A brand new, alternative Christmas experience has launched at Westgate Oxford.

This year the centre will be home to ‘WasteLess Wonderland’ a contemporary reinterpretation of the classic Christmas market with a sustainable theme. 

WasteLess Wonderland is curated by the design studio company HemingwayDesign.

The event will offer "good for-the-planet" gifts from independent designer makers, festive food produce, and street food from local suppliers as well as workshops that reuse and repurpose leftovers from Christmases past. 

Launching on Friday, November 24 and running until Friday, December 22, guests will be able to experience a festival line-up of attractions, events and experiences including Christmas star-making workshops using only wood offcuts, kaleidoscope gift-making using recycled Christmas cards and Japanese zero-waste gift-wrapping courtesy of the Furoshiki Wrap Company.  

Guests will have the chance to go for the personal touch and craft some homemade decorations such as wreath-making using natural resources, seasonal foliage and adornments that can be found in your garden. 

There are expected to be more than 30 activities, attractions and traders including designer-makers selling slow fashion and reworked vintage across the month-long experience. 

There will be weekend workshops, interactive elements and entertainment and a toy swap shop gift exchange. 

Three food brands from Oxfordshire will be part of the experience.

The Wonky Food Company will be selling jars of great-tasting relishes that use imperfect and surplus fruit and veg that helps tackle food waste.

Climatarian Kitchen will be serving street food dishes all made from surplus food, while Damascus Rose, a social enterprise supporting refugee women in Oxford, will be selling delicious Middle Eastern food.  

For the musically-minded, there will be an opportunity to play your favourite Christmas tunes with The Junk Orchestra’s giant Music Mushrooms – the orchestra is a supersonic collection of re-invented objects, recycled into musical instruments. 

Working with John Lewis Partnership’s Creative Studio, surplus shelving has been repurposed into market stalls and set flats have been reused to build part of the street food kitchen. 

Each Friday will see WasteLess Wonderland host ‘Friday Lates’ from 5-9pm.

A pop-up bar from Toast will be exclusive to Friday Lates, with the company’s award-winning craft beer brewed with surplus fresh bread that would otherwise go to waste – Toast’s profits go to charities working to fix a wasteful food system.   

Friday Lates will also include the ‘Recycled DJ Party’ with Charity Shop DJ, who use vinyl records sourced solely from charity shops to trigger memories.

Guests can pick a record, get behind the turntables and have a go at being a DJ themselves, dedicating their tracks to friends at the event.