Community Festivals & Parades

The BID is proud to support many community festivals and parades!

Every year we support the Aldgate in Winter festival – a co-curated community winter activity. Prior to the pandemic, the festival took the form of a 400 person long, large scale lantern parade across Aldgate and ended with a fete on Aldgate Square. 2020 saw a reimagined version of the festival with an interactive virtual programme of events with lanterns made at home and rehoused in Aldgate in shop fronts and office lobbies, followed by a large scale exhibition of the past year’s worth of creatives in Spring.

It’s important that the BID is fully behind these community enhancing aspects bringing joy, colour and light to Aldgate. In the height of the pandemic in 2020, the online version of the festival forged 1000s of conversations, craft making and workshops combatting loneliness, isolation and instead enhanced a sense of wellbeing through togetherness and the process of making.

Additionally, Aldgate Connect BID is taking part in The Lord Mayor’s Show. The Lord Mayor’s Show is a community parade to celebrate the new Lord Mayor of the City of London. We are joining up with EC Partnership to enter a float in the 2021 parade. The float surrounds the theme of young people in Aldgate and the Eastern Cluster and how they interact with the High Street. We are working with local artists and schools to help us curate this project with the community.