A HORSFORTH businesswoman is part of a team organising a nationwide Window Wonderland trail to help families celebrate the Christmas season safely.

Gill Wood is the owner of ARTventurers West Leeds, which gives art classes for babies, toddlers and children in Pudsey and Guiseley.

The Big Window Wonderland Trail encourages households to display Christmas cheer in their windows, so that over the weekend of December 19 and 20 children and their families can take part in a trail spotting festive window displays in their local area as an alternative to some of the Christmas events that have been cancelled or modified this year. Participants are also encouraged to make a contribution to the nationwide charity Fareshare who re-distribute surplus food to charities that turn it into meals.

Gill's advent window is also part of the Horsforth Countdown to Christmas Community Advent Calendar and will be lit up each evening from December 1 to 24.

“So many festive activities have been cancelled or have been booked up well in advance this year” said Gill. “But as a business working with families every day, we know how much children look forward to the Christmas celebrations. So the ARTventurers Team came up with The Big Window Wonderland Trail as great way to ensure they don’t miss out completely. We’d love as many people in Horsforth, and Leeds to create a festive, happy wintery display in their window and join in. Your display could be painted, or could be made up of decorations, – we have some printable templates on our website if people want to use those and get the children involved in the decorating too.”

The Big Window Wonderland now has a large community following on Facebook with nearly 80,000 households already signed up to take part.

Gill said: “We did a similar hunt for Easter eggs in the first weeks of lockdown and then as a team we organised a great online celebration for VE Day in May. Both events showed us that people love things to look forward to despite the pandemic, and also how creative and resourceful people are! We had almost 50,000 people take part in our Big Neighbourhood Pumpkin Trail at Halloween too. Already people are designing their windows and getting their decorations out of storage and sharing their ideas in the group. It’s going to be a great event and something to look forward to.”

Visit https://www.artventurers.co.uk/the-big-neighbourhood-winter-windowland-trail/ or contact Gill at gillwood@artventurers.co.uk to find out more. Follow the Horsforth Countdown to Christmas advent window trail by following google map locations found at https://horsforth-woa.org/horsforths-countdown-to-christmas/

Fareshare the charity fights hunger in the UK by redistributing good food which would otherwise go to waste to almost 11,000 frontline charities nationwide. Visit https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/the-big-neighbourhood-winter-windowland to donate.

Visit https://www.artventurers.co.uk/westleeds/ to find out more about Gill's classes.