This year the Lord Mayor has made six grants to community groups to develop floats and take part in the Show: you can find the details in local press releases. The City of London press office has also put out these announcements:
Six of Britain’s most accomplished cobblers have been invited to participate in the 791st Lord Mayor’s Show on Saturday 11th November 2006. The craftsmen, who all work for the UKs biggest shoe repair chain, Timpson, will join boss, John Timpson CBE, and thousands of other participants exclusively invited to lead the Lord Mayor elect from The Guildhall to the Royal Courts of Justice for the annual inauguration ceremony.
The day before Hamburg sends a large delegation to the Lord Mayor’s Show (Saturday), a German Alderman will be honoured in a City of London Freedom ceremony at Guildhall. Nikolaus Schues, a member of a well-known German business family and owner of the Laeisz shipping line, will be admitted on Friday morning to the Freedom, sponsored by City of London Alderman Alison Gowman and Kenneth Stern, a former Lloyd’s broker and underwriter and well-known link between the two North Sea trading cities.
Santa Claus will be travelling from Finnish Lapland for his first official visit to the United Kingdom this November. On Saturday 11 November, Santa and his helpers will take part in the historic Lord Mayor’s Show when by over half a million spectators and millions more on television will watch him travel through the streets of London on his sleigh.
A group of transplant recipients will be grabbing their pompons and red bowler hats and jumping aboard a double-decker bus to fly the flag for organ donation at this year's Lord Mayor's Show in London, in front of an estimated crowd of more than half a million people.
Buster Martin, who is believed to be Britain's oldest employee, will be heading up the Pimlico Plumbers procession at the Lord Mayor's Show on Saturday 11 November – and walking the entire route. Buster will be at the forefront of Pimlico's float (number 77) along the route of the Lord Mayor's Show, which is approximately three miles.
The need to build understanding between religions and cultures in our society has never before been more discussed. Ujamaa, a Hackney based community arts group, which has been funded by the City of London Corporation to create a float and perform in this year's Lord Mayor's Show, is one organisation striving to extend this understanding to all sectors of the community through street theatre, music and dance. Their float will hit the streets of the City of London on 11th November as Ujamaa leads the new Lord Mayor from The Guildhall to the Royal Courts of Justice for an annual ceremony to welcome him into office.
Cambridge School, a special educational needs school in Hammersmith, will be joining in with the celebrations at this year’s Lord Mayor’s Show. Children from the school will be devising and performing street theatre and dance alongside Ujamaa Arts project.
Each year, hundreds of children get involved in creating and designing many of the floats and acts that feature in the Lord Mayor's Show, the 3 mile long street procession now almost in its 800th year that weaves its way through the historic streets of the Square Mile to welcome the Lord Mayor of London into office. Many of these children have been putting this practical artistic experience to good use, with schools reporting that children submit their work as part of their Art GCSEs and even college entrance portfolios.
Shoreditch-based Arts for All, one of six community groups funded by the City of London Corporation and invited to take part in this year's Lord Mayor's Show, will be taking to the dance floor on the 30th of October with a premier choreographer from the Central School of Ballet for their final dress rehearsal (picture opportunities available).
The carnival is historically an embodiment of the symbolic inversion of power, and has often been linked to the debauched festivities of the Roman festival of Saturnalia. The Lord Mayor’s Show, coming up on its 800th year and traditionally a celebration of the swearing of fealty to the crown, does not fall easily within this category. However, on taking a closer look at the line up for this year’s Lord Mayor’s Show, it’s apparent that it incorporates more of the exciting, colourful and irrepressible art of the carnival than ever before.
It may not reach more than five miles an hour, weighs nearly three tonnes and has only six horsepower (although they are particularly powerful horses) , but Britons can be justly proud that the Lord Mayor’s Coach is once again being prepared for this year’s Lord Mayor’s Show. After all, how many vehicles remain road-worthy for almost 250 years?
Local Hackney children from Albion Kids Show are preparing for their part in this year’s Lord Mayor’s Show by creating beautiful and thought-provoking paintings of their estates. The paintings will adorn a float specially created to depict urban Hackney through the eyes of its youngest residents. Albion Kids Show, a community group who recently won funding of £10,500 and an exclusive invitation from the City of London Corporation to take part in the Lord Mayor’s Show, provides opportunities for local children to try their hand at art, sports and even circus performance in the safety of their own estates. The group also hopes to reduce the tension that can exist between children from different Hackney estates by encouraging them to play and learn together from an early age.
Praxis, a refugee community organisation based in East London, has won £10,500 in funding from the City of London Corporation and an exclusive invitation to participate in the Lord Mayor’s Show, a London tradition which dates back nearly 800 years. Praxis, which has worked for over twenty years to settle refugees in Britain’s capital city, say involvement with the Show will help young people from these groups integrate with the wider community and provide them with arts resources, workshops and training.
The Lord Mayor’s Show 2006 will take you on a cultural trip around the world – without the need to leave London. This year’s Show, on Saturday 11th November 2006, will be one of the biggest and most culturally diverse in the parade’s near-800 year history.
The 2006 Lord Mayor’s Show is set to be one of the biggest, most vibrant and culturally diverse in the parade’s near-800 year history, as it winds through the streets of the City of London on Saturday 11th November. More than 6,000 people of all ages will take part in the three mile long procession.
City Livery Companies today elected John Stuttard as the 679th Lord Mayor of the City of London, to serve from Friday 10 November 2006. John Stuttard, who served as Sheriff of the City 2005-2006, is an eminent accountant and City businessman who advised government in the 1980s, and has spent most of his career helping global businesses access global markets.