Va Va Vroom! - Scooting Our Way To Carnival Success!

Wow! Another fabulous carnival season done and dusted, and a brilliant array of trophies and certificates, from Best Comic Entry to Best Overall to Most Time and Effort in Construction, across the six carnivals (it would have been seven, but Ventnor Main was sadly rained off!) we entered for our 2019 season.

Our theme was Va Va Vroom - we were all on Vespas, designed and built in-house by our outstanding carnival team, and danced through the streets to 'Stupid Cupid', 'Da Doo Ron-Ron' and 'Sh-Boom'.

Over the summer, we were also delighted to be asked by Steve Robson of Visual Impact if we would make an appearance at the IOW Scooter Rally on 24th August and perform our routines - of course, we said yes!

As always, we'd like to say a huge thank-you to everyone who organises and participates in our carnival entry, and we'd also like to extend an equally huge thank-you to the Island's carnival committees...without them, the events simply wouldn't happen!

The carnivals are a staple of our summer, and we absolutely love performing in them and making people laugh, and we can't wait to do it all again next year.

For now, though, the next stop...?

Our fortieth anniversary pantomime: Sleeping Beauty.

Summer with the Strollers

What a whirlwind of a summer we've had!

We've been super busy, so busy that we simply haven't had time to blog about it, so we'll take you on a whistle-stop tour of what we've been up to...

With Joseph over, we did a top-speed turn-around and launched ourselves into carnival season with this year's entry: Dirty Dancing!

Dressed as cleaning ladies, complete with bright pink hair rollers and carpet sweepers, we danced through the streets to 'I Want to Break Free' and 'Greased Lightning', performing kicks, flicks and hip-wiggles and picking up trophies as we went.

Feedback, as always, has been excellent, and we're already musing on ideas for next year.

We also held our presentation for the proceeds of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and were overwhelmed once more by how much we were able to give away.

We presented a cheque for £3,500 to St Peter's Church, Shorwell, who were our partners for the production, and we presented a cheque for £2,000 to The Joe Ellis Trust.

To top it off, we also purchased our fifth Public Access Defibrillator for the Isle of Wight, which will be placed in the parish of Shorwell.

We've said it a hundred times before, and we'll say it again: thank-you, to every single person who supported Joseph, and to our spectacular cast and crew, without whom the show simply wouldn't have happened.

So, with the carnivals over and Joseph nicely wrapped up, we now turn our attention to our 2017 pantomime: Jack and the Beanstalk.

Set to be performed at Medina Theatre on February 18th, 19th and 25th, trust us when we say you'll want to save the dates!

It'll be our 'biggest' panto yet!

Over the summer, we also reached some pretty incredible milestones on our social media pages, topping 200 followers on Instagram and reaching a brilliant 500 followers on Twitter, while our Facebook page continued to grow and is now approaching 1,100 'likes'.

In honour of these awesome achievements, our next blog post will be all about our social media channels, so watch this space!

That's all for now, but stay tuned as we embark on our next pantomime adventure and keep an eye on the blog for more news and updates from The Wight Strollers. As we step into Autumn, we hope to bring you an insight into some of the behind-the-scenes happenings of the company, including our social media, our committee, our costume and scenery teams, and how we go about choosing our charities each year - it's all good stuff, you won't want to miss a word!

For now, though, it's one more big thank-you from us to all our supporters and we'll be checking in again soon.

Strolling into Summer

Carnival rehearsals are well underway and our theme is going to have you giggling across the Island this summer...as always, though, it's top secret, so don't go asking a Stroller to give the game away, our lips are sealed!

We've been rehearsing, costume-crafting and float-building for a few weeks now and things are going swimmingly. With only two weeks until our first carnival on Saturday 25th July in Sandown, we're polishing up the routines and putting the final touches to our floats ready to wow the crowds once more.

But that's not all we've been up to!

Last weekend, some of our members and their friends and families took part in a car treasure hunt around the Island, organised by two of our wonderful committee members, Judith Day and Mike Squibb. There were ten teams taking part in the fundraiser and everyone (eventually!) made it back to the picnic point with 'The Dibley Winners' emerging victorious.

We'll also be at the Funtasia Festival at Los Altos Park in Sandown on the 25th and 26th July, running a bottle tombola to raise more funds to cover the ever-increasing cost of putting on our shows, so we can continue to give as much money to local charities as we can. If you can support us by donating some bottles (full ones!) then please leave a comment or get in touch via Facebook to let us know - or you can just come along and buy a ticket or five for the tombola and try your luck at winning a prize!

Speaking of fundraising, one of our members - Nicola Chastney, known to Aladdin audiences as So-Shy - is abseiling the Spinnaker Tower for Parkinson's UK next weekend. Good luck, Nicola, we're all rooting for you!

Another not-so-little announcement comes in the form of our 2016 pantomime. In our last blog entry, we announced it as being Mother Goose, but sadly we've struggled to find a script this time around that meets the needs of the company so we've done a bit of a U-turn and our 2016 pantomime will now be...

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!

A firm favourite with many of our members, this classic fairytale was last brought to life by The Wight Strollers in 2008 and we can't wait to bring it back!

Our director will be casting the show over the summer and rehearsals will start in the autumn, along with our usual selection of backstage blogs for your enjoyment. In the meantime, watch this space for carnival news and pictures and we'll see you out and about this carnival season - give us a wave when you spot us!