Main sights on this 12 months’s Lights On Stratford competition visited over 83,000 occasions

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The primary sights on this 12 months’s Lights On Stratford competition had been visited greater than 83,000 occasions in the course of the annual occasion’s six-week run, officers say.

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Vacation spot Stratford government director Zac Gribble shared preliminary figures with the Beacon Herald on Thursday, 4 days after Stratford’s third winter lights competition was formally wrapped.

The numbers are “conservative,” Gribble mentioned.

Pageant workers had been solely capable of observe visits at 5 places – The Pool at Market Sq., Affinity at Tom Patterson Island, LightWall at 70 Ontario St., Vacation spot Stratford’s headquarters at 47 Downie St., and the shuttle buses Stratford Transit runs between the competition’s main options.

Not tracked had been visits to the neon coronary heart show on Lakeside Drive or the close by Tom Patterson Theatre. A traditionally common weekend for the competition was additionally worn out over the vacations when a significant winter storm in Southwestern Ontario closed Perth County’s roads.

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“Regardless of that, I feel we did very properly,” mentioned Gribble, including the variety of complete visits tracked was barely larger than final 12 months. “Suggestions from the neighborhood and from preliminary conversations … with companies, notably downtown, has been extraordinarily optimistic.”

Vacation spot Stratford launched town’s first winter lights competition three years in the past because it started a push to develop tourism choices outdoors of Stratford’s world-renowned theatre season. That continues to be the aim – greater than 50 per cent of the visits tracked by competition workers had been by individuals from communities farther than 40 kilometres away, Gribble mentioned.

“I’m very happy with how we did,” Gribble mentioned. “On the whole phrases, journey remains to be considerably disrupted as we get better from the pandemic. We’re seeing much less individuals from south of the border and that’s not simply us, (that’s) the tourism trade within the province and nation.”

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Providing entry to gentle shows that haven’t but been seen elsewhere within the province has been a part of the competition’s draw, Gribble added, and this 12 months was no totally different.

The show in Market Sq. – The Pool, by Jen Lewin – made its Ontario debut throughout this 12 months’s competition. Affinity, a show from Australia showcased on Tom Patterson Island, made its North American premiere in Stratford. LightWall, conceived in Stratford and developed by British Columbia-based Limbic Media, was model new.

“We’re very eager on Stratford representing new works which might be being premiered on this a part of the world,” Gribble mentioned. “I feel that was actually, extremely profitable. That’s a part of the system transferring ahead.”

The largest addition to the competition this 12 months won’t have been one of many competition’s main shows, nonetheless. Free cabs and shuttle buses out there to convey individuals to the competition’s main places had been very profitable this 12 months, Gribble mentioned.

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“The truth that it was free, that it makes use of metropolis transit, and that it’s absolutely accessible is admittedly, in hindsight, one thing we should always have been doing from the get-go,” he mentioned, including that different cities have requested for extra details about the partnerships that made these companies potential. “This may at all times be integrated transferring ahead.”

Now that this 12 months’s shows have been taken down, workers have already began turning their consideration to subsequent 12 months

“We’re already knee deep in planning,” Gribble mentioned. “It’s grown into one thing that the neighborhood actually embraces.”

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