Art is an essential driving force that inspires urban leaders to develop their city and to deliver diversity and identity of the city.
Within LUCI, we look at both permanent and temporary creative lighting in cities. Light festivals represent a significant cultural ecosystem: 40 LUCI members organise, are involved in or host light festivals, from established to emerging ones, and every step in between.
The LUCI Light Festival Working Group has become a platform for decision-makers to discuss current topics and trends and think about the future of light festivals.
At LUCI, we believe that light festivals can be important tools to promote art and culture in cities, boosting the local economy and activating public spaces and transform the way we live and experience our cities at night.
Created in: 2021
Led by: Cities of Lyon and Glow
Main objectives
As light festivals continue to grow and expand worldwide, city representatives and festival organisers are attentive to the fact that these kinds of events also have major ecological repercussions with large flows of people and the environmental impacts in terms of mobility, production, catering, energy, etc. Through various conversations in working group meetings, light festival organisers have identified the next major challenge for these kinds of events: how can light festivals remain attractive, inclusive and festive moments while also being much more sustainable?
Working Group activities
2023
- In June and December, the Light Festival Working Group gathered 20 light festivals to share updates on current strategies to address sustainability issues in their events as well as discuss the challenges in implementing solutions.
- At the December meeting, 9 partners, including LUCI, 7 festivals, and a university, decided to collaborate to work towards a proposal for a Creative Europe project on this topic which was then submitted in early 2024.
- During the Annual General Meeting in Jyväskylä (March), participants were inspired with a keynote by light artist Kari Kola where participants were reminded how light art is a powerful medium to reveal the beauty and character of any site.
- During the LUCI Asia Urban Lighting Workshop 2023, art director Jinhee Choi presented about the first Seoul Hangang Bitseom light festival and how the city worked with artists to transform public spaces.
- Turin’s Luci d’artista light festival was front and centre during the LAiPS International Final Conference “Bringing Life to Public Spaces with Light Art” (November) where participants learned about Turin’s permanent light art collection and experienced the festival first-hand.
- The “Beacon of Hope” international light art co-creation launched in 2022 continued its journey in 2023 to be adapted to the local context of light festivals in Leipzig, back to Eindhoven, and Brussels.
- The Lyon Light Festival Forum 2023 featured conversations, roundtables and pecha-kucha sessions with a focus on creative angles to imagine the city of tomorrow.
