Woolwich Christmas lights event announced by Greenwich Council

Greenwich Council have announced a Christmas event later this month in Woolwich.

The council state “a magical light installation” will be held on Saturday 29 November at both Beresford and General Gordon Squares.

In addition expect a festive art trails, Christmas singalongs, free activities for children, workshops plus arts and crafts with local arts organisations.

Funfair rides will be put on alongside festive market stalls.

It’ll be interesting to see how they organise it this year. General Gordon Square was never really designed for mass-footfall events being mostly grass, but then the council put them on across the space anyway.

In turn greenery was often left muddy or/or bare particularly outside the summer time. Variations in height are also not the best for thousands of people.

Meanwhile the hard-standing Beresford Square which was ideal for catering to big crowds often wasn’t used for mass events. Now it’s been reworked into the fantastic looking new space with fountains but less hard standing.

Still, it’s not completely devoid as seen below.

Both squares are generally excellent public spaces with General Gordon Square being a winner from day one but how they organised events showed little understanding of each square’s design – which presumably as the client the council desired or else they just let an outside consultant do it with minimal oversite.

So will they factor that in mind now millions spent on another upgrade? Guess we’ll see. Still, it sounds excellent and hopefully is a boost to the town centre’s footfall and visitor numbers.