The Café on the Corner, a Catherine Street establishment that raises funds for Camphill Village Trust, has won the city’s first ever #StAlbansAdvent, landing a marketing prize worth over £2,000.

The Camphill Village Trust supports adults with learning disabilities, mental health problems and other support needs across 9 locations. Locally, Camphill St Albans’ integrated urban community provides support and a thriving social network for adults with learning disabilities and mental health conditions. The winning window featured illustrated scenes of St Albans, forest trees and cut out characters painted by the Camphill community.

The Café promoted their window on their social media sites, confident that their ‘pretty magical’ window that was ‘designed and handmade by the people we support’, was winning material.

Their confidence was well founded, with over 30% of the 1,003 votes cast being in support of Café on the Corner.

Nicole Massey, Day Opportunities and Social Enterprise Manager at Camphill Village Trust said,

“We really enjoyed making the window display with our community. It took our art studio team around 4 weeks to create so it was really a labour of love! We’ve been operating on Catherine Street since 2001 so we’re delighted to have won the prize. Our community is really proud of their achievement. We can’t wait to work with Radio Verulam and The Herts Ad to use the marketing funds to promote the excellent coffees, cakes and lunch options that we have on offer to a wider audience.”

Organised by St Albans BID, the #StAlbansAdvent event was a series of daily business windows’ unveilings throughout December. Saturday 1st December began with panto fun at the Alban Arena and the event culminated with a virtual unveiling from St Albans Cathedral on Christmas Day. Over 1,000 votes were cast by the public to choose the winning business. Cositas’ ‘Morning after the night before’ display and Rumball Sedgwick’s illuminated dolls houses came second and third place respectively.

Mia Collins was the lucky public voter, drawn at random from all the votes cast for the window displays. She has won a £100 St Albans Gift Card to be spent at over 75 businesses in St Albans City Centre.

Helen Burridge, St Albans BID Manager, said ‘We’re delighted with the feedback received about the first ever #StAlbansAdvent. The daily reveals were great fun to follow in real life, and online, and the online poll was successful too. We hope the trail has highlighted the humour, creativity and character of many of our businesses around St Albans and wish all of our businesses and community a very Happy New Year!’