🧢 This week’s ‘Top Pick’ @WeightmanPR: Trentham Winter Light Trail
It runs through to 31 December, so time is running out to see Trentham Estate’s all new illuminated Winter light trail around the historic gardens, in Staffordshire. The trail is over a mile long, and features interactive displays, soundscapes and larger than life illuminations. Threre’s also an après ski lodge bar and chalets, local independent food vendors, children’s funfair amusements and marshmallow toasting.
🧢 Stoke100 calendar announcement hits the right note
The first of many music concerts and events have just been announced, as part of a year-long festival of arts, culture and fun to mark Stoke-on-Trent’s centenary in 2025. They include: The Rise of the Fab Four on 25 January, King’s Hall, Stoke; Soul-on-Trent on 5 April, King’s Hall, Stoke; and the North Staffs Symphony Orchestra’s Stoke-on-Trent Centenary Concert on 28 June, King’s Hall, Stoke. Further announcements will be made soon, and more information will be posted on the Stoke100 website, www.sot100.org.uk.
🧢 Derby’s role with Railway200 picks up a head of steam
In 2025, Railway200 will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the modern railway. Events are currently being planned nationwide, including in Derby, home to Europe's largest rail cluster. Two Railway200-specific events in next year’s celebrations are being hosted in Derby - including “The Greatest Gathering”, on 1, 2 and 3 August when the largest temporary assembly of rolling stock and railway-related exhibits in a generation will be brought together for three days across Alstom’s historic Derby Litchurch Lane Works. The Midland Railway Study Centre, meanwhile, will stage three weekend-long events in the Museum of Making at Derby’s Silk Mill.
🧢 100 anniversary of Stoke poet, novelist, playwright - and Angry Young Man
March 14 2025 will mark one hundred years since John Wain’s birth, in Stoke-on-Trent. Poet, critic, novelist, and playwright, many of his novels have been republished, along with a retrospective Selected Poems and Memoirs - and as a result his reputation has not simply been consolidated, is still growing. He was originally associated with the Movement poets and also with the so-called ‘Angry Young Men’ of the early 1950s, when his first novel Hurry On Down was published. And, in the same year that the city marks 100 years of city status, celebrations are being planned across The Potteries to mark his centenary. Born in The Potteries and educated at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School and St John’s College Oxford, Wain aught English at Reading University until 1955, when he resigned his academic post to earn his living as a professional writer.