City wide Easter trail launches to offer children a twist on a traditional Egg Hunt

With traditional Easter Egg hunts off the agenda due to Covid restrictions, Chester BID has set up a lockdown friendly Easter trail for children across the city. It will launch on April 1st and run throughout the month.

As schools break up for Easter holidays, the team at the BID were keenly aware that families will be looking for activities that are safe, socially distanced and contactless. Chester BID have teamed up QR code trail experts High Street Safari to create a free, interactive story-trail that is designed to encourage children to walk, get engaged and most importantly, have a lot of fun. 

Mr Finniebaker’s Easter Factory Trail is positioned around Chester city centre with 10 woodland Easter factory characters, like Mr Badger who paints the egg wrappings or Mr Frog who drives the egg lorries. The trail takes about an hour to complete but can be completed in more than one visit. It’s completely free for families and groups to take part in and they win a personalised, digital ‘selfie storybook’ at the end.

To create their ‘selfie storybooks’ families need to practice their acting as they take funny ‘scene’ selfies along the trail, with directions like ‘look amazed’ or ‘look curious’. Then, once they complete the trail, their selfies are then embedded directly into the book pages as part of the story. The book tells readers about the day their family went on a video tour of the factory - so they become stars of the story and get a wonderful keepsake.

Emily Ghazarian, Marketing and Events Manager, Chester BID explained: ‘We normally run an Easter hunt around the city – but this year, restrictions made that untenable. Instead, this trail works by using contactless QR codes, without the need for families to download or sign up to anything. With safety in mind, it has also been designed so that there is no need to go inside. Families can scan each Easter character, learn their names and what their job is in the factory. Younger children will enjoy spotting the colourful characters in shop windows and older kids, and grown-up ones, will engage by hearing the stories.’

Martin Blackwell, High Street Safari Project Director and former CEO of ATCM and the Charity Retail Association, said, “If something fun like this can help make families and kids feel good about going back out onto the high street in a safe way, then we’ve done our jobs.”

To find out more visit –

https://experiencechester.co.uk/event/mr-finniebakers-easter-factory-trail/

About High Street Safari:

High Street Safari is a project being coordinated by Martin Blackwell, former CEO of Assoc. of Town & City Management (ATCM) and the Charity Retail Association. It was set up to create a unique high street family experience that aimed to raise significant sums for local good causes.

About Chester BID Company

A Business Improvement District (BID) is a business-led, business-funded body created to improve a defined commercial area. Chester BID is funded solely by the businesses within the city.

There are over 460 businesses in Chester’s BID area with a rateable value of more than £18,000. Each of these contribute a levy equal to 1% of their business rates every year to fund a wide range of improvements identified by the businesses themselves. It is expected that approximately £2.5m of private sector funds will be generated over the five-year BID term and this money will be reinvested back into the city centre.

In June 2019, hundreds of businesses voted in favour of the plans to renew the BID’s term in Chester and on September 1^st, 2019, Chester BID Company started a second five year-term with the intention of continuing to deliver a more vibrant and successful trading environment for Chester city centre.

For more information, visit www.ChesterBID.co.uk

Pictured - Selfie Storybook Page from the Easter Factory Trail Chester BID.