Our final event of the year will be on the 5th & 6th December. We are launching Pickering Snowglobe - a new indoor Christmas Market/­Festival, which will be completely housed inside the Galtres Park Arena on the Pickering Showground.

As many of you will know, the venue held a last minute Christmas Festival here in 2025 in response to the very late cancellation of the Christmas Festival in Malton. I came in a couple of weeks before the event to act as a consultant to the venue management and was responsible for the layout plan and power distribution. I was there both days and, despite some obvious issues, I saw great potential in the venue - so I am delighted that the management at Galtres has given me the opportunity to completely take over this event from them and I am introducing some major tweaks to be certain of making this year a major success:

• The event will be free entry with free parking (last year parking was charged at £5 and this resulted in some visitors turning around to leave to avoid the charge)
• A full marketing and PR campaign is being developed (last year there was not enough time for the venue to do very much marketing)
• We have engaged the services of The Yorkshire Grinch to create a very unique 'Grinch Grotto' to run alongside a traditional visit to see Father Christmas (last year the grotto experience was sold out and received fantastic feedback. Adding The Yorkshire Grinch will definitely build on this success)
• The Funtime Express land train will once again be transporting visitors from the arena to the grotto lodge (The land train is always a very popular feature)
• A full programme of seasonal entertainment is coming together with choirs and brass bands already booked in (last year it was too late for the venue to engage with any choirs, so there was only a partial programme of entertainment)
• Another major change from last year is the timing of the event - we will run with a much more tried and tested schedule from 10am to 4pm each day (last year the event was supposed to run from 12-8 and 10-6, but each day the event ended much earlier than planned)
• Rather than have the distraction of a funfair, we have instead opted to have a small number of child-friendly traditional rides, which will also be inside the arena to keep everything undercover, under one roof (last year the funfair was not in-keeping and in my opinion, added nothing to the Christmas vibe of the event)
• The Street Food Court will be inside too. Last year most of the street food vendors were outside, but a mis­com­muni­cati­on with the parking team meant that visitors bypassed the street food traders and went straight into the arena via a back door - its quite possible some visitors didn't even know there was a street food court outside at the front. This time, all street food traders will have equal opportunity.