Paper Chain Christmas Tree

Following two successful years of decorating the 15m high Christmas tree on Church Street in Liverpool city centre, Design Laser Play was once again asked to decorate the huge Sitka spruce tree for Christmas. The tree was part of the city centre Snowflake Trail, led by Open Culture and commissioned by Liverpool BID Company. Key to the brief for the tree decoration was to ensure hundreds of local primary school children were directly engaged in whatever was created.

Design Laser Play decided on a new concept for the 2016 tree design, a Giant Paper Chain. This would not only make a bold and visually striking decoration but enable almost twice as many local school children to be involved than had in the previous two years of decorating the tree with Design Laser Play.

Design Laser Play worked closely with their commissioner Open Culture to produce a teacher’s school pack ensuring the key stages of arts, maths and science played a part in the children’s learning and designs. Each child was supplied with one large polypropylene chain link and encouraged to create a design for their link using a pixel graphic style layout, the children then transferred their design onto their blank link using self-adhesive vinyl blocks also produced and supplied by Design Laser Play. Overall, 725 primary school children from 24 Liverpool schools were directly engaged in creation of the Paper Chain.

The children’s completed links were then assembled by Design Laser Play, creating a chain approx. 350m long, constructed from colourful lightweight weatherproof and durable polypropylene that was supplied to Liverpool City Council tree team to install on the Christmas tree.