Purple Turnip Festival - 29th October

October 6, 2016

Lisburn City Centre hosts its annual Purple Turnip Festival in October 2016 with a family fun weekend.

On Saturday 29th October from 12pm – 4pm dance on the interactive light floor in Market Square, lit with LED lights to make it a truly magical experience for aspiring performers of all ages and enjoy free craft activities. Local business ‘Jumping Clay Lisburn’ will be in attendance with workshops to make your very own clay pumpkin and purple turnip magnet. Transform into a scary goblin or pumpkin with face painting and get up close and personal with a wide range of exciting exotic animals, if you’re brave enough! This is a unique experience to learn more about the animals as well as the opportunity to hold them. Of course, no turnip event would be complete without a terrific turnip hunt, where participants will have the chance to win some spooky prizes by putting their investigative skills to the test and trying to find some of the cleverly hidden turnips around the City Centre.

On Sunday 30th October from 3pm – 6pm come along to the unique venue at Navigation House, 148 Hillsborough Road for storytelling and turnip tales with Billy Teare and Kathleen O'Sullivan.  The Council are working with Lagan Navigation Trust to bring you a spooky autumn event involving a lantern parade along the Lagan towpath with silly scarecrows and other harvest inspired characters. If that's not enough, taste apple tart treats and flavoursome pumpkin soup whilst listening to acoustic sounds – all under a Halloween themed stretch tent!

Councillor Uel Mackin, Chair of Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council’s Development Committee commented, ‘Purple Turnip Festival returns to Lisburn for its 8th year in not one but two amazing venues. Market Square in particular has seen recent revitalisation and has been designed to enable us to have more of these events throughout the year so make sure to put the dates in you diary and come along to enjoy the fun. Whilst visiting the City Centre, we encourage you to call into your favourite café, shop, bar or restaurant with friends and family to sample the wide range of product and services Lisburn has to offer.