Leeds

FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER 2009 

On Friday 10 October 2008 Leeds' fourth annual Light Night event transformed the City Centre. 50 venues opened their doors, most of them until midnight, and played host to over 70 events. The different venues between them recorded 47,000 visits over the course of the evening.

New venues this year included independent shops which opened as part of Leeds Shopping Week, playing host to theatrical events and launching new, locally produced comics to celebrate light and the city.  Also, the new Leeds City Museum opened and played host to newly commissioned performances by Yorkshire Dance and Bennu Dance Group.

Both Universities played a huge part again this year.  There were projections onto the iconic white tower of the Parkinson Building at the University of Leeds.  Students and staff of Leeds Met took over Queen Square (a beautiful but little known Georgian square right in the heart of the city) and transformed into City-Dell (pictured), a macrocosmic magical world of light, transformation and, as one pleased and baffled punter said ‘Urban planning done by Daft Punk'.

Pyramid of Arts, an organisation who work with learning disabled and non-learning disabled artists together, produced a ‘Light Maze' in the Church Hall at Oxford Methodist Mission.  Although the venue is not normally open in the evenings, the event attracted over 2,000 visitors during the course of the night.

Black Dogs transformed the centre of Briggate, Leeds's main shopping street with a Dose of Summer, a dose of the summer which we all seemed to miss, with milk shakes and ice cream, face-painting, parasol decorating, deck chairs, country dancing, and a performance by Sir Cliff Richard.  So many people came to receive their dose of summer that the faces painted with red fake tans could be seen all over the city all night!

These are only some of the many stories of the night.  Most markedly this year it seemed that young people and families now ‘trust' the event and therefore trust their city centre a little more.  The number of families and children in attendance this year was huge, with events such as Legoville at Leeds Met Gallery allowing young (& not so young) would-be architects the chance to construct their ideal Leeds out of Lego and Duplo.

Light Night is now an established and unmissable part of the cultural calendar in Leeds, and will return to the city inFriday October, 2010.  

Please visit www.lightnightleeds.co.uk for further details.