Children’s body pushes for a zone in the Dome
Children 2000, the company which lobbies to promote children’s interests in National Lottery and millennium spending, is calling for a “children’s zone” to replace the beleaguered Spirit Zone in the Millennium Dome.
The Spirit Zone, the area of the Dome devoted to religion, is lacking 12m worth of sponsorship.
Children 2000 is writing to Jennie Page, New Millennium Experience Company chief executive, and to the Department of Culture Media & Sport, with its alternative proposals today (Wednesday) for an area designed to appeal specifically to youngsters.
Susan Stranks, a former presenter of children’s TV show Magpie who runs Children 2000, believes a children’s zone would attract both sponsors and children to the event, which opens on New Year’s Eve 1999. She says she is already talking to a number of potential sponsors.
“A children’s zone could be exciting and spiritual in the broadest sense. Children are a more sponsor-worthy focus,” she says. Her ideas range from a Great Glass Elevator, based on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory books, and a chocolate factory which produces “millennium munchie bars”.
A survey by research group MORI earlier this year showed that after healthcare, the majority of the public wants lottery cash to be spent on improving children’s lives.
