Salford Dock will be transformed on 10 and 11 October with two days of free, family-friendly activities to run alongside the filming of CBeebies Christmas Show, Peter Pan.
Popular CBeebies presenter Dr Ranj (Get Well Soon) will welcome families to the main stage, based outside The Lowry Theatre. He will be joined at various times over the weekend by other CBeebies stars including Phil Gallagher (Mister Maker), Sid Sloane and Rebecca Keatley (Let's Play) and Cerrie Burnell. Organised by BBC Learning, the event will also see Rastamouse and Da Easy Crew skating into Salford with co-creator Michael De Souza.
Inspired by CBeebies’ Christmas Show, Peter Pan, which is filming at The Lowry on 11 October and which will be broadcast as the centre piece of the CBeebies Christmas schedule, the activities will all take on a pirate and ocean theme.
A Liverpool tall ship, The Glaciere, will be docked in Salford Quays over the activities weekend when it will become the "CBeebies Jolly Roger" allowing families on board. There will be activities on the boat and on the quayside including story telling in the cabin. The sessions, run by the Book Trust storytellers, will feature tales of pirates, mermaids and adventures under the sea as well as exerts from Peter Pan.
On the deck of the Jolly Roger, "pirates" from Captain Hook’s ship will also be preparing to set sail. Actors from the Ministry of Fun will perform an interactive show at regular intervals throughout the day and encourage children to take part on the quayside.
There will be two treasures hunts for children to take part in. In the first, children will be able to programme Beebots to find the hidden treasure and there will be the CBeebies bug table where they can play on the CBeebies app. In addition a basic orienteering trail for children will see them using a basic map in order to collect letters to spell out a word and complete the trail.
Inside The Lowry itself there will be First Steps – a Peter Pan themed dance and movement session for under 5s – on the Friday afternoon in Studio 2 (bookable via the box office for free). On the Saturday there will be drop in arts and crafts sessions for families at 11am–12.30pm in the Lookout and 1pm-4pm near the Terrace Bar.
And for those who weren’t successful in the ballot to get tickets for the CBeebies Peter Pan recording then there’s a chance to watch the performance on a big screen relay outside The Lowry.