What do you want to see on LightNight? With over 100 free events, performances, installations, exhibitions and more on the annual ‘culture crawl’ it can be tough to know where to start. We’ve planned a route that will take you from early evening, right through to early morning.
Let’s start at the Waterfront.
Why not head to one of Liverpool’s newest spaces, RIBA North, to step into a mesmerising new world and get into the mood for the evening. Jayson Haebich’s Diffringere is a LightNight commission. An interactive work, it creates a mesmerising effect of colour and light, taking pure white light from a laser and breaking it apart into millions of its component colours, which are then scattered around to create a dazzling array of colour and light.
With your mind blown, check the time to see if you’re ready for a performance of The Cockatrice at Tate Liverpool. At 17:30, 18:00, 18:30 and 19:00 this 15 minute puppetry performance is new from Headstrung and is all about a creature of transformation, created when a chicken’s egg is hatched beneath a toad. Perfect for small audiences, brace children and curious adults!
At 18:00, Singing Mirror begins at the British Music Experience, based in the Cunard building. Another LightNight commission, it’s an immersive sound and light installation that’s responsive to the presence of visitors, transforming you in a series of kaleidoscopic patterns.
If we’re going to pack everything in, we’re going to have to hop on the LightNight heritage bus. It’s free and loops the city until late into the evening, so it’s the perfect way for us to get around.
Next stop: the Baltic Triangle!
At new space Hinterlands you’ll find Anamorphix, a new 3D live light installation and performance by audio-visual artist Carlos Bernal, using electronic sounds with a combination of LED bars and projection-mapping. No two people will see the same thing in this immersive environment that reveals a new dimension. Performances at 19:00, 19:45, 20:30 and 21:15.
Cains Brewery Village round the corner is a great place to stop for a bite to eat. Baltic Market is one of LightNight’s new food hubs, where you can take on enough fuel to keep you going.
On Jamaica Street you’ll find Baltic Creative, where asCreatives have an evening planned for little LightNighters. There’s also Dorothy, which is hosting the Nineteen Hundred & Eleven Party , an interactive installation celebrating Liverpool’s enduring desire for social justice and transformation. Get involved and contribute your own unique campaign poster to a growing exhibition of the demands for change we want to see in society.
We’re back on the bus to Hope Street, where from 10pm until 10.30pm see Drum Clash 2.0 at the Metropolitan Cathedral Piazza. Using light, rhythm and movement LUMA Creations/ OLC Productions present the heartbeat and power of the drum through changing shapes and shadows of light; creating change from the natural to the mechanical.
Bold Street is only a few yards away and from 17:00 until 21:00 celebrate all things revolutionary at News from Nowhere with Revolution! Deeds and Words! What does Revolution mean to you? From Suffragettes to #MeToo! La Lutte Continue!
We’ll wave hello to FACT and onwards to Bluecoat where there’s a whole night of hands on family fun planned. Spend the evening in the garden with choirs, DJs and live musicians; then refuel at the outdoor bar and barbecue with a performance from Halcyon Syncopators at 19:45. From 19:40 to 20:00 Dung Beetles’ Cosmic Journey in the courtyard.
Cross Church Street and walk to Lime Street where you’ll find STANZA by John Elcock. The Liverpool artist has created a new work transforming an ordinary street into a place of reflection. Take a moment out of the hustle and bustle before the next event.
Soul restored it’s time for William Brown Street. Make it by 20:15 and you’ll see Batala Mersey on the Picton Steps, a static small band drumming performance expressing the conceptual origins of the Brazilian spirit.
Liverpool Singer-songwriter and guitarist Nick Ellis performs a style of streetscape narrative-noir blended with a classic British acoustic approach in the Picton Reading Room at 21:00. Looking at ideas around the transformation of places, Nick is performing pieces from his work Adult Fiction; a novel set to music.
Meanwhile, from 17:00 until 22:00 see Fashion Geographies, an immersive staged fashion event which is a synergy between fashion design, fashion communication and art installation. The digital imagery of heritage ‘stories’ is projected onto plain outerwear garments (designed and constructed by 2nd year LJMU fashion students) as part of a dynamic installation.
Back on the bus because we’re going to Baltic with our dancing shoes firmly on.
At Constellations it’s time for the LightNight After Party, where four female artists come together to jump start LightNight into its next phase. Open Culture and Cartier 4 Everyone present four female artists at one unifying party to jumpstart LightNight into its next phase. DANCE4MATION starts at 20:30 until 02:30 An audio-visual installation blurs into a dance piece; legendary LGBT/BAME archivist Sandi Hughes sets the tone with party tracks cut from 1975 to 2005; then the vital global grooves of Giovanna (SisBis) light up the dancefloor further, before the Bollywood/Punjabi pop/club/hip-hop melting moves of south London’s Manara carry us away. Also features a new work by locally-based video artist Anna Levin, screened from 20:30 to 21:30.