The Heather Scarecrow Festival 2018 is in full swing until the 5th August, so we took a trip along this evening to see this year’s entries. To those not familiar with it, the little village of Heather in Leicestershire is now celebrating the 20th anniversary of the scarecrow festival, where various local residents make scarecrows, often on topical themes, and put them in their gardens.
This year has an overall theme of films, which of course provided some obvious crow puns – Russell Crow in Gladiator, etc – and some recent films like Paddington, Peter Rabbit and The Greatest Showman had multiple entries.
However, some less recent films, like Up and War Horse also had multiple entries in the competition. The Up stair lift even moves up and down when you walk near it.
The local church’s entry is just fantastic, and looks even better in real life. A series of figures made of wire seems to fade in and out as you walk by. The effect is spectacular, amazing that it is “just” some wire.
I also quite liked the Braveheart entry, and the Simpsons looked very jolly in their tent.
Visitors can of course just turn up and walk around the village, but for just £2 you can purchase a programme which lists all of the scarecrows and where to find them, and crucially comes with a voting form so that you can let everyone know which was your favourite. The winning scarecrows have now been announced and are:
1. Rabbits are Brave
2. Identity Parade
3. Crowtel Transylvannia
4. Mary Poppins Arrives!
5. The Simpcrows
6. They Walked This Path
7. (Bob) Marley and Me
8. Staircrow
9. Jurassic World
10. Up
11. Billy Elliott
12. The Greatest Crowman
13. Gladiator featuring Russell Crow
14. The Boss Baby Crow
15. Windy Miller
The Di Everett Award (Independently judged): Billy Elliott
The People’s Award (Schools): Harry Potter, Heather Primary School
Schools, Pre-schools and nurseries (Independently judged by sponsor Kimbles):
1. Broom Leys School: School Children
2. Hugglescoat Primary School: We’re Going ON a Bear Hunt
3. Heather Pre-School: Peter Rabbit
If you want to see some previous entries, here are links to:
The Heather Scarecrow Festival 2014
The Heather Scarecrow Festival 2015
The Heather Scarecrow Festival 2016
The Heather Scarecrow Festival 2017
All of those £2s add up, and the festival has already provided £7250 to local charities this year alone, so as well as being great fun, it is a worthwhile cause.
Here are photos of most of the scarecrows, a few a little blurry as the challenge of photography with a five year old and an enthusiastic dog was a bit much to get them all as sharp as I would like!
Stay posted for dates for the 2019 event.
