As we celebrate the fifth instalment of our Walls Weekly blog posts and only five more weeks until the festival itself, I thought I’d keep with the theme of five and give you five exciting updates that have taken shape this week.

Festival Meeting

First of all, at our festival meeting on Friday 5th July at The Red Tower, the family activity booklet was finalised ready for print. This booklet features the amazing designs of our own Friend of the York Walls member Leo O’Brien who has worked extremely hard to make this feature fun for all our visitors. Here is your first sneak peek, but come along to the festival to get your free copy!

Activity Booklet

As well as this, Dick Raines has finalised designs for our archaeological display, which will be expertly built in time for the festival. This will include findings spanning from the Roman period up until the 1900s and will be on display at Fishergate Postern Tower. Be the first to see what we found during our excavation in December 2018 on the 10th and 11th August.


We also have partnered this week with Good Organisation, whose aim is to help people affected by homelessness throughout York, on two inspiring initiatives. The first exciting new project is called ‘Postcards from the Edge’ which focuses on using photography to capture the beauty in places of York’s heritage that aren’t usually seen by tourists. These photographs will be taken by participants that have been affected by homelessness, generated into postcards and distributed across the city – we can’t wait to see them!

The second initiative we have confirmed partnership with is ‘Invisible York’, a programme which has helped people in the city affected by homelessness become tour guides across York. We have one amazing participant willing to offer their services during the festival weekend to guide our visitors on a new tour around the walls. These will be taking place on both the Saturday and the Sunday, so be sure to join for your free guided tour.

Our fifth and final update this week regards all things signage! In order to make your festival weekend as easy and fun as possible, we have been walking the walls this week to size up where signs can be placed to make your navigation around the walls as simple as possible. Here is our festival organiser Martin Hetherington testing out his attempt at a sign on Layerthorpe road.

More exciting updates to follow as the final five weeks close in. Keep an eye on our social media for more news!

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