We hope many of you will join in with Winchester’s Carols on the Doorstep on Sunday 20 December at 5:30pm, a great initiative from our Trustee Debbie Deeney in association with Winchester Radio.

I wanted to let you all know of a fun, free and festive event we are organising on Winchester Radio for the community, on Sunday 20th December at 5:30pm. Be brilliant if you are able to take part, and share this far and wide with family, friends, neighbours and work colleagues. And let me know if you are planning to take part too, so we can include you in some shout-outs on air.

There is a national initiative called ‘Carols on the Doorstep’ – Debbie Deeney from Winchester’s Chat-Tea Cafe at Badger Farm Community Centre, was alerted to it by a local resident, and she kindly approached us at Winchester Radio to see if it was something we could run on-air. We’ve been in touch with the national organisers, and pleased to say we will be running a Winchester version for local folks to participate in, on Sunday 20th December at 5:30pm. Be such a lovely way to bring the community together in spirit, after the year we’ve all had.

We’ll have 4 Christmas Carols on air from 5:30pm on Sunday 20th December and there’s a matching carol-sheet for all the verses we’ll be singing at this Winchester event. People can join in on their own doorsteps, from within their homes or gardens within their household groups/bubbles. Be a lovely activity for people living with dementia to participate in, as we know music is so therapeutic and relaxing, and can really lift people’s mood.

3 of the 4 carols we’ll play on air are performed by local Winchester choirs/churches.

Anna O’Brien, Winchester Radio

Download the Carol Sheet

You can find the Winchester carol sheet that will be used for this local event below. There are also some printable invitations so you can invite neighbours to sing along too from their doorsteps. If you’re popping them through neighbours’ letterboxes, please remember to be Covid-safe and do so with freshly sanitised hands.

These should be printed-out with the following options set inside the print dialogue box inside Adobe Reader, so that they are printed at 100% size, not slightly scaled, and for the carol sheet, with both sides of the sheet the right way up! Page Sizing & Handling: ensure “Actual Size” is selected, not the default “shrink oversized pages” “Print on Both Sides of Paper” should be ticked and “Flip on short edge” selected (not the default “flip on long edge”).

Share the Christmas community spirit

It would be wonderful if you’re able to join in on Sunday 20th December listening and singing along to Winchester Radio 94.7FM. All details of how to listen are on Winchester Radio’s dedicated Carols on the Doorstep page. It would be such a nice way to unite people in song, and share Christmas community spirit across Winchester.