Thorntons Family Fun Day With Our Childrens Entertainers Mix & Mingle Party Entertainment!

On 7th May 2011, Thorntons held a Family Fun Day at their head offices in Alfreton, Derbyshire. Alive Network provided a selection of mix and mingle acts to keep children entertained including magicians, fire and glow performers, stilt walkers, jesters and jugglers, balloon modellers, face painters and circus workshop leaders. Oliver Folkerd of Spinoff Performance gives us the low down on their action packed day.

We began our day at 7.00 am, packing all the costumes and equipment into the cars.

At around 7.45 am we headed off in a 4 car convoy to the event, narrowly avoiding a couple of motorway closures.

We arrive on site for 9.30 am and are met by some extremely chirpy members of Thorntons, who give us a tour of the site and show us where we will be performing.

By this time the weather is against us as it has started to rain but we are promised sun later in the day, so we knuckle down and begin setting up the workshop area and face painting tent.

When we have set up the outside area, the Thorntons staff show us to our dressing room which they have kindly stuffed full of free chocolate for us!

As the workshop leaders and face painters head out to their tents, the rest of the team start to prepare for their first performance set.

With costumes on, the first set head out to begin their performance.

As the performance starts the weather really closes in and the rain picks up, but we are still out in the pouring rain loving every minute of it!

As the rain eases off around midday, people start arriving at the event on mass and our circus workshop and face painting stalls go into overdrive.

As the day progresses, the team go through 10 different sets of costume changes making their way out to the fun day.

Where we keep the crowds entertained all day long.

As the end of the event approaches at 4.00 pm, members of the team that aren't performing start to pack away all the kit in the dressing room.

At 4.00 pm we try to close the face painting stall, but such is the demand, we are met by frantic parents desperate to have their kids faces painted, so we keep the stall open for an extra ten minutes and stop people joining the queue.

Once the last face has been painted we begin to dismantle the face painting and workshop stands.

Once it is all dismantled we begin the Tetris like task of loading all the equipment back into our cars.

We said goodbye to our client at Thorntons, and made our way home.

It has been a long and tiring day, but the crowds have been fantastic and everyone had a great time. As always, the team are happy and smiley at the end of another great gig!