I hope I am not the only one that has a traveling Nativity display. It's always a bit of a challenge to develop, but setting up in a new area can bring new, fresh energy to people who have never seen such things.
This nativity gets lots of attention. It's made from insecticide cans from Malawi. My favorite character is the king wearing white with the red letters spelling RAMBO.
Here are a few hard facts about sharing nativities in new places.
Lesson #1. You have to give it a minimum of three years. The first year should be a sample size. I take no more than 100 sets just because I can get that many in two carloads, and pack in and out in a single day. This genrally gets people excited to see the larger collection. They tell their friends what is coming next year.
Lesson #2 Promotion is critical. If you worked lesson #1 well you have a built-in audience excitied to help you spread the news. The key is the timing of the promotion and how to stay in an advertizing budget. Purchasing an add in a local newspaper can be expensive. I tend to avoid those . However, if you do purchase one, be sure to pick the right time to hit the press. One week prior works well, but getting newspapers to work on your schedule may be a big ask.
11X14 fliers do well if distributed to the right places. Some of my best advertizement has been on the free pinup board at the local grocery store. We do a tearoff table to remind people of the time, dates and location. Churches are not always the best places to leave a ooster UNLESS you have a strong working relationship with that church. Mostly, those go onto the pastor's desk and die, or worse - get thrown into the recycle bin the minute you are out the door.
In general nursing home directors are always looking for things to add to their calendars so make an appointment and get on their calendars at least on month ahead. That means you want to hit them up just before Thanksgiving weekend, or even two or three months prior. Some activity directors think three or even six months ahead.
I got this one from a Friends of the Creche meeting auction. It's from Canada - made out of pewter.
Lesson #3. Use your connections. One friend made a phone call to a local reporter who came up literally as we finished setting up. The interview was fast and furious, and he had it up in a few hours, leading to several local news stations coming to see what he had posted. In a few hours I was featured on three stations, and even NPR (local affiliate).
Because I was engaged in a ministerial association in that location I got the other churches to "come and see" (that's in the Bible last I checked!)
Lesson #4 If you are visiting in a new location you smiply have to impress upon the site owners (I ususally only do churches) what benefits they will get from the event.
Lesson #5 Tie the event into another activity. Dinners, concerts, auctions, food drives, toy drives...I've done them all. One church had singers, another a whole "Walk to Bethlehem" event where the whole church was a living nativity complete with donkey's and sheep, a person making clay pots, another person telling stories and even a fullblown village with foods and lots of shops. Needless to say that event brought in the big numbers. We would get 1,500 people in their two day event. Don't limit yourself to nativies.
Lesson #6 If you spread out your collection people will be better able to see it, but that demands lots of extra people to monitor the visitors. Yes, baby Jesus will walk away. I keep my 600 set collection in a 42' teired arrangement. I can watch them all quite easily. I can also tell people what they want to know, and what they havent seen.
Here is my special design. I created this version 12 years ago. It comes in 6' sections and I can add or subtract as needed. The sheets are used hospital linens (and yes, they were hard to get - I had to have special permission). I put twinkle lights at the rear of each row and daisy-chain the 50' lights so I only have a one plug system). Two additional rows go up after I put the top rows up. I built this were I can climb up to set the top row or put it over the 18" upper backing. shelves are 1' deep and 1' tall down to the bottom two rows which are 6".
I discovered the 22 1/2 degree bends (2) work really well. it feels more inviting - like a big hug. The tables in foreground are used for staging. Big sets on the top, smaller sets on the bottom.
Here's the full display before I straightened the sheets. For. an added detail a row of poinsettias on the bottom works very well. Wrap twinkle lights in a tube of tooling and weave them among the Poinsettias. Yes, people will step on the bulbs and break them occasionally, but it does add a striking barrier.
For construction details leave me a message at mail4creche@gmail.com. I think we mastered the design fairly well.
Warning: storage of the units can be difficult, however, I've created these so the shelves are removable and the 21 braces stack together in a fairly tight space.
Neil Allen - Webmaster.