Lumiere London

The Light of the Spirit, Patrice Warrener

 

Back in January I visited the Lumiere London Light Festival with other members of Canterbury based The Student Makers Market. Lumiere was a new art light festival that took place over four evenings in central London. The main roads that the festival took place on were closed to vehicles, allowing spectators to walk the festival routes easily. We attended Lumiere on the last day of the event on the Sunday. We were originally planning to see all of the installations in the festival by walking and using the tube system to get around. Unfortunately, many of the tube lines and stations around the festival areas were closed due to crowding, so we had to do our best on foot. We still managed to see a lot of the festival.

Piccadilly, NOVAK

Garden of Light, TILT

We concentrated on viewing the installations in the Piccadilly, Westminster and Kings Cross areas. The types of artworks that we saw ranged from projections, to illuminated structures at street level to inflated items situated over the streets. My personal favorite pieces were The Light of the Spirit by Patrice Warrener and Les Lumineoles by Porte par Le vent. 

The Light of the spirit was a colourful projection on to the west gate of Westminster Cathedral, you can see a photograph of this piece at the top of the blog. Patrice Warrener used bright almost psychedelic colour to pick out the details of the original stonework down to tiny details on the robes of the Saints figures above the door. I felt that this brought the history of the building to life in a new way.

Les Lumineoles consisted of large inflated illuminated fish that were hung above Regent Street, there were also illuminated Lilly flowers at street level. The movements of the fish were set to atmospheric music. This piece was extremely impressive and made me feel like I was at the bottom of a river looking up at the fish swimming above. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a good picture of Les Lumineoles but you can find great videos and pictures of it on the internet if you want to know more

London, Janet Echelman

By the end of the evening we were all super exhausted from walking around 10 miles and couldn't wait to get the train back home. We all really loved the event! It was great to experience being able to walk around a completely pedestrianized central London amongst beautiful art pieces this was the largest light festival that I have experienced in person and I hope that Lumiere returns to London again in the future.

Goodbye for now! Nicola 

The Student Makers Market Christmas Festival and Pop-up Shop

Our lovely window's all designed and merchandised by student makers

 Happy New Year! I hope you had a good one and a lovely Christmas. I though it was about time I wrote a blog about my experience with Future Foundry's Student Makers Christmas Festival and Pop- up shop. This has proved to be a very photo heavy post, but there were so many lovely photos to chose from and it has been so difficult to whittle them down to just a few.

Clothing and art work by Dream Safari, Coffee Shop and zine reading area by Lock Projects in collaboration with Manifest Coffee

Home ware by Punk Butterfly

Clothing by Ocean Breeze Custom Clothing

Work from Katy Chambers, Louise Hubbard, Abordaje, Steven Alan, Grace Nikorabi and Alex Foster

My brand of course Luna Sky Jewellery

 T Shirt by Erin Laurel Hayhow

Silk Cushion by Becca Collier

Hair pieces by Ash's Dolls house

Ruby Tuesdays Knits

 The Student Makers Market Christmas Festival and Pop - up Shop took place from the 6th to the 24th of December. All of the Student Makers taking part worked hard to; put the shop together, merchandise their own displays, staff the shop, assist visitors and run workshops amongst many other tasks. The pop up shop gave the student makers a chance to show case their brands and gain experience in starting their own business. There was also a chance for student makers to attend workshops specifically tailored for young start up businesses and to run workshops for visiting members of the public. There was even a coffee shop at weekends. The festival and pop-up shop was a huge success, and received great support from the residents of Folkestone and Kent's creative community. 

My favourite workshop was the 'DIY Screen Printing Workshop with Fat Hen and Flo'. Susan Mckenna taught us how to do screen printing without a space hogging expensive machine. All of the students makers prints were lovely, and I even got a chance to screen print a t- shirt with my own business logo. Other workshops included; basic programming with RoofOfTwo, How to sell with David Liliford of Lilford Gallery and many more. 

Over all the Student Makers Pop- up shop was a very successful event that was enjoyed by all who took part and visited. I have meet lots of lovely, creative and inspiring people since joining the Student Makers Markets initiative and I hope that all the student makers taking part have a prosperous future.I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lisa Oulton for allowing me to take part in the Student Makers pop- up shop, all of our kickstarter backers, workshop leaders, volunteer's and sponsors, it wouldn't have been possible without you all.

Close up of some basic programing in action during RoofOfTwos workshop.

Myself and Ash of Ash's Dolls house trying our hand at screen printing in one of the workshops

Goodbye for now Nicola x

*All pictures in this post belong to myself and Future Foundry.