Elected members authorised awarding the deal to performance specialists Cirque Bijou on Thursday.
16:58, 29 Apr 2026Updated 16:58, 29 Apr 2026
Contract for Paisley Halloween Festival parade and animation approved(Image: Renfrewshire Council)
A contract for the spooktacular Paisley Halloween Festival parade and town centre animation has been approved in a move that has been described as a “huge opportunity” for Renfrewshire Council.
Elected members authorised awarding the deal – worth in excess of £520,000 – to performance specialists Cirque Bijou at the finance, resources and customer services policy board on Thursday.
The agreement is expected to begin in late May and run until the end of November next year, with the local authority holding an option to extend for another year.
Councillor Graeme Clark, Labour group economy and regeneration spokesperson, conceded he was a “little surprised” by the value of the contract at the meeting.
He added: “It’s a great event, it brings people from across Renfrewshire into Paisley, it’s been exciting in previous years … It would be helpful if officers could clarify [as] it’s quite a large sum of money.
“There’s not a great deal of detail in the report about how that money’s going to be spent … It would be good to get some more information about what this over half a million is actually achieving in terms of what’s being brought.”
Cirque Bijou has partnered with the local authority on the free-to-attend event – which attracts thousands of visitors to the town – since 2019.
Last October, more than 350 professional performers and community groups participated in the parade, which was inspired by children’s book and film characters, as it wove through the town centre.
Suzi Maciver, the council’s commissioning and creative events lead, said: “In terms of the value of the contract, this is a value which is split over three years, so in the first year the value of the contract is £170,000, second year £175,000 and the third year £180,000.
“The total amount is reflective of the extension of that contract which we’ve never been able to do in previous years – it’s been year to year with this event, so it’s a huge opportunity for us to be able to contract such a highly skilled specialist supplier to work with us longer term to really develop and flesh out some of the impacts that we’ve seen that this event can really have.”
Paisley Halloween Festival is considered a significant part of the council’s events programme – one that it has claimed is widely regarded as one of the best of its kind in the United Kingdom.
During the budget-setting process in February, the administration allocated an additional £350,000 to extend its annual calendar through to 2028/29.