Make a break of it when Lumiere returns to Durham

13th October 2011

Categories: Visitor News

When Lumiere returns to blaze a trail through Durham next month there will be many short breaks on offer to tempt visitors to make the most the UK’s largest light festival.

The dedicated festival pages on thisisdurham.com features carefully created Lumiere deals, Culture Vulture itineraries and Festival Top Tips plus live twitter and flickr feed, as well as a link to the Lumiere website to ensure visitors have all the information they need to enjoy a short break in Durham and take in the fantastic festival.

Lumiere returns to Durham, between 17-20 November, with over 30 installations across the city, including works by Tracey Emin, Cedric le Borgne and David Batchelor. It is a world-class biennial festival that celebrates artists working with light in all its forms. Over four nights Durham will rediscover a city transformed into a magical nocturnal landscape.

In 2009, the inaugural Lumiere festival drew an estimated 75,000 people into the city, and generated some £1.5million for the local economy.

“Lumiere promises to be even more spectacular than in 2009. The fact that the event is now attracting artists of the calibre of Tracey Emin demonstrates Durham increasing profile at a national and international level.” said Melanie Sensicle, chief executive, Visit County Durham. A jewel in the spectacular North Eastern landscape, the city of Durham boasts many delights including a medieval castle, ancient university cobbled streets and, of course, a breath-taking Norman cathedral dubbed 'the best on planet Earth' by the celebrated writer Bill Bryson.The city offers a unique blend of heritage and contemporary culture, superb shopping and a varied, vibrant nightlife, and hidden green spaces in which to take some tranquil time out.

Lumiere is the largest light festival in the UK focusing on works created by artists bringing together a beguiling mix of international, national and local artists and designers, all using the medium of light to create artworks to delight, surprise, and stop people in their tracks. The Festival will also include a programme of talks, lectures and lighting demonstrations.

The Festival will open with a lantern parade through the streets of the medieval city and back by popular demand will be Ross Ashton’s Crown of Light, originally commissioned as the centrepiece for Lumiere 2009. The piece, a huge projection that transformed the entire 120m span of Durham Cathedral into a vast animated screen, brings together the illuminated manuscripts of the Lindisfarne Gospels with ancient stained glass and artefacts from inside the Cathedral itself.

The full programme will be announced later this month and will include some breath-taking large-scale works. Artichoke has been commissioned to deliver the festival by Durham County Council with funds from Arts Council England

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