LightNight Liverpool, the city’s one-night arts festival, is back on Friday 18 May 2018. With six new commissions from artists alongside 100+ free events at venues and unusual spaces across the city, the annual “culture crawl” celebrates arts and culture, ten years on from Liverpool’s title of 2008 European Capital of Culture.
For 2018 the theme is Transformation, understood as a significant change in both people and place. Transformation is happening all around us, both visible and invisible, turbulent and political, personal and emotional.
Produced by Open Culture – who are also behind Tickle the Ivories and the Winter and Summer Arts Markets – LightNight Liverpool is in its ninth year. It showcases the creative lifeblood of Liverpool, presenting new and ambitious commissions and free events including everything from concerts, exhibitions, hands on workshops and dance to street performance, theatre and talks.
Venues large and small will open their doors until late, in every corner of the city from Albert Dock and the Waterfront, St George’s Quarter and Ropewalks to the Baltic Triangle and Hope Street. Attracting visitors of all ages, the city comes alive for the night; in 2017, over 15,000 people attended LightNight.
This year, LightNight Liverpool’s commissions include;
In Patrick Dineen’s The Polar Bear Waltz the last polar bear sings an aria of the beautiful Arctic land he once knew that has been utterly transformed by climate change. The performance will take place at LJMU’s John Lennon Building.
Double D Divas introduces you to Dolly Twinkle (Elaine Collins) and Dora Bella (Karl Lorca) the most exciting double act since Velma and Veronica (deceased) Kelly. Both are fighting to find their place in a world that takes no account of their singular talents or their particular disabilities. Expect drag, singing, heartbreak, slippers, and British Sign Language.
Singing Mirror will take place at the British Music Experience where people will find themselves transformed in a series of projected kaleidoscopic patterns. Live video is fed through several animated lenses to create an ever-changing environment. Alex Mead and Jack Wates create a kaleidoscopic light and sound installation ‘controlled’ by audiences who can interact with a projected ‘mirrors’.
Liverpool AV artist In Atoms will create an exclusive new installation presented as a two-screen dialogue with an original musical score at Liverpool Cathedral.
Elinor Randle and Tmesis Theatre present Grandma was a Monkey, a highly visual and physical spectacle in The Albert Dock telling the story of human evolution and transformation.
Jayson Haebich’s installation explores the transformation of light by passing a laser through a special lens to break it into millions of component colours.
Stanza is a site specific light installation transforming a device familiar to us in our daily encounters with the modern world, into something altogether more enigmatic and less purposeful. John Elcock is a Liverpool artist with an interest in landscape, birds and symbolism. Continuing the Liverpool tradition of painter poets, his writing is full of imagery and selected fragments of his work from the three collections of poetry published by The Artel press will form the basis of Stanza, in which a city street will become a place for poetry, quality reflection and illumination.
The full programme will be released 1 May and is available to pre-order now at www.lightnightliverpool.co.uk
High-resolution images of LightNight Liverpool 2017
Highlights Film LightNight 2017
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