Nottingham Light Night

Nottingham’s Light Night has been running for quite a few years now, and although I had been aware of it before I had never taken the time to explore any of the events, until this past Friday, 28th February. This year’s focus was Nottingham Castle and it made a nice change to wander around the grounds at night, even if you did have to be very careful about your footing on some of the paths. I was also very glad that I had bought a ticket in advance (£4 instead of £5), because the queue when I arrived at the Castle was extremely long and with a ticket already I was able to bypass that and go straight in with no waiting around.

This year’s theme at the Castle was also tying in with the Centenary of World War I events going on around the country and I particularly liked the videos which were projected onto the side of the Castle, as seen below:

Another nod towards the centenary was this tank, made from recycled materials by Sarah Turner whose repertoire is the creation of  handmade sculptures from waste plastic bottles and cans and which actually looked very impressive in the grounds of the Castle.

I ventured very briefly into the Castle itself, but the crowds were so intense that I decided to move on, this time down to the Robin Hood Statue, where I saw what was described as Medieval fighting Star Wars style with lightsabre’s – which was actually very cool and naturally did not photograph at all well!- and a light installation created by the pupils of Seely Primary School, who decorated jars then filled them with candles, as below:

I then headed towards the Museum of Nottingham Life which was especially kept open that evening and because I’ve never been there before, but again the crowd was so dense that I decided I’ll just add that to my local list of things to see soon instead, so watch this space for that.

I then moved on to St Nic’s Church, again largely because I’ve never been inside it. I have to say it was very busy and packed in there too and I was immediately greeted in a friendly manner and offered tea and cake, though I declined as I wasn’t feeling hungry at that point. I did stick around for a while while the Nottingham Gamelan group Naga Lelana performed though. They are a percussion orchestra from Java and played some very nice music on beautifully decorated instruments.

After that I walked back through the Market Square, browsing through some of the stalls and other light installations before heading home. This is only a very small sampling of the events put on for Light Night so if you are planning to head to next year’s event it would be worth making a note of which areas of the City you want to visit and to avoid long queues for ticketed areas (though obviously quite a lot of the outdoor installations are free to view) by buying in advance. Definitely a nice event that really brings out a fun aspect of the City.