LightNight

The free one-night arts & culture festival

LightNight is Liverpool’s one night arts and culture festival – a festival for everyone, and all exploring the city together in a new light.

With everything from large-scale light projections and live music to workshops and spoken word, art, crafts and theatre, street performance, walking tours, dancing and late-opening exhibitions, all taking place across the city centre, and all on one night.

LightNight sees city centre venues large and small, old and new, stay open late to celebrate the incredible arts and culture on offer in the Liverpool city region. Each year tens of thousands of people take the opportunity to try something new; see something different; step out of their comfort zone; or just spend time with friends and family.

The demand for the festival has always been overwhelming, with audience members describing their experience of the night as ‘wonderful’ ‘fascinating’ and ‘inspiring’. Partner organisations feedback is similarly positive with over 97% of participating organisations consistently saying they would take part year on year because of the opportunities to trial events, develop the skills of staff and artists, broaden audiences and build their profile.

LightNight is produced by Liverpool-based social enterprise Open Culture.

The History of LightNight

Since the first LightNight in 2010 the festival has gone from strength to strength with continued support from the arts sector, local authority, funders, sponsors, artists and most importantly – audiences.

The LightNight audience is varied, from young adults to young families, multi-generational groups and professionals. It is a very social event with groups of friends, work colleagues, community groups and families meeting up to explore the night.

Over the years LightNight has generated a huge amount of local, regional and national print and online press coverage including BBC and ITV live broadcasts.

Open Culture’s aims of access, inclusion and opportunity weave through all the LightNight programmes.

The aims of the festival are to:

Why People Love LightNight

“Gets people out and gets things happening – cultural stimulus”

“The variety and vitality – Liverpool at its best“

“The atmosphere and the way the city seemed very accessible and open to all”

“Chance to see things; normally work 9-5 so it opens up possibilities”

“The art, the atmosphere, and the people you meet”

“Massive buzz in the city centre and the amount of people out and about…”

“Nice to have something other than clubs to go to”

“Experienced a new venue, enjoyable surprises”

“Light Night is such a joyful night of the year. The whole city – all ages, all backgrounds – comes together. It’s magical! And it proves why the arts and culture are so important to us and to the life of a city.”

LightNight Timeline

2010

LightNight Liverpool is launched, attracting over 12,400 visits to the city centre for a one-night culture crawl featuring over 90 events and 55 venues, as well as street performances and walking tours.

Events included the opening of Toulouse Lautrec exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery with live music, curator talks and Youth Theatre performances, The Art of 3D and disco dance at FACT, Talks by Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Bonnie Greer, Artists’ Studios openings and exhibitions, a one night golden spectacular launching the 2010 International Liverpool Biennial and much more.

View the LightNight 2010 Festival Guide here.

 

2011

LightNight returned for its second year, with over 50 venues and 100+ events. There was an outdoor candle-lit labyrinth, Look11 Liverpool’s first International Photography Festival launch, nocturnal tours of Liverpool’s historic Old Dock and the Radical Route walking tour giving an insight into Liverpool’s history as a city of radicalism and protest, as part of Liverpool City of Radicals 2011, amongst much more.

View the LightNight 2011 Festival Guide here.

 

2012

LightNight 2012 saw over 25,000 visits to over 90 events in 53 venues. With exhibitions, choir performances and open studios, creative workshops and futuristic robots, dazzling projections, powerful photography, cycling trails and theatrical tales. The programme of events included Rainbow Lights for Homotopia IDAHO 50 at the Active Learning Lab, Screenadelica’s gig poster exhibition at Liverpool Academy of Arts and LIPA’s Takeover at Liverpool ONE. There was also a Chinese Arts Showcase at The Black-E, A Bite of James & the Giant Peach at The Brink Liverpool, presented by the talented Kirkby Youth Theatre, Artist Polly Morgan’s taxidermy demonstration at the Victoria Gallery & Museum and Impropriety’s Journey to the Yet Unknown at St George’s Hall.

View the LightNight 2012 Festival Guide here.

 

2013: Memory and Identity

LightNight 2013 introduces an annual festival theme. Exploring Memory and Identity the festival included the launch of LOOK/13 Liverpool International Photography Festival and the official public reopening of Liverpool’s iconic Central Library, which formed part of the In Other Words literary festival. LightNight 2013 offered over 130 events, taking place across 58 venues.

Commissions: Large Scale Light Projections across 3 city centre locations (by Andy McKeown).

View the LightNight 2013 Festival Guide here.

 

2014: WW1 Commemoration

Many of the events of LightNight 2014 marked the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War as part of the commemorations that happened in Liverpool and across the world.

LightNight 2014 brought light projections, theatre, exhibitions, walks, workshops and much more to the city with 44 venues involved and over 100 events taking place. Highlights include the Anglican Cathedral staging a worldwide dance-off as well as a Grand Organ recital, a “singing bowl” orchestra and even a psychedelic music performance amongst the huge programme offer.

Commissions: Sound Battle (by The Kazimier Clash with The Harlequin Dynamite Marching Band). The Kazimier clashed with The Harlequin Dynamite Marching Band to create an audio-visual battle across various city centre locations.

View the LightNight 2014 Festival Guide here.

 

2015: Looking to the New World

The festival theme for 2015 was Looking to the New World, marking the start of One Magnificent City – a seven-week series of major events that took place that summer continuing with Three Queens on 24-26 May and culminating on 4 July with Transatlantic 175.

A new partnership with Mersey Transport Trust resulted in a number of free Heritage Buses looping to key venues for LightNight. It was operated on a donations basis and was an enormously popular addition to LightNight for many years to come.

There were over 65,000 visits to the 56 venues and outdoor locations enjoying and engaging in the 137 events.

Some new venues took part for 2015, the most notable included openings across the LJMU campus with hands on activities and exhibitions, a major immersive installation at the Cunard Building, late openings at Merseyside Maritime Museum and a choir festival at the Metropolitan Cathedral. Additionally, there were with street theatre trails that included How May I Direct Your Call? by Paperwork Theatre and Eggmen & Boom Boom’s Waggle Dance as part of Tmesis’s Physical Fest. Plus, the first of Bring the Fire Project’s exhilarating fire performances wowed the LightNight crowds.

Commissions: HEX/Light DiVision (by The Dyads: Laura Spark, Joel Murray, Simon Knighton, Laura Brownhill and Rory Ballantyne, Erica Sourti.

View the LightNight 2015 Festival Guide here.

 

2016: Experiment

2016’s festival was themed Experiment and offered audiences a unique opportunity to see a side of the city they may not have experienced before.

With 56 venues and 131 events LightNight: Experiment events included No Worse, There Is None; a truly special LightNight Commission by Adhoc Creative, Bido Lito! and Bill Ryder Jones at Liverpool Cathedral, The Big Sing Ting at the Town Hall, the Everyman who hosted the exceptional experimental commission Neu Collective Consciousness, a silent disco in the Picton Reading Room in Central Library, St George’s Hall where LightNight brought together Ceilidh and Bollywood for an international experiment. Plus, the Maritime Museum, which celebrated its 30th anniversary, launched their Afro Supa Hero exhibition.

Commissions: Flock (by Physical Fest), The Cage of Experiments (by Katy-Anne Bellis of Caustic Widows), Gizzago’s Pop Up Playground (by Gizzago), Illumaphonium (by Michael Davis), Météo- Dock (at Albert Dock, created by TiLT), City Sites (The Mindset Ensemble / Mark Jone, Laura Spark, Sweet Jam Band), disSociation (by Deep Hedonia), OP POP Matrix (by Andy McKeown), Love Without Sound: Pixophytoflora (by David Badger), Afterglow (by Carlos Bernal), Afloat in Land (by Friend or Foe), Neu Collective Consciousness (by Logan & Wilcox), No Worse, There is None (by Adhoc Creative, Bido Lito! and Bill Ryder Jones).

View the LightNight 2016 Festival Guide here.

 

2017: Time

The theme of Time gave us a chance to think about the past, present and future of the city, with the festival’s events investigating ideas about memory, ageing, mortality and experience alongside the influence of time in philosophy, physics, astronomy, quantum mechanics and relativity. With 50 participating venues and over 100 different organisations collaborating, LightNight visits were now at over 72,000.

For 2017 some of our most celebrated organisations – including our principal sponsor, Liverpool John Moores University – Bluecoat, BBC Radio Merseyside, Open Eye Gallery and the Metropolitan Cathedral celebrated significant anniversaries. Plus, The Unity reopened after a major refurbishment. So, it couldn’t be more appropriate for us to ask our festival partners to muse on the theme of time.

Some of the highlights of LightNight 2017 included Time Out of This World in Brass; two special concerts by The Liverpool Walton Band of the Salvation Army performing James Horner’s classic soundtrack to The Land Before Time, Zugzwang; a new commission by artists Logan & Wilcox in which their installation relied on monitoring our unconscious reactions. Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral glowed thanks to Rotation Eighteen269; a light installation and atmospheric accompanying soundtrack. The Time, Space and Climate Change installation featured experts from LJMU’s Astrophysics Research Institute and Department of Geography plus Liverpool’s Parish Church hosted work by Liverpool Biennial.

Commissions: Zugwang (by Logan & Wilcox), Bloom (by Friend or Foe), The Super Sonic Assembly (by Tracey Carmen & DJ Greg Wilcox), Where the Time Goes (by Jonathan Raisin), Rotation Eighteen269 (by Andy McKeown), Typhoon and the Pedal Players (by Paperwork Theatre), Buildings Roman (by Surtsey Project), Same As We Ever Were (by Mersey Dance Initiative), LightNight After Party (by DJ Andy Votel & Sam Wiehl).

View the LightNight 2017 Festival Guide here.

 

2018: Transformation

The festival theme for 2018, Transformation, questioned and reflected upon the transformative nature of the self and the world around us.

Highlights from over 100 events and 40 venues included Liverpool AV artist In Atoms’ exclusive new installation at Liverpool Cathedral. The Imago, that imagined a world where the human fixation with classification breaks down. Patrick Dineen’s The Polar Bear Waltz at LJMU’s John Lennon Building highlighted the effect our lifestyle is having on our planet. And at the Singing Mirror, at the British Music Experience, you could find yourself transformed in a series of projected kaleidoscopic patterns.

Commissions: The Polar Bear Waltz (by Patrick Dineen), Singing Mirror (by Jack Wates & Alex Mead), The Imago (by In Atoms), Double D Divas (by Elaine Collins & Karl Lorca), Walking Upright (by Tmesis Theatre), Stanza (by John Elcock), Diffringere (by Jayson Haebich).

View the LightNight 2018 Festival Guide here.

 

2019: Ritual

LightNight: Ritual considered ritual as a universal phenomenon, spanning the breadth of human history, and also as an artistic process by which we shift our state of mind. Ritual offers us an active and creative process by which to create shared meaning, understand the world, and define – and transcend – our place within it.

LightNight celebrated its 10th year, with another 100+ events and 42 participating venues.

LightNight 2019 events included Ritual 2.0, which saw the underground tunnel at Moorfields Train Station transformed into an immersive sound and light installation for the first time ever. Bido Lito and Merseyrail worked with artist Sam Wiehl, accompanied by a soundtrack mix by Forest Swords. Liverpool Cathedral hosted a ‘death cafe’ as a place where people from all walks of life could gather, share and discuss their perspectives of death and dying, Plus, a Wicker Women ceremony at Blackburne House, an incredible light and sound installation at Exchange Flags entitled Halo and the Big Brass sing along at St Georges Hall.

Commissions: Híbridos,The Spirits of Brazil (by Priscilla Telmon & Vincent Moon), The Peaks & Troughs of Modern Rituals (by Richie Moment), Bido!100 & Merseyrail Present Ritual 2.0 (by Forest Swords & Sam Wiehl), The Great British Baraat (by Movema, Milapfest & Bombay Baja Brass Band), AD Finitum: The Invisible Choir (by Rory Ballantyne), Demolition Memorial Keepsake (by anti-cool), Donna Summer Fever (by Projectile Vomit).

View the LightNight 2019 Festival Guide here.

 

2020: Home

LightNight 2020’s theme was always planned to be Home; a planet, a city, a village, a building, a body. Outside of the physical, home is a community, a feeling, a memory, a familiarity; it’s the place from where we reach out, to understand one another and create a community where we can all belong. Home is a sense of belonging. Social ties made through family, work, friends, religion or culture give you a sense of connection to others, where you are valued and cared for. But with homelessness rising, people around the world displaced and forced to seek refuge in strange, hostile geographies, and barriers to belonging thrown up in the shape of discrimination based on religion, disability, gender, sexuality or mental health – where and how do we find our home?

Due to the Pandemic, LightNight was in fact actually at Home. With the festival very quickly changed from an in-person event to a huge number of the festival partners sharing their digital content, giving audiences the opportunity to celebrate and spotlight some of the artists and venues that would have brought everyone together via an online version of the festival.

Additionally, landmarks across the city centre were specially lit up to mark LightNight at Home, aiming to offer a symbol of hope for all as we dealt with the ‘new normal’. Two special projections created by Draw and Code and delivered by Adlib, took place on the Metropolitan Cathedral and Liverpool Cathedral both linked by Hope Street. The imagery of the projections and the building lighting were widely shared online and in the press post event.

 

2021: Play

Coming out of the other side of the pandemic, LightNight 2021 was a hybrid festival taking place on the first Friday after venues could open, with over 75 events taking place both online and in-person across 30 venues.

As we began to process the shockwaves of a global catastrophe LightNight 2021 hoped to find respite as we explored how Play can offer a space to create, re-imagine and find novel solutions.

Events included Homotopia’s Queer the City Drag Cabaret featuring some of the UK’s most stunning drag performers entertaining the public outside LUSH on Church Street. There were Liverpool Biennial collaborations across the city centre as many of the contemporary art festival’s exhibitions were open for LightNight. Stealing Sheep’s Song Machine saw the band become a human instrument for one night only and there was the immersive and interactive LUX game and light projection which could be played by visitors at the Bombed-Out Church.

Commissions: Queer the City: Drag Cabaret (by Homotopia and Filla Crack), Project Earth: Liverpool! The Cut-Out Opera (by Love Ssega), The Three VVV’s (by Haroon Mirza), Song Machine (by Stealing Sheep), The Play Scratch Night & Workshops (by Yolanda Mercy), Play the Stars (by Leo & Hyde, Rosie Summers and Marco Galvani), In Flow (by Ronan Devlin).

About Open Culture

Open Culture wants you and everyone you know to take part in more arty stuff around Liverpool and the city region. Mainly because it’s proven to make your life a bit better!

Established as part of 2008 Liverpool European Capital of Culture, Open Culture is an independent social enterprise working collaboratively across the region to increase the profile of, and engagement with the arts.

Known for projects like LightNight Liverpool, the Tickle the Ivories street pianos and the Winter and Summer Arts Markets, Open Culture develops projects across multiple art forms that nurture and connect artists and audiences to make people happier.

UncoverLiverpool.com is a website devised and created by Open Culture and is a complete ‘what’s on’ guide to arts and culture in the Liverpool city region, where you can find out what’s coming up from the latest exhibitions, gigs and theatre to workshops, family days out and festivals.

Plus, the community section is dedicated to people working in the arts sector, offering a place to easily share news, call outs, job opportunities, commissions, wanted and other notices.

It is a completely free to use the site, and it is free to add arts and cultural event listings and notices. Sign up for the free Monday morning weekly e-newsletter here.