Artists to bring Blackpool Illuminations to life through new celebration of light

Internationally-renowned artists including Bob & Roberta Smith, Steve Messam and Compagnie Bilbobasso have been confirmed for the inaugural LightPool Festival. Free to attend, the new six-night festival will celebrate Blackpool’s unique relationship with light from Friday 28 October to Wednesday 2 November 2016.

Marking the penultimate weekend of Blackpool Illuminations, the first LightPool Festival will transform the town centre, thanks to support from Arts Council England and Coastal Communities Fund.

Encouraging visitors to explore on foot, a spectacular walking route will feature more than 20 art works from local, national and international artists, inspired by Blackpool’s history and linking together its iconic buildings. Each night in St John’s Square, a programme of live performances will wow visitors with light and fire displays from some of the world’s leading performance artists.

Highlights of the first LightPool Festival include:

• the new commission Art Is Your Human Right by Bob and Roberta Smith, which will see illuminated words hanging at eye-catching locations around the town centre including the Council Office, The Grundy and Clifton Street.  Bob and Roberta Smith will also lead and convene a public discussion on the power of art to drive social change on Friday 28 October

• French Compagnie Bilbobasso, who will perform Polar, an explosive fable of fire and tango

• When the Red Rose from Steve Messam, a new series of temporary, site-specific installations presented by Marketing Lancashire. This rising tide of the colour red takes the county’s historic symbol and by a twist of language creates something new and surprising for each location.

• Ron Haselden’s Brothers and Sisters – 34 drawings in light of children including three works newly created with young people in Blackpool – will appear in windows of the former Ocean Hotel on North Promenade. The building is has recently been purchased by local arts organisation LeftCoast with plans to convert it into an Art Bed and Breakfast (AB&B)

• the UK premiere of Santiago by Emma Allen, an animated self-portrait combining body-painting and light to explore the human evolution from past to future, as well as a new commission for Lightpool called Light Lessons

• performances and installations premiered at Burning Man Festival 2016, including The Musical Periscope an immersive installation by Yuli Levtov and a performance from The FireWorks Collective, the troupe which represents the UK fire performance community in the Nevada desert, USA, each year

• Spark! by Worldbeaters Music – concluding the festival with an LED drumming spectacular, featuring a bespoke new section of the show created with students from Blackpool & Fylde College and accompanied by pyrotechnic virtuosos pa-Boom

• Lumidogs – illuminated costume making workshops for dogs, and their owners, will culminate in a mass illuminated dog walk around LightPool Festival’s new art trail

All the installations will form an illuminated trail taking visitors on a journey around the town centre to explore the LightPool Festival.  A specially designed map will be available to take people on their illuminated adventure ensuring they don’t miss any elements of the Festival.

With £48,000 of additional funding from the Arts Council’s National Lottery funded Grants for the Arts, the festival is the climax of the two year, £2 million LightPool project, funded by the Coastal Communities Fund with partners LeftCoast and Blackpool Council.

Cllr Gillian Campbell, Deputy Leader of Blackpool Council said, “Millions of visits are made to the Lights every year but we are often told people want to see something new and different, this is it. I’m delighted to welcome these internationally renowned artists who will be bringing exciting new light shows to the town centre. We hope that it will encourage visitors to see another side to Blackpool and experience Blackpool Illuminations in a new light.”

Alison Clark, Director North, Arts Council England said, “We are very pleased to support LightPool through our National Lottery funded Grants for the Arts programme. This festival is a wonderful platform to showcase exciting and unusual work that will delight audiences. Light Festivals are growing in popularity in the UK and Europe, and it’s great to see Blackpool, with its wonderful illuminations history, as part of this growth.”

Coastal Communities Minister Andrew Percy said: “Thanks to £2 million from our Coastal Communities Fund, the festival is one of the star attractions of Blackpool’s growing tourism economy. The LightPool Festival is a fantastic way to celebrate our Great British Coast and I would encourage everyone to visit.”

Alex Rinsler, creative lead for LightPool, said: “Arts festivals turn the everyday into something extraordinary – they create magical spaces where people can come together, share experiences and explore something new. We’re thrilled to be bringing such a range of wonderful artists to Blackpool to reimagine the town with residents and visitors alike.”

LightPool Festival builds on the successes of The LightPool shows on The Blackpool Tower, launched in 2015 and running throughout the 2016 Blackpool Illuminations. Visitors this year are spoilt for choice, with three new 3-D projection shows designed specifically for LightPool. They include Chasing Stars by The Projection Studio, introduced by Tim Peake and based on the pioneering work of European Space Agency, Down the Rabbit Hole by Czech digital art collective The Macula, and Enchanted Blackpool, created by film-maker Cecile Llewelyn-Bowen, using designs by her father Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. All three of the films, along with two popular shows from last year’s LightPool events, will be available to watch for free from the Comedy Carpet several times every night, with extra performances at weekends and over the October half term.

The LightPool programme also includes a fantastic new exhibition at The Grundy Art Gallery – Neon: The Charged Line, which brings together some of the most internationally renowned neon artworks from the 1960s to the present day.

Blackpool has a long history of collaborating with light technologies. Light is synonymous with the town’s history and development since the first eight arc lamps that graced the promenade in 1879 to in excess of the 1,000,000  lamps that now feature in this year’s display. Blackpool Illuminations also has a long history of commissioning artists and collaborating with cultural partners such as the Arts Service and the Grundy Art Gallery; a key partner on Blackpool’s Arts Council England funded Arts Engagement programme.

For more details on this year’s LightPool, go to www.visitblackpool.com/lightpool

For more information on Blackpool Illuminations, visit www.visitblackpool.com/illuminations

Blackpool Illuminations light up until Sunday 6 November.

All the events will be free to attend and accessible for the whole family.