2018, which you can watch here and we've taken part each year since by installing and dressing our own Christmas tree.
The global pandemic has meant that the Christmas Tree Festival had to be held differently this year. Normally the church is open for a week to visitors and grand events are held to celebrate the holiday. Despite not being able to host the event as normal, we joined other companies and charities by dropping off a decorated tree in order to be part of the merriment and support the event.
A big part of the Christmas Tree Festival is to bring people together for this special occasion, but that wasn't possible this year. In order to make the event accessible for all in the future, the church is raising money for equipment in order to stream events for anyone that can't be there in person.
The church is appealing to the public to help raise the funds, with the Rector, Reverend Wendy Dalrymple, pledging to run 5k for every £1,000 raised. In December Wendy completed a Santa Fun Run, bringing her running total to 29 miles and the total amount raised to £10,000 so far.
Bridget Towle, Treasurer to the church said: " The money raised will be going towards funding new equipment to film, record, and stream services and musical events in the church building.
"We want to share the use of this professional equipment with groups from Charnwood Arts, the Fearon Community Association, and the Falcon Centre. As well as choirs and orchestras, there will be opportunities provided for young people to make recordings. It should make the church a popular and vibrant venue."
We've made a donation to support the fundraising and if you would like to as well, you can find out more information on their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/allsaintsloughborough/
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