Paisley Halloween Festival

Paisley Halloween Festival: Roll up, roll up, the dark circus is coming

After an immensely successful 2018, Renfrewshire’s lauded fright-fest returns and promises to be bigger and, somehow, even better this October.

Laden with gothic architecture, folkloric tales of ghostly apparitions and other supernatural entities, it only makes sense that Halloween is properly celebrated on the streets of Paisley. The site of the last mass witch execution in Western Europe back in 1697, the modern-day descendants of those who bore witness to such condemnable sights thankfully keep their relationship with the macabre in much more jovial and family friendly territory.

Among the crown jewels of the UK’s festivals of fright, the award-winning Paisley Halloween Festival is returning in all its beguiling splendour on Friday 25th and Saturday 26th October. Designed to captivate not only the community of Renfrewshire but incentivise people from around Scotland to visit Paisley town centre, last year’s edition saw over 34,000 congregate in order to immerse themselves and their families in all things otherworldly. Charged with bringing the festive atmosphere of a Rio De Janeiro or New Orleans Mardi Gras celebration to the west central lowlands, helming this event is none other than Bristol’s Cirque Bijou. Heralded as one of the nation’s leading outdoor theatre specialists, these creative masterminds have helped instil shock and awe for everyone from Welsh alt-rock icons Muse to Take That and the British Paraorchestra. Devised within his mind and those of his trusted collaborators, Artistic Director Julian Bracey told us of how this partnership with Renfrewshire Council came about:

“Several companies were asked to pitch for the role of creative directors for this year’s Paisley Halloween festival, and after a formal application and a number of interviews with Renfrewshire Council, Cirque Bijou were incredibly excited to be awarded the role,” he explained.

“The council came up with the idea of ‘Dark Circus’ as the creative brief and Cirque Bijou have been busy coming up with ideas involving giant lions, Svengali ringmasters and even a life-sized elephant to create a spooky circus parade. Cirque Bijou create carnivals and circus shows across the world and our approach is to collaborate with artists wherever they go. So, over the past months, we’ve been busy searching the local area to find artists to be part of their core creative team.”

Paisley Halloween 2018

Photo by Elaine Livingstone

...THE PARADE MAY SERVE AS THE CENTREPIECE OF THE EVENT BUT IT IS FAR FROM THE SUM TOTAL OF WHAT’S ON OFFER

Bolstered by “magnificent floats, voodoo acrobats, fire performers, creepy clowns, jinxed jugglers and a host of other circus characters”, the parade may serve as the centrepiece of the event but it is far from the sum total of what’s on offer. Supplemented by dazzling aerial acrobatics from Edinburgh’s All Or Nothing, their “haunted carousel” will be sure to leave jaws ajar and eyeballs fixated on each superhuman feat that they execute from pulse-quickening heights.

Interspersed with a cavalcade of street performers, SPARK’s LED drummers, facepainting stalls, pumpkin carving and much, much more, another exciting new addition to this year’s itinerary comes in the shape of a silent disco. A firm favourite of music festivals and club nights around the world, this event will bring the inaudible, headphone-assisted phenomenon to Dunn Square with tickets priced at £5 for adults and £3 for children with deals available for families.

Among the cornerstones of a new, revitalised Renfrewshire, find out more about the 2019 Paisley Halloween Festival via paisley.is/halloween.