The Abbey community will be celebrating the festive season with their very own Winter Lights Festival. The Christmas lights switch on is happening on Wednesday 16 December and will include a Lantern parade along Wadloes Road followed by a community meal by Food-cycle, an Art Fair, and community performances.

The Cambridge Art Salon is delighted to be able to support this community event with funds raised by the EastSide Creates programme.

Local artist Jill Fordham, who has a studio at Unit 13, has been running lantern workshops ahead of the festival and we hope everyone who has participated will come along with their creations and help light up Wadloes Road.

If you need some inspiration, here are photos from previous lantern workshops.

The light switch on is outside Barnwell Spar at 6pm Wednesday 16 December.

ABOUT JILL FORDHAM

Jill grew up in Cambridge and has explored many different areas of art and craft over the years. She attended art college as a mature student, where she learned her skills as a stained glass artist and for a short period, has worked in the stained glass studio of Susan Matthews, stained glass artist and curator of Ely Cathedral stained glass museum. Jill has been working in this medium now for 20 years, and has sold her work at various fairs and galleries in and around Cambridge.  As well as undertaking private commissions both designing and restoring stained glass windows, mostly for private clients. Past commissions have included work for Ely Cathedral and Chilford Hall. For the past ten years Jill has taught stained glass courses for manor community college, Whitehouse arts, Rowan foundation, and for school groups, as well as teaching general art/craft to special needs groups, such as Castle school and the Alzheimers’ society.

You can see some of Jill’s beautiful glasswork on her website http://hurdy-gurdyglass.co.uk/