The Westgate Centre in Oxford is launching its Christmas theme with a view to helping customers save the planet.
A new, alternative Christmas experience designed and curated by Wayne Hemingway will be launching at the shopping centre later this month.
This year the centre will be home to ‘WasteLess Wonderland’ - a reinterpretation of the classic Christmas market with a sustainable theme.
READ MORE: Path closed by council due to flooding safety risk
WasteLess Wonderland will showcase talent from the city and beyond as part of a Christmas market experience.
It will offer ‘good for-the-planet’ gifts from independent designer makers, festive food produce, and street food from local suppliers as well as workshops that reuse and repurpose leftovers from Christmases past.
Launching on Friday, November 24 and running until December 22, shoppers will be able to experience a festival line-up of attractions, events and experiences.
This includes Christmas star-making workshops using only wood offcuts, kaleidoscope gift-making using recycled Christmas cards and Japanese zero-waste gift-wrapping courtesy of the Furoshiki Wrap Company.
Customers will have the chance to go for the personal touch and craft some homemade decorations such as wreath-making using natural resources, seasonal foliage and adornments that can be found in your garden.
There will be something for all the family including weekend workshops, interactive elements and entertainment – there will even be a toy swap shop gift exchange.
READ MORE: Drivers face gas works at the Botley interchange
Three food brands from Oxfordshire will be part of the experience – the Wonky Food Company will be selling jars of great-tasting relishes that use imperfect and surplus fruit and veg that helps tackle food waste.
Climatarian Kitchen will be serving street food dishes all made from surplus food; while Damascus Rose, a social enterprise supporting refugee women in Oxford, will be selling delicious Middle Eastern food.
For the musically-minded, there will be an opportunity to play your favourite Christmas tunes with The Junk Orchestra’s giant Music Mushrooms – the orchestra is a supersonic collection of re-invented objects, recycled into musical instruments.
WasteLess Wonderland will be adorned with a striking design that reimagines cast-offs from Christmases past, breathing new life into leftover materials.
READ MORE: Bus service cut back due to major roadworks
Working with John Lewis Partnership’s Creative Studio, surplus shelving has been repurposed into market stalls and set flats have been reused to build part of the street food kitchen.
Each Friday will see WasteLess Wonderland host ‘Friday Lates’ from 5pm-9pm.
A pop-up bar from Toast will be exclusive to Friday Lates, with the company’s award-winning craft beer brewed with surplus fresh bread that would otherwise go to waste – Toast’s profits go to charities working to fix a wasteful food system.
Friday Lates will also include the ‘Recycled DJ Party’ with Charity Shop DJ, who use vinyl records sourced solely from charity shops to trigger memories.
Guests can pick a record, get behind the turntables and have a go at being a DJ themselves, dedicating their tracks to friends at the event.
Oxford-Based Annie Sloan, CBE, inventor of Chalk Paint and one of the UK’s most influential designers, will be part of the launch day activity.
She will be showing visitors how to repurpose furniture using paint as well as a live demonstration painting a 10ft repurposed plywood Christmas tree.
Brendan Hattam, centre director at Westgate Oxford, said: “This is a never-seen-before festive experience and we are delighted to be pioneering our WasteLess Wonderland for the first time in the UK, here in Oxford.
“There’s going to be so much to do, see, explore, experience and taste, and all with a unique Christmas twist – we’re really excited about the line-up and cannot wait to unveil our exclusive new festive attraction next month.
“We all have a part to play in creating a more sustainable future and we believe this year’s Christmas experience will have the same Westgate festive magic, while encouraging guests to think about recycling, reusing and wasting less.”
READ MORE: Brand the Bus competition goes electric
Wayne Hemingway from Hemingway Design said: “Whilst most of us love Christmas, it’s a time when we buy more than we need and then there are those well-meant but unwanted gifts.
"At a time when we must think about the future of the planet and its resources, and whilst the ‘cost of living crisis’ continues to impact on many people’s daily lives, the time is right for a fresh look at city centre seasonal celebrations."
Help support trusted local news
Sign up for a digital subscription now: oxfordmail.co.uk/subscribe
As a digital subscriber you will get:
- Unlimited access to the Oxford Mail website
- Advert-light access
- Reader rewards
- Full access to our app
About the author
Andy is the Trade and Tourism reporter for the Oxford Mail and you can sign up to his newsletters for free here.
He joined the team more than 20 years ago and he covers community news across Oxfordshire.
His Trade and Tourism newsletter is released every Saturday morning.
You can also read his weekly Traffic and Transport newsletter.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here