15/09/2026
I found this in my archives at the weekend.
The original poster for the very first Winter Droving, held in Penrith on 24th November 2012.
It feels particularly poignant given the news last week that The Winter Droving is moving from Penrith to Carlisle.
Because there's a bit of the story behind this event that I don't think many people know.
I helped create it.
Back in 2012, Penrith's Christmas lights were coming to an end and the organisers and I started talking about what we could do instead. They knew about my previous experience working at Walk the Plank in Manchester, creating large-scale outdoor events, and I'd also been working closely with Penrith's business community at that time through the Chamber of Trade and the BID.
We took inspiration from Up Helly Aa in Shetland, with its incredible fire procession, but we couldn't simply recreate a Viking festival in Penrith. It wouldn't have meant anything.
So we started with "Penrith".
Its history as a market town. Its agricultural roots. The auction. The animals traditionally driven through the town – something my own family were actually part of. Penrith's position as a meeting place and a crossroads.
From those conversations, The Winter Droving was born.
The sheep. The animal masks. The market. The fire. The lanterns. Even the "Join the Herd" line you can see on this original poster – it was all rooted in that original idea of what made Penrith, Penrith.
I helped develop the concept, pitched it to local organisations to secure support and funding, and worked on the branding, photography, PR and marketing for those first events.
I stepped away after the first two years when Eden Arts decided to take the marketing in-house and put more of the available funding into delivering the event itself. Somewhere along the way, my involvement in its creation largely disappeared from the story.
I've never really spoken about that publicly.
But with the announcement that Winter Droving is leaving Penrith, it feels like the right time to put my little part of its history back on record.
I'm incredibly proud of what it went on to become and what it has meant to Penrith over the years. Which is also why I'm genuinely sad to see it leave.
I've got absolutely no problem with Carlisle having a fantastic winter event. Take the experience, the fire, the lanterns, the performers and everything that's been learnt over more than a decade of delivering The Winter Droving.
But then start where we started.
What is Carlisle's story? What makes that place distinctive? What could you create that couldn't belong anywhere else?
Because Winter Droving wasn't simply an event that happened to take place in Penrith.
Penrith was part of the idea.
That's something I think matters whether you're creating an event, marketing a destination or building a brand. There's a big difference between taking inspiration from something that works and replicating it somewhere else.
The Winter Droving worked because it belonged somewhere.
I genuinely hope Carlisle gets a brilliant event.
I just wish it was one created from Carlisle's own story.
