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Festival of lights / Light festival The concept of a festival as a cultural event has been known and propagated around the world for many years (Getz, 2005, p. 20-21). The word “festival” is defined as “a public, themed celebration” (Getz, 2005, p. 21), as well as “all expressions of cultural events. […] that occur locally and can be informal in nature” (UNESCO, 2009, p. 26).

Artificial light as a medium has been used over the centuries, but only in the last 20 years has emerged as a new phenomenon, a new type of festival in Europe and in the world – the festival of lights. This sudden boom is associated with the development of lighting technology, new techniques of illumination (3-D mapping projection), light sources (LEDs) and the development of lighting control systems and their automatization (Zielinska-Dabkowska, 2015). Undoubtedly, the above development of this new creative discipline has also been affected by globalization and easy “flow” of people.

So far, there has not been any accepted definition of the Festival of lights/Light festival in the world. A Festival of light is “an artistic, thematic, live and cultural event, open to the general public (usually at no charge), repeated regularly, which uses artificial light as a medium and is part of Cultural Tourism” (Zielinska-Dabkowska, 2016). Cultural tourism on the other hand, is defined as “the movement of persons to cultural attractions away from their normal place of residence, with the intention to gather new information and experiences to satisfy their cultural needs” (Richards, 1996, p. 24) This form of tourism is also becoming increasingly popular around the world and can play a role in a regional development (OECD, 2009, p. 35). Cultural events in the form of festivals of lights have emerged as additional positioning mechanisms, after many cities began to use culture to promote themselves as brands (European Union, 2015; Palmer, 2004; Patel, 2013).

More than 30 different festivals of lights have been identified in Europe on the basis of the information available online (Schielke, 2013) and from the organization of Lighting Urban Community International - LUCI (LUCI, n.d.) a unique international network bringing together cities and lighting professionals engaged in using light as a major tool for sustainable urban, social and economic development. They include:

  • in Belgium: Light Festival Ghent;
  • in Estonia: Tallinn Light Biennale;
  • in France Chartres en Lumières; Fete des Lumières;
  • in the Netherlands: Glow;
  • in Germany: Leipzig Festival of Lights; Festungsleuchten, Genius Loci Weimar;
 Lichtrouten, Lüdenscheid, Berlin Festival of Lights; Luminale in Frankfurt RheinMain;
  • in Switzerland: Lausanne Festival of Lights; Rendez-vous Bundesplatz, Bern; Lux Geneva Festival;
  • in Sweden: Nattljus, Eskilstuna; Gothenburg Christmas town; Lights in Alingsas;
  • in the UK: Illuminate Bath; Light Festival Longbridge, Birmingham; Lumiere, Durham; E-Luminate Cambridge Festival; Illuminating York;

It should be noted that there are not many case studies related to the light festivals, due to the fact that it is a relatively new field of visual art. Most literature refers to other categories of festivals concerning, for example: dramatic arts, cinema, world culture, visual art and craft, literature, history and heritage, literature, music etc. (Newbold et al., 2015; Silber & Rosenstein, 2010; UNESCO, 2009, p. 10-11; p. 38).

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