— Jonathan Cresswell also contributed to this report
After the cancellation of the Lincoln Christmas Market on Wednesday, December 1st plans have been put in place to hold an alternative event.
The Healthy Hub, based at Beaumont Fee, had a stall booked for the Christmas Market and decided to organise the event for other stall holders who are already in Lincoln yet have no market to go to.
Around 30 to 40 stalls will be set up inside The Healthy Hub starting at 12pm on Friday, December 3rd and the event will run until Sunday December 5th.
Rebecca Dray, the chief executive of The Healthy Hub, says that she has been “inundated with emails from stall holders saying they were absolutely desperate when they found out it had been cancelled because they think their business might go under because they are relying on the trade to keep them going and they’ve got stock they’ve been making since August.”
The decision to cancel the Christmas market could have a significant impact on the local economy as it brings in £10 million a year.
As many stall holders had already travelled to Lincoln, The Healthy Hub decided that with the amount of space they have that they should hold the alternative event because, as Dray says: “The council have done a really great job with organising the Christmas Market and promoting it so it is very, very popular but cancelling it yesterday at lunchtime meant that it was too late for a lot of people were already on the road.”
Although filling the void of the traditional market might seem like a challenging task, Dray described it as “exciting” and that it is “fantastic to think about our community”.
The next day will be working on organisation and promotion of the event, but Dray wants people to be sensible, saying: “We don’t want anyone to strand themselves or anything like that but essentially there are loads of people in Lincoln and yesterday when it was cancelled we were on the High Street and the High Street was absolutely full of people shopping.”
They are also looking for volunteers to help with the organisation of the event, as Dray says many people are already helping out: “We’ve had people volunteering to come and shovel the snow, I think it’s just getting community spirit going, which is excellent, so it’s all about the big society, isn’t it, this is big society all over.”
If you want a stall at the Alternative Christmas Market or want to volunteer, email hello@thehealthyhub.co.uk. You can find out more information on their website
Well Done Rebecca!