Kids will perform for the Queen's birthday

Voluntary arts organisation Peterborough Creative Action will tell the story of 20 local people and how their lives overlapped with Her Majesty’s during the past nine decades.

The project, backed by £6,500 of funding, uses these stories to build a free theatre performance at Botolph Green, off Oundle Road, delivered by 60 seven to eight-year-olds from St Botolph’s C of E Primary School and local Sunday schools.

The ‘Theatre in Education’ performance will celebrate the lives of the ‘living historians’ - including one who was a Coronation programme seller - and Queen Elizabeth II. It will be performed at Festival on the Green on Sunday, June 12 at 11.30am on the day the Queen officially celebrates her 90th birthday.

It will then be followed by ‘The Big Botolph Lunch’ which will replicate the menu provided at parties throughout the country to celebrate the Queen’s Coronation in 1953.

The programme is accompanied by a community sculpture of a colourful ‘Coronation dress’. This has been made entirely out of sweet wrappers donated by staff and patients at Peterborough and Stamford NHS Foundation Trust and symbolises the unwrapping of people’s memories.

An accompanying train on the dress will record the names of local 90-year-old women and will be put on display around the city.

Shan Barcroft, Peterborough Creative Action chair, said: “We feel honoured to be able to bring alive the stories of some of the older members of the community, and we have been struck by the way they have enthused and inspired young people in telling their story and sharing their heritage.” For more information, call 07766135820.