Autumn

You will have seen the earlier circulars regarding the Halloween Trail and TraderTopTrumps. We still have space for the latter and so please do send us your information and photograph - see the past two newsletters for details

The Halloween Trail is now full and will be published in the next two weeks and we hope will help bring an extra steady flow of family-based customers to the streets over the coming weeks.

Christmas

Lights - the BID will as usual pay for lights on North, East and West Street. Our income was significantly reduced however we hope to make a bit of an impact as always.

Gift Guide - we do a regular Christmas gift guide. Would you like to be in it? If so please send a short description of your gift, price and a high res image of 1MB minimum to sophie@weareplaster by Monday 18th October.

Community Choirs - the third element of our Christmas proposals will aim to go large with local community choirs as we think this is in keeping with one of the few positives to emerge from Covid. That of people feeling a stronger part of their local community.

Thursday Nights - we do not have a specific set of activities supporting late opening this year however would encourage traders considering this to aim for the late-night opening on Thursdays in December. We can support this in the Gift Guide.

Lantern Parade - as ever the BID is a lead sponsor with the Lantern Parade. More details of how businesses can actively interact with the parade will follow soon.

In Other News

Briefly, we are delighted to have secured significant additional funding from West of England Combined Authority of nearly £400K. Most of this will be committed to test the East Street Vision (have you seen the video? - check it out here). However, approximately £135K is reserved for culture and events. We will be circulating more information soon and seeking ideas and feedback around how to best use this over the next 18 months.