Let’s Grow Halifax

Wednesday 27th & Thursday 28th October 2021

Halifax Borough Market

NEW from the co-creator of the award winning TV show, ‘Mr. Bloom’s Nursery’

 ‘Let’s Grow’ is coming to the heart of Halifax this half term, transforming spaces in its historic Borough Market. The ‘Let’s Grow’ pop-up Allotment is free to explore, with its charming family of baby fruits and vegetables to meet, along with their friendly Vegetable Nannies. There’ll be street art games to play, make & take family workshops, a treasure trail to follow and you can even help urban street artists to transform some unused market stalls into giant pieces of art!

Start your ‘Let’s Grow comes to Halifax’ experience by heading to the festival hub, which is inside the Albion Street entrance to Halifax Borough Market. Here you’ll find…

The Let’s Grow Pop-Up Allotment – Interactive Performance 
Meet a charming family of baby fruits and vegetables and their friendly Nannies. Come and join the Vegetable Nannies at their pop-up Allotment and get stuck into the daily duties of feeding, bathing and caring for their baby fruits and vegetables. Audiences are encouraged to befriend, feed and comfort all manner of earthen toddlers, such as Babs the downhill-racing watermelon, Jessica, the Sweet-Potato beauty queen & Oz, the talented little Marrow whose ambition is to become a stage actor!

The Let’s Grow Junior Vegetable Nanny ‘make & take’ Workshop
Design and make your own fruit or vegetable baby to take home, just like the ones in the Let’s Grow pop-up Allotment. The workshop culminates in each participant being ceremoniously registered as a ‘Junior Vegetable Nanny’ and being awarded their official identity lanyard to take home along with their very own fruit or vegetable baby!

The Let’s Grow Treasure Trail
Some of the Let’s Grow fruit and vegetable babies are hiding in the Market. Can you find out where they all are? Collect a Treasure Trail Map from the Festival Hub and get started! Each map includes a set of fun stickers and each completed trail has the chance to win a Halifax Shopping Gift Card! There’s lots of prizes to be won!

Let’s Grow Bulb Planting Workshop & Wish Tree

Calderdale is going to be 50 years old in 2024 and we’re planning a fantastic party! Join the team to plant your ideas and pot a daffodil bulb to grow at home! Talk to our gardeners about how we can celebrate and grow together. We want to know about Calderdale’s treasures and what you’d like to see get bigger and better in the future!

As part of Let’s Grow comes to Halifax, artist Scott Walker (Up Against the Wall) will transform unused market stalls into giant pieces of art. Scott Walker makes interactive, streetwise artworks that are an invitation to play. His original hand drawn cartoons take inspiration from years of cartoon illustration and urban culture. For Let’s Grow, Scott will create giant pieces of wall art that infuse local landmarks with fantastic creatures. Scott invites folk of all ages to step up and get creative by colouring in his black and white artwork, together creating a colourful, big and bold, piece of participatory art for the Halifax Borough Market.

Visual artists Urban Canvas unfurl the flags of creativity by playfully encouraging you to explore the market with their colourful street art games. The games will be depicted in chalk on the beautiful stone Market floor, weaving from the outside arcades, in and amongst the market stalls and festival activities. The whole family can enjoy and creatively engage with Urban Canvas’s mixture of traditional and newly invented games, which re-kindle an element of fun and bring forward the child in all of us! Remember a time when children’s song, dance and art intermingle seamlessly into the purest forms of creative expression known as “the art of playing-out.”