Light Festivals & Place Making

1. Light Festivals and Place Making
Gail Skelly
g.skelly@mmu.ac.uk
@GailLightFest

2. Seminar overview
• Light festivals
• Research design
• Findings
• Next steps
• References

3. Why study community light festivals?

4. Platt Fields Park
Art Car Parade, Manchester Light Night, Liverpool

5. Carabosse, Nuit Blanche,

6. ‘Illuminations have become a key element in the urban designscapes…. [and]
culture led regeneration strategies and place promotion’
(Edensor and Millington, 2012)
‘mainstays of urban tourism and policy-making’
(Quinn, 2010)
‘Light festivals are often big-budget events, driven by commercial imperatives,
characterized by a strong top-down approach which seeks to exploit a cities
competitive advantages ‘ (Giordano and Ong, 2017)

7. Fete de Lumiere, Lyon, 2017

8. London Lumiere, 2018

9. Community light festival, Salford, 2017
Rhythm
Temporality

10. Community Light festivals
Working definition for this study
small-scale
estate, neighbourhood or town level
locally organised
creativity
annual or bi-annual
genesis inspired by heritage or special interest
reiterations and rituals
inter-generational
relatively deprived
non-commercial
subsidised or self-funded
non-statutory partnerships

11. Research questions
How are community light festivals organised and produced?
How do people experience community light festivals?
What is the socio-cultural impact of community light festivals?
How do community light festivals contribute to a sense of place?

12. RESEARCH TO DATE
Ethnography
Participant observation
Auto-ethnography
RESEARCH TO DO
Walking interviews
Semi-structured
interviews
Route-making exercise
Research Design

13. LIGHT FESTIVALS VISITED TO DATE
Matlock Baths Illuminations
Blackpool Illuminations
Pool of Light, Blackpool
Heckmondlight Switch On
Durham Lumiere
London Lumiere
Leeds Light Festival
Ordsall Lantern Parade
Peel Park Opening, Salford
Light Waves, Salford Quays
Liverpool Festival of Light
Glow Festival, Eindhoven
Ulverston Lantern Festival
Sharrow Lantern Festival, Sheffield
Waterlicht, Winnet’s Pass
Oldham Light Festival

14. LIGHT FESTIVALS VISITED TO DATE
Matlock Baths Illuminations
Blackpool Illuminations
Pool of Light, Blackpool
Heckmondlight Switch On
Durham Lumiere
London Lumiere
Leeds Light Festival
Ordsall Lantern Parade
Peel Park Opening, Salford
Light Waves, Salford Quays
Liverpool Festival of Light
Glow Festival, Eindhoven
Ulverston Lantern Festival
Sharrow Lantern Festival, Sheffield
Waterlicht, Winnet’s Pass
Oldham Light Festival

15. Findings to date

16. Place identity
Co-
production
Affordances
of light
Atmospheres

17. Place identityRe-inscription
History
and
heritage
Routes and
sites
Defamiliarisa
tion
Magical and
enchantment
Theatrical
interventions
Ordsall and ‘Salford Docks’

18. Ordsall, Salford

19. Ordsall Lantern Parade Route 2017 Sharrow Lantern Parade Route 2018
Finish
Finish
Start
Start
Indices of Multiple Deprivation

20. ‘Get Diggy With It’ at Ordsall Hall
Lighting the Legend 2006

22. Ulverston Town Centre

23. I think in our case the kids get dragged along, it’s the
other way round, we have a lot of adults, a lot of adults.
It’s lovely to see the kids, they’re so proud of what they’ve done.
Have you ever been to the Dickensian festival at the end of
November, that is worth visiting.
Yeah, I see it every year anyway I hope you enjoy it its brilliant
Re-inscription at Ulverston Lantern Festival

24. Ulverston Lantern Parade, 2017

25. Heritage at Heckmondlights

26. Co-
production
Embodied
practices
Social
networks
Creative
agency
Collaboration
Inclusion and
exclusion
Transition

27. Embodied practices at
Heckmondlight, 2017

28. Sharrow Lantern Workshop volunteers
Sharrow creativity

29. Ordsall Lantern Festival

30. Inter-generational embodied
practice at Ordsall

31. Ger’ on w’ it!
Your daughter will grow up with it….
then she’ll be landed with it
Well you should know about it,
because it all over Facebook
It’s important to get even more
people to see the event
Transition at Heckmondlight Switch On

32. Event
atmosphere
Event
dynamics
Anticipating
Event
culture
Moment of
switch on
Lighting
and
rhythm

33. Traditional and digital artist
commissions at Heckmondlights

34. Switch on moment at
Heckmondlights 2016

35. Switch on at Ulverston Lantern Festival, 2017

36. Affordances
of light
Materiality
of light
Social
Interaction
Liminal
space
Carnivalesque

37. Social interaction at Ordsall Lantern festival

38. Liminal space at Waterlicht, London Lumiere, 2018

39. Winnats Pass, site of Waterlicht

40. Walking interviews
Route-mapping
Semi-structured
interviews
Return visits to case
studies
Light Festival visits Lyon, France
Moonraking,
Slaithwaite

41. Social
Interaction
Event
dynamics
Anticipating
Event
culture
Shared
heritage
Atmosphere
Inter-
generationality
Reinscription
Next stages ….

42. ‘
Lighting the Legend 2004

43. Alves, T. (2007) Art, light and landscape: new agendas for urban development, European Planning Studies, 15(9): 1247-1260
Bakhtin M (1984 [1965]) Rabelais and his World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Debord, G. (1994) The Society of the Spectacle, New York: Zone Books.
Ebbensgaard, C. (2015) Illuminights: a sensory study of illuminated urban environments in Copenhagen, Space and Culture,18(2): 112-131
Edensor, T. (2018) Moonraking: Making things, place and event, for L. Price and H. Hawkins (eds) Geographies of Making/ Making Geographies:
Embodiment, Matter and Practice, London: Routledge
Edensor, T., & Millington, S. (2012). Blackpool Illuminations: Revaluing local cultural production, situated creativity and working-class values.
International Journal of Cultural Policy, 19, 145-161.
Edensor, T., 2014, ‘The aesthetic, social and cultural effects of festivals of illumination: contrasting transformations of space and place by lighting’, in
U. Hassenhorl, K. Krause, J.
Edensor, T. & Millington, S., 2009, ‘The Contested Landscapes of Christmas’, Sociology, Vol 43(1), pp103-121
Florida, R. (2005) Cities and the Creative Class, London: Routledge.
Gibson, C., and N. Klocker. 2004. Academic publishing as "creative" industry, and recent discourses of "creative economies": Some critical reflections.
Area 36 (4): 423-34
Hallam,E., and Ingold, T. (2007), Creativity and Cultural Improvisation:An Introduction.In T. Ingold and E.Hallam (Eds.), Creativity and Cultural
Improvisation (pp.125). London:Berg.
Jakob, I. (2012) The eventification of place: Urban development and experience consumption in Berlin and New York City, European Urban and
Regional Studies, 20(4): 447-459
Jiwa, S. and Coca-Stefaniak, J.A., 2009, ‘Light Night: An “Enlightening” Place Marketing Experience’, Journal of Place Management and Development,
Vol 2(2), pp154-166
Quinn, B. (2010) ‘Arts festivals and urban tourism and cultural policy’, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 2(3): 264–279
Rojek, C., 2013, ‘Event power: How global events manage and manipulate’, Sage
Stevens, Q. and Shin, H., 2014, ‘Urban Festivals and Local Social Space’, Planning, Practice & Research, Vol 29(1) pp. 1 – 20
References

44. Gail Skelly
PhD Candidate,
Manchester Metropolitan University
g.skelly@mmu.ac.uk
@GailLightFest