About

"I will never look at Leeds in the same way again"

A pleased punter, 2007

Light Night Leeds is based on the model of events such as Nuit Blanche in Paris and Toronto and Notte Bianca in Como, Italy. For one night each year, city centre venues that are normally closed at night open up late to host a range of cultural events, displays, shows, exhibitions and tours and provide bizarre, unusual and out-of-context entertainments, designed to celebrate the wealth of creative and cultural activity in the city.

Leeds was the first city in the UK to host such an event, adapting it and renaming it ‘Light Night'. It was first conceived four years ago as part of the regional ‘illuminate' festival. It has continued each year since and in 2007 became one of the more bizarre parties held as part of the Leeds' 800^th birthday celebrations. This year, it takes place on Friday 10^th October and will open up museums, galleries, shopping centres, places of worship, cafés, theatres, universities, colleges, bars, shops, arcades and the streets themselves, late into the night.

Previous Light Nights have seen murder ballads in the Town Hall, shire horses and ice cream vans parading along Briggate, thunderstorms inside Holy Trinity Church, fire shows at the Royal Armouries, daring displays of visitor participation with white umbrellas and boilersuits, ghostly audio tours and outdoor light projections. In 2007, some 50 venues and more than 240 artists took part. 2008 is already shaping up to be much bigger.

Light Night is a celebration of the creativity of the people of Leeds, showcasing the work of individual artists, emerging theatre groups and major arts organisations of national and international repute. It is also a celebration of your creativity: ‘The Show becomes The Audience and The Audience becomes The Show'. Sing, dance, draw, play, get involved or just watch... Whatever you choose to do, Light Night is a fantastic Friday night out, the likes of which you will never have seen before.