Claire Allford, who lives in Totnes, is fighting to bring back the Totnes lantern festival, which has been a huge tradition for many years in the town.

The festival sees people in the local community come together to make lanterns and light up the streets of Totnes, but it hasn’t been able to run for the last few years.

Claire said: “I became chair of the carnival committee in 2018 but obviously with Covid-19 we had to cancel it for the following 2 years.

“Then the committee folded as we couldn’t elect a new one so I never got to achieve my vision, which was to have a walking procession in the hope that it would be more accessible for people to join in without the worry of having to get a float together.”

A meeting was hosted on Tuesday in the Lovelace room at The Mansion to discuss the matter, and it is hoped that there will be a lot of positive feedback by the local people of Totnes.

Claire says she wants to: “Sew the seed to bring the carnival back.”

One of the issues that organisers have faced is the funding required to set up road blockages for the event, as event runners are required to pay for accredited contractors, which wasn’t an issue in previous years. To resolve this, Claire hopes to link the event with the Totnes Town Council Late Night shopping events, which are already in place, in the hopes that this will reduce the pressure on funding the event.

She said: “I’m linking in with folk within the community and we are hoping to be running various lantern and costume making workshops in the hope that people will then join the procession on Tuesday 19th December.” The time of the procession is yet to be confirmed, but it will probably be late afternoon or early evening.

So far, Claire has received a positive response to the plans: “I have had some exciting conversations so far with various people who are keen to be involved.”

When the last committee folded, the funds were given to charity, so to raise money for the event, Claire is running her ‘odd object event’ in August, which sees a competition of odd objects being put up in shop windows and participants writing down the ones they spot.

She said: “I had continued to run the popular odd object competition throughout Covid and organised a Halloween themed Window Wanderland so I just thought it was time to give it another go and see if we could get it off the ground again.”

The odd object competition will be running from August 21st to September 2nd and entry forms will be on sale from Arcturus Bookshop for £1 nearer the time.

The first prize is £25, second £15, third £10, and people entering can also vote for the best odd object in a shop, with the best shop winning a trophy .