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Reopening the High Street with Safety & Fun in Romford
From Saturday 24th April until Sunday 6th June 2021, families in Romford will be able to track down the ‘Secret Carnival’ and its wily characters via smartphones thanks to Romford BID
As high streets open once more this April, Romford BID are keenly aware that families will want to look for fun activities that are safe, socially distanced and contactless. As part of a programme of events, they’ve teamed up QR code trail experts High Street Safari to create a free, interactive story-trail that is designed to encourage children to walk, get engaged and most importantly, have a lot of fun.
The Secret Carnival Family Trail is positioned around Romford with 10 carnival characters, like Harlequin, the cheeky jester. The trail takes about 45 minutes to complete but can be completed in more than one visit. It’s completely free for families and groups to take part in and they win a personalised, digital ‘selfie storybook’ at the end.
To create their ‘selfie storybooks’ families need to practice their acting chops as they take funny ‘scene’ selfies along the trail, with directions like ‘look amazed’ or ‘look curious’. Then, once they complete the trail, their selfies are then embedded directly into the book pages as part of the story. The book tells readers about the day their family went on a tour of the secret carnival – so they become stars of the story and get a wonderful keepsake.
The trail works by utilising contactless QR codes, without the need for families to download or sign up to anything. With safety in mind, it has been designed so that there is no need to go inside the venues, but some participating businesses are offering extra incentives to come in while you visit.
When families in Romford scan each character’s unique QR code they’ll learn their names and what their role is in the carnival. Younger children will enjoy spotting the colourful characters in shop windows and older kids, and grown-up ones, will engage by hearing the stories.
Martin Blackwell, former CEO of ATCM and the Charity Retail Association, who is coordinating the project nationally, said, “We’ve now run three national trails like these in 2020 and have just been blown away at the response considering the difficult climate on the high street. We had over 30,000 families play last year in over 200 locations. If something fun like this can help make families and kids feel good about going back out onto the high street in a safe way, then we’ve done our jobs.”
Julie Frost, BID Director said, “We are really excited to be working with the team at High Street Safari for our third safari trail. They are great for families to do together and this one is especially fun as you can be part of the story by taking selfies as you go. Thanks to our 10 sites in Romford who have agreed to put the decals in their windows and good luck to all those taking part.”
Romford BID would like encourage families who are taking part on the trail and sharing on social media to tag Romford BID in their captions
www.instagram.com/romford.bid/
To find out more about the trail, visit the website:
