Light Night returns to Leeds this autumn on Friday 9th October, transforming the city centre from teatime until sunrise the next day. Venues across the city centre – theatres, places of worship, galleries, arcades, museums, prison cells, graveyards and streets – open through the night to play host to all manner of imaginative events, performances, art installations, light and sound shows, all of which are open to the public and are completely free.
The first ‘Nuit Blanche’ was held in Paris in 1997. News of its success quickly spread and major cities around the world began hosting events. Leeds was the first UK city to hold its own ‘Light Night’, and its popularity quickly grew. This year, events will also be held in Nottingham, Birmingham, Bradford, York, Sheffield and Liverpool
This year will include a series of spectacular light-based commissions projected by Lumen onto The Civic Hall, the opportunity to make new friends using yoghurt pots and string, information on the discovery of Rumpelstiltskin’s unmarked grave, your chance to be a signet in Swan Lake, a photographic study into the fragmentation of memories in Leeds Town Hall, Irish music, story-telling and dressing up, amongst many other things. Visitors may also become part of the show as mobile phone films recorded on the night will be relayed on the BBC Big Screen. The world’s smallest film festival returns to the most world’s most intimate cinema, hidden in the goods lift of The Electric Press building, while all kinds of surprises, mysteries, half-truths and legends will come to life in the city streets. Some you will stumble across by chance, some require furtive exploration. What we can guarantee is that every venue – and the streets themselves – will be filled with light, dance, sound, performance, and fun for people of all ages.
Millennium Square will host a number of events, including awe-inspiring moving projections on the Civic Hall and a chance to draw with light and see your creations up on the BBC Big Screen. Discover the lost art of conversation using yogurt pots and string, see moving artwork around the city at a travelling gallery, create your own planet and become part of the Light Night solar system or see angels descend from heaven in the university chaplaincy. Just a snippet of the 80 events across 50 venues that are sure to keep you busy all night!
Light Night celebrates the work of large established arts organisations as much as it does that of individuals, students and amateurs artists. It is an opportunity to share and enjoy the full range of creative activity in the city.
Visit www.lightnightleeds.co.uk for more information about the night’s events. A full event brochure will be available to download a fortnight prior to the event. Or just turn up on the night and explore! An information point will be stationed at The Light shopping centre, which will be open from 5pm onwards.
Image Credit: City Dell by Leeds Met from Light Night 2008 – photograph by Jonathan Turner.