DEVIZES carnival artistic director Loz Samuels believes moving forward the date of the procession to the middle of July will help bring new life back to an event that first started in 1912.

This year Ms Samuels was disappointed with the number of entries and vowed to get more schools back involved.

She said: "We will move carnival to earlier in the year, the current date means that schools are on holiday so miss out on the opportunity of working on their entries during term time.

"The new date for 2019 will be the weekend of the 13th of July. We are yet to decide on a Saturday or Sunday and are now consulting with other event organisers in the area to avoid clashes.

"We have chosen this date after some consultation with teaching staff and believe it doesn’t clash with other major local events and isn’t too close to the end of term. We hope to create a programme of support helping schools who want to be involved but need advice or help with making costumes and floats in the future.

"We hope to see school entries increase and the enthusiasm for carnival starts to grow enabling it to grow in size and spectacle."

The carnival parade, which was originally held to raise money for the town's cottage hospital, has traditionally been held on the first Saturday in September. In its early days the parade would stretch for more than a mile. But in recent years the number of motorised floats has dramatically declined.

For a number of years this was made up for by a big rise in walking entries from schools but for these too have declined.

The International Street Festival, which was launched in 1999, has grown in popularity and will still be held next year on the bank holiday weekend of August 25 and 26. Picnic In The Park will remain on its usual weekend of August 18 but the Confetti Battle is to move from a Wednesday to August 31 and become the finale to the festival.

Ms Samuels said: "Changing this unique event to a Saturday should mean that more people can experience it as they will not be working. We hope to get more runners signing up for our colourful 5k run in 2019 than ever before.

“I believe the Confetti Battle should have national significance. It’s an amazing event and is growing each year, the introduction of the Colour Rush has made the atmosphere even better and we want it to continue to grow and become more spectacular, I hope our audiences and participants will get behind these changes and take the opportunity to get involved.

"We are very keen to hear from any groups or individuals that may want to become more actively involved in carnival to discuss how we can work with them.” Go to www.docadevizes.org.uk