The First ‘Social Distanced’ Summer Entertainment Workshop at Doncaster Lakeside Shopping Centre was a huge hit!

The Brief

We had the pleasure of creating a Summer Event and Entertainment programme for Doncaster Lakeside throughout August 2020. This popular and well-established Shopping Centre sought out our help in creating amazing, interactive and above all fun entertainment options that visitors could enjoy whilst shopping. In particular, the centre wanted children to have the opportunity to have fun and interact with each other in a safe environment whilst maintaining social distancing!

As we all know, the coronavirus has caused a storm throughout the world and ‘social distancing’ has quickly become the new norm. Because of this, Doncaster Shopping Centre wanted to help prepare children for when they go back to school and have to interact with each other at a distance, in order to remain safe. Their aim was to prove that you can still have fun whilst being 2 metres apart!

The first event on our entertainment programme was to bring The Trolls to Doncaster Lakeside! Due to the new Trolls World Tour movie that was released earlier this year, we knew this theme would be a huge hit with children and child-like adults alike.

The Challenges

The main challenge we had when putting together this Trolls themed weekend was creating entertainment that was not only fun, interactive, and unique but also safe and honoured the ‘social distancing’ guidelines. We constantly asked ourselves ‘what can we do to engage and capture visitors’ attention and attract them to the shopping centre all whilst staying safe and maintaining 2 metres apart?’ It was a hard concept to execute, however here at Big Foot Events, we are well known for our ability to adapt and improvise and adhere to even the most challenging of briefs.  With this in mind,  we knew that we would be able to overcome any issues and put together an amazing Trolls themed weekend that not only brought a lot of attention to the shopping centre, but also had children amazed, engaged and entertained (social distanced of course)!

The Solutions

In order to overcome any safety issues and abide by the current ‘social distancing’ law, we restricted The Trolls Meet and Greet to a limited number of people per session. This way, we could make sure visitors remained 2 metres apart and that each visitor got the opportunity to safely interact with our fantastic Trolls! This first event, that took place on Saturday 1^st August 2020, was simple yet crowd-pleasing. It captured visitors’ attention and kept them in the shopping centre, as well as gave children their first experience interacting with other children in a small space, whilst social distancing. We all know children find it hard not to touch each other when playing. We ensured that the event would be a quick and easy set-up and did not need a large team of people to set up the event – therefore keeping social interaction to a minimum. We ensured all staff were coronavirus free and kept sanitised at all times.

The Results

We were extremely thankful that we had the weather on our side as it was glorious sunshine on the day of the Trolls Workshop weekend! Our interactive, cheeky Trolls truly glistened and shined in the sunlight and their bright colours caught the attention of visitors as soon as they entered the Shopping Centre. We knew children – and Troll enthusiasts – would still be on a high from the newly released Trolls movie, and this was confirmed when their faces lit up with excitement when they saw the Trolls mischievously walking around the Shopping Centre.

As you can see from the picture below, our Trolls were extremely eye-catching, and immediately lit up the centre with their happy-as-Larry personalities. It was fantastic to see little children, as well as adults, wanting to take a picture with the beautiful beasts. We had a giant marquee behind the trolls, as well as friendly staff in order to maintain crowd control and keep visitors at a safe distance from each other. It was fascinating to see children excitedly communicate with each other through looks, hand gestures and of course through talking whilst maintaining social distancing! In fact, they were so captivated by the Trolls that they didn’t even seem to mind that they had to stay 2 metres apart from each other.

Overall, the first ‘socially distanced’ Summer entertainment workshop at Doncaster Lakeside was a huge success and we had people instantly signing up to the next workshop taking place the following week.

We cannot wait to see how our ‘Greatest Showman’ themed weekend turns out! Keep updated on our website and Social Media platforms for more ‘Socially Distanced’ entertainment!