Last weekend Light Night returned to Nottingham for the first time since 2020. It wasn’t quite as impressive as previous years but that’s understandable given current circumstances and there were still a lot of places taking part that we didn’t visit due to time constraints.
We did a small loop around the city centre from Trinity Square (above), to the Market Square down Lister Gate and then through the Lace Market and to St Mary’s Church. We were disappointed with the showing at the Market Square – previous years have had projections across the Council House building but this time there was small circular video playing in the square attached to some scaffolding.
Lister Gate was slightly better but the Light Night app did somewhat suggest that the neon signs, as above and below, would be along the whole of the road, but instead there were just four of them at the very end of the road near the old entrance to Broadmarsh Shopping Centre.
The best part of the night, and the one that seemed most popular was the States of Matter installation at St Mary’s Church (the church usually takes part in Light Night and has consistently been the best part of the evening every year we’ve been). This year the focus was an immersive light and music show that was a collaboration with young people across the county exploring our relationship with water, global warming etc. It didn’t particularly translate into photos, but a few are below.
Outside of the church was a nice little display called The Telling of the Bees, a collaboration between a bee keeper and a children’s group; the lights below changed to represent the hive, flight, orientation and swarm of bees with music playing including field recordings from the hives and woodland.
Overall not a bad evening and it’s good to have a bit of normality returning to the city. You can find a few more photos here.
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