Tuesday 18 April 2017
For 35 hours across six nights, 24 stunning light installations transformed the city of Cambridge during February’s Bouygues e-Luminate Festival.
Now in its fifth year, the historic city of Cambridge with its stunning architecture provided the perfect backdrop for e-Luminate Cambridge. An event at the forefront of art and technology, ephemeral light art installations played with the richness and diversity of the urban landscape.
Taking Play as this year’s theme, Bouygues e-Luminate Cambridge Festival amazed and delighted this February in a truly unique winter spectacle. As well as the light installations themselves, there were also 14 other events taking place. Whether it was creating holograms, following light trails, wine tasting, criss-crossing the city in search of the dazzling light installations created by over 30 local and international artists or participating in this year’s day conference on all things light and play related, thousands enjoyed the six-day festival of light.
From Gloria Ronchi and Claudio Benghi’s kaleidoscope of glowing butterflies that came alive at night along the river bank by Magdalene College, to The Cambridge Whale, created by Alice Turner - an anatomical reconstruction of the Museum of Zoology’s iconic Finback Whale specimen, depicting skeletal and soft tissues as well as fascinating facts about the specimen – everyday buildings and spaces were transformed for a few short hours into something extraordinary and magical.
Artistic Director, Alessandra Caggiano said: ‘This year’s Festival exceeded all expectations and much to our delight got people really engaged with the artworks. Light installations such as the Catch Me Now by Tine Bech had a level of interactivity not experienced before in outdoors art events in our city and the public loved it! The support of our many sponsors truly helped us to bring the beauty of the e-Luminate Cambridge Festival to the thousands of people who attended the event this year. We are immensely grateful to them all and in particular to our title sponsor Bouygues UK.’
Managing Director of Cambridge Live, Steve Bagnall added: ‘This was the first year we welcomed Alessandra and e-Luminate into the Cambridge Live team. It was fantastic to see so many people engaging with the amazing installations across the City and coming along to events and workshops in the Corn Exchange and Guildhalls. Cambridge Live is very proud to be presenting the Cambridge e-Luminate festival and we’re looking forward to helping the festival grow and develop over the coming years.’
Fabienne Viala, Chairman of Bouygues UK, e-Luminate Cambridge’s title sponsor, said: ‘This year’s e-Luminate festival reinforced this exciting event’s position as one of the highlights of Cambridge’s cultural calendar. With our role as main contractor for The Triangle, and our sister company Bouygues Energies and Services involved in a long-term energy partnership with Cambridgeshire County Council, we were very pleased to be able to sponsor this festival, which celebrates Cambridge’s architecture by bringing together energy and the built environment.’