Kids' faves to head lights display

Huge new spectacular displays featuring children's TV characters will be among the highlights of this year's Walsall Illuminations, organisers said today.

Work on this year's installations is almost complete in readiness for the annual lights display in the Arboretum.

They have been put together by the show's creative team, which has spent the last 12 months developing the designs and fitting the lights. It is hoped the new displays will help boost visitor figures to the event, after they slumped to an all-time low last year.

Guest characters will include Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go from children's TV channel Nickelodeon.

The team including artist-designer Bob Slassor, carpenter, Les Willetts and electrician Mac Pratt have toiled all year long to create the new features.

Mr Slassor said: "The illuminations is much more than just the lights, it has become an all round family show. We are trying to broaden the appeal of the event."

He added: "We went to London to seek approval from Nickelodeon earlier in the year to make sure they were happy with the designs we put together for the Dora and Diego characters."

The display boards will be installed in a few weeks time, advertising the illuminations.

Other features of the event this year will be robot Titan, who stands 8ft tall, and can sing and dance and will entertain audiences with his robotic moves on film at the event.

The piece will be shown every evening throughout the Illuminations' 38-night run, and will be projected on to giant screens.

Around 120,000 people visited the show last year, which recorded losses of £200,000 after it switched dates, running up towards Christmas.

The council decided to take consultants' bold advice to switch to a six-week stint from mid October to December in a bid to cash in on the seasonal Christmas calendar and capitalise on other dates such as Halloween and Diwali.

This year the event ret- urns to its original slot in the calendar, running from from September 26 to November 2. Tickets go on sale from August 1.

For details contact 0845 1112909 or log on to www.walsall-lights.com