Events
Woodley WI Carnival Float – A Tribute to the Calendar Girls
It’s been 20 years since the Ladies of the Rylstone and District WI stirred up a storm with their saucy calendar which was launched on 12 April 1999.
When the Woodley Carnival Committee announced the theme for the 2019 Carnival was ‘At the Movies’ it seemed the obvious choice for the ladies of Woodley WI to pay tribute to the Calendar Girls film by creating a Calendar Girls float.
A sub-committee of volunteers was set up and the team worked hard to develop a plan on how the float should look. We devised a plan to create a central ‘pod’ painted with bright yellow sunflowers for 6 ‘calendar girls’ to sit inside. We each wore skin coloured strapless camisoles and rested an arm on the outside edge of the ‘pod’ giving the illusion that we were naked as only bare shoulders were visible to the spectators below! Genius!
To complete the picture 6 other ladies dressed up in black dresses and wore sunflowers just like the real calendar girls when they were photographed in the news reports. Naturally there were cakes on stands and a huge blow up prosecco bottle too. With one final lady posing as the photographer/director the picture was complete!
The float was decorated with a myriad of sunflowers, labelled with Woodley WI banners and the 12 months of the years painted by two of our artistic WI members.
The main purpose of entering a float was to advertise the Woodley WI and to ‘get our name out there’ so some of our members volunteered to be ‘walkers’ with buckets and wearing Woodley WI T Shirts to collect donations and distribute leaflets along the way.
It was an amazing day, and the sub-committee are all now firm friends as well as Woodley WI Members. The Float was judged to be Runner Up in the category of ‘Schools and Charities’ and we are now the proud owners of a trophy and a certificate of appreciation.
The whole process was fun and turned out to be a really good team building exercise. Needless to say we are now thinking about entering another Woodley WI float next year, we are just waiting for the theme to be announced so watch this space!
The pod was so marvellous with its hand painted sunflowers we couldn’t just throw it away, so we donated it to Woodley Baptist Church Pre School, for the children to play in!
Emily's Week with Woodley WI
Emily the Centenary doll was delivered to us at our monthly meeting on Thursday 13th June 2019 and we entertained her by taking her to the Guildhall in London, various places in Woodley town centre including Library, a music shop and a coffee shop, one of our members took her to their allotment and the Hexagon in Reading. She went to work and did some glass recycling too! It was a fun week!