Equinox Partners

Leading the CMS Parade was the HydroPower Serpent manned by nine members of CMS volunteer staff who were taught how to swirl the Head and Body of the Father Thames flow puppet through the streets of the City.

Two Giant Walking Puppets, controlled by six more members of CMS trainee lawyers, brought up the rear of the parade.

Hydro Power Serpent

The Swirling Dancers and the Rain Dancers from the Sarah Bonnell Secondary School were joined by the trainees from CMS in brightly coloured costumes – all conceived by Clare Newton and her staff at Equinox Partners.

As part of the volunteer programme all the girls were trained in-house by Equinox Partners' team – a great opportunity to learn how to dance in front of the crowds lining the streets of London.

Visit You Tube to see them in action : Swirling Dancers  |  RainDancers

A vibrant, fizzing blonde cross between Michael MacIntyre and Bridget Jones, Movement Director, Polly Bennett, managed to stir a dysfunctional group of lawyers and and administrators into a finely honed coherent team of walking paraders.

Jump, jump, clap, jump, step, clap, clap, jump! 

Leaping and marching to the Beyoncé beat of 116 bpm, we all fell under Polly's spell of delightfully humourous tutelage, bringing together all the months of effort together one Saturday morning at the Sarah Bonnell School in Stratford, East London. All part of the experience of being in the Lord Mayor's Parade. @po_b

Creating projects to reach into the heart of the community, CMS supports local inner-City schools and their pupils on a regular basis with educational programmes and engages them in the realities of the modern world. 

LEFT – Fiona Woolf, as the Lord Mayor Elect, handed out School Hat Competition certificates to the children of Whitmore Primary School in front of their 250 colleagues. Through the media of papier-maché, glue, paint and glitter, the children of inner-city Shoreditch interpreted CMS’s core legal areas and let their imagination run riot! Outstanding results – and just a little bit of fun. The reward for the final winners of the competition was to walk with the Cameron McKenna parade at The Lord Mayor's Show on 9th November. What a day it was for them! If somewhat wet and cold at the end of it – the children were left with a smile on their faces and memories that will remain forever.

RIGHT – The NewsPower Team from the Sarah Bonnell Secondary School in Stratford, East London, is another outlet for CMS Cameron McKenna’s Corporate Social Responsibility team, led by CSR Manager, Robert Powell (right) and supervised by CMS member Amy Bird (left). The pupils have been tasked with recording, and reporting on, the progress of the River of Power parade preparations. Their work will be put forward as their entry into the BBC School Report competition, giving the 11-16 year-old students a chance to produce their own news reports for a real audience and develop journalistic skills to prepare them for a very media-savvy world.

BOTTOM RIGHT – Clare Newton, Creative Director, and Carey English, Animatuer, the inspiration behind the 'River of Power' and CMS engagement with the schools programme.