Lightpool Festival 2016

Winner of the Large Tourism Event Award at the Lancashire Tourism Awards 2017.

  • About

    LightPool Festival 2016 ran from 28 October until 2 November 2016. 6 nights, 35 installations, 6 large productions, a conference, to celebrate light, Blackpool, LightPool and Blackpool Illuminations. Best summed up by IMAGINE PEACE, love yoko.

    Know more

  • Captain Kronos

    A flying spaceship, aerial performance, pyro and rousing soundtrack, as well as illuminated procession and parade involving up to 100 people. Created to celebrate the closure of cult venue Kazimier in Liverpool, it’s next level performance appropriate for the launch of the festival.

  • Polar

    Featuring a whole host of breath-taking fire performances and an exploding piano, this show has been described as ‘thriller meets silent film’ and features a multi-talented cast of dancers, musicians and fire performers.

  • Lumidogs

    Produced by the LightPool production team and exclusive to LightPool Festival, Lumidogs is back and it’s bigger and better than ever before! An extravagant staged event featuring a star-studded cast of special guests, including the one and only Trip Hazard from Britain’s Got Talent! ‘Crufts meets Cabaret’, a Blackpool first.

  • Mr Wilsons

    Mr Wilson’s Second Liners form a traditional New Orleans brass band. However, this is no sombre occasion: Mr Wilson’s expend their collective musical talent paying homage to the diehard days of the Hacienda, 90s club culture and its greatest hero, Mr Tony Wilson.

  • Commandos Percu

    Percussion, fire, lights, motion : pure energy. From direct contact with the public, the huge sound box drives across the town. This human machine shows off its rhythm and drags the audience along a path punctuated with pyro surprises. Shouts, drums, sparkles: an exhilarating spiral!

  • Spark

    The original and best LED drummers, Spark! Is a unique, captivating and outstanding show like no other! Five mysterious characters made of light and sound will take you on an extraordinary and mesmerising journey. High impact drumming and lovable musical arrangements, beautiful lighting design, dynamic choreography, dazzling costumes, and strong characters.

  • Echelle by Ron Haselden

    This lightwork originally commissioned for the Salisbury Festival is a visually stunning neon pink ladder that appears to be a stairway to heaven and will appear on St Johns church. The work has also toured to Canterbury, Rotherhithe, and Walworth.

  • Art Is Your Human Right

    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.

  • Goodbye Coco by Michael Trainor

    A coffin for a fictional clown bedecked with 540 programmed fairground lights, and made precisely to fit the artist himself. Whether the piece is sad or funny is up to you!

Captain Kronos
Captain Kronos
A flying spaceship, aerial performance, pyro and rousing soundtrack, as well as illuminated procession and parade involving up to 100 people. Created to celebrate the closure of cult venue Kazimier in Liverpool, it’s next level performance appropriate for the launch of the festival.
I waited
I waited
Elisa Artesero is a Light and Text Artist using installation to address themes of transience, the nature of happiness and hope. She has exhibited in the UK, France, Montenegro and the Faroe Islands.

She is one of the top 5 Curator Choices for NOISE Festival 2014, selected from over 5,000 entries by Tim Marlow, Director of Artistic Programmes at the Royal Academy, London.
When the Red Rose
When the Red Rose
Wrapping a piece of architectural heritage of this famous resort in a protective bubble, is artist Steve Messam’s playful and surreal celebration of Blackpool’s unique seaside heritage. Commissioned by Marketing Lancashire
Polar
Polar
Featuring a whole host of breath-taking fire performances and an exploding piano, this show has been described as ‘thriller meets silent film’ and features a multi-talented cast of dancers, musicians and fire performers.
Light Lessons
Light Lessons
A group of defracted beings will guide you through a darkend passage. Commissioned by LeftCoast and Blackpool Illuminations for LightPool 2016. Emma Allen resides between Sri Lanka and London, where she was born and raised.

She’s an internationally recognised and celebrated artist that is entirely self-taught, and produces work in a broad range of different mediums.
Parts of a Lighthouse
Parts of a Lighthouse
This classic light art installation sat in the nave of Blackpools' Sacred Heart Church, refracting light from its magnificent octagonal roof through tetrahedral prisms in kaleidoscopic shards to form a dazzling beautiful house made from beams of light, as per original script
Spark
Spark
The original and best LED drummers, Spark! Is a unique, captivating and outstanding show like no other! Five mysterious characters made of light and sound will take you on an extraordinary and mesmerising journey. High impact drumming and lovable musical arrangements, beautiful lighting design, dynamic choreography, dazzling costumes, and strong characters.
Mr Wilsons
Mr Wilsons
Mr Wilson’s Second Liners form a traditional New Orleans brass band. However, this is no sombre occasion: Mr Wilson’s expend their collective musical talent paying homage to the diehard days of the Hacienda, 90s club culture and its greatest hero, Mr Tony Wilson.
Echelle
Echelle
This lightwork originally commissioned for the Salisbury Festival is a visually stunning neon pink ladder that appears to be a stairway to heaven and will appear on St Johns church. The work has also toured to Canterbury, Rotherhithe, and Walworth.
Art Is Your Human Right
Art Is Your Human Right
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.
Commandos Percu
Commandos Percu
Percussion, fire, lights, motion : pure energy From direct contact with the public, the huge sound box drives across the town. This human machine shows off its rhythm and drags the audience along a path punctuated with pyro surprises. Shouts, drums, sparkles: an exhilarating spiral!
Lumidogs
Lumidogs
Produced by the LightPool production team and exclusive to LightPool Festival, Lumidogs is back and it’s bigger and better than ever before! An extravagant staged event featuring a star-studded cast of special guests, including the one and only Trip Hazard from Britain’s Got Talent! ‘Crufts meets Cabaret’, a Blackpool first.
Cocos Coffin
Cocos Coffin
A coffin for a fictional clown bedecked with 540 programmed fairground lights, and made precisely to fit the artist himself. Whether the piece is sad or funny is up to you!
Visitors Map
Visitors Map
6 nights, 35 installations, 6 large productions, to celebrate light. To assist visitors a map of the light installations and nightly performances was produced. Twice nightly guided tours were also provided
What they say
What they say
"Such a wonderful display of visual art. Such passion. All concerned should be really proud.”
“ WHOAH!!! Lightpool, and everyone involved, you pulled it out of the bag and smashed it to smithereens this week!!CONGRATULATIONS!!! ”
“Can't describe how amazing LIGHTPOOL was last night. Rarely felt so proud to be from Blackpool."
Daily Mail Online
Daily Mail Online
Flamethrowers, fizzling tango and a MILLION lamps: Blackpool kicks off its dazzling display as part of new festival.On Friday a celebration of light will commence as the city's LightPool Festival opens.Part of Blackpool Illuminations, it will include more than 20 art works and three new 3-D projection shows
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Blackpool Gazette
Blackpool Gazette
New Festival sees them tripping the light fan-tango. It's the Illuminations but not as we know them.
Read More
The Observer
The Observer
Now in its 137th year Blackpool Illuminations has long been billed as the greatest free light show on Earth, spanning a whopping 6 mile of coastline. This year the new Lightpool festival will refresh tradition and re-invigorate the lights for the future, using arts as the drive

Lightpool Festival Producer - Phil Holmes

2016 will see the inaugural LightPool Festival, celebrating Blackpool's unique relationship with light.
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.

Building on the successes of the LightPool shows on the Blackpool Tower; from October 28 to November 2 the town centre will be transformed with a number of spectacular light art works, inspired by the buildings, history and people of the town.

To complement this we will run a programme of live performances each night, all related to light and fire, with talent coming from the UK and abroad. Fire with Tango, highly explosive percussion performances, illuminated parades and processions.

Light art festivals are a phenomenon spreading across the globe, and just in the North of England you may well have heard of Lumiere in Durham, Light Up Lancaster, Illuminating York, Light Night Leeds and many others.

Acts performing included French Compagnie Bilbobasso to perform Polar: 'an explosive fable of fire and tango' and the Worldbeaters will return with their smash hit Spark.

The LightPool festival will take place in the spiritual home of illuminations. By running for just a few days, the festival allows us to present different sorts of work. It means we can transform the town centre into a playground for people to explore. By being free to attend, the LightPool Festival 2016 will offer a wonderful opportunity for whole families to experience something different. A number of works will be made with different communities in Blackpool, telling stories about the town and the people who live here.

Winner of the Large Tourism Event Award at the Lancashire Tourism Awards 2017.
Watch the Lightpool Festival 2016 video