Aire Park is set to come alive as Leeds Light Night returns this October, bringing an evening of creativity, culture and community to the heart of the South Bank.
This year, there’s even more reasons to join us, with two spectacular installations transforming Aire Park as part of the city-wide celebration. Visitors can explore these captivating artworks while enjoying a vibrant programme of free entertainment throughout the evening.
The popular Little Fox Market will also return to Aire Park, bringing together a fantastic selection of independent makers, artists and local businesses offering unique gifts, handmade products and creative crafts. Complementing the market will be a range of street food vendors, serving delicious food and refreshments throughout the evening.
Whether you’re discovering the illuminated installations, encountering the roaming butterflies, enjoying live performances, browsing independent stalls or sampling food from local traders, Aire Park is the perfect place to experience one of Leeds’ most anticipated cultural events. Join us for an unforgettable evening of light, performance, food, shopping and entertainment at Aire Park.
Meet PoWeЯ by Aérosculpture (France)
Watch light bloom into enormous digital flowers as spinning LEDs create circles, spirals and radiant flashes in the darkness. FloWeЯ PoWeЯ combines digital technology and electromechanics with persistence of vision, the effect that allows rapidly moving points of light to appear as complete forms. The machinery seems to disappear, leaving luminous traces suspended in the night. Inspired by experiments with the rings of Saturn, the installation pairs hypnotic movement with mechanical rhythms and a responsive soundtrack. Psychedelic yet contemplative, it offers a joyful garden of light dedicated to peace and connection.
Aftereal by Aritst: Yasuhiro Chida (Japan)
Watch a luminous landscape ripple before your eyes as hundreds of fluorescent threads rise, fall and shimmer in ultraviolet light. Driven by small motors, the elastic lines move in waves, leaving fleeting traces that seem to hover in the darkness like drawings made with a sparkler. Japanese artist Yasuhiro Chida uses this simple combination of material, movement and light to play with perception, revealing how our eyes and brain construct what we see. Hypnotic and ever-changing, Afterreal invites you to slow down, look closely and question where reality ends and illusion begins. In partnership with Great British Sasakawa Foundation and Daiwa Foundation.
GIANT BUTTERFLIES
Look out for four enormous butterflies roaming freely through Aire Park. Lit from within by glowing LEDs, these spectacular puppets float, turn and dance among the crowds to their own musical soundtrack. Their brilliant wings bring colour and movement to the night, inviting visitors to follow their journey and experience a close encounter with nature on a larger-than-life scale. Playful, radiant and full of character, Butterflies transforms the park into a magical habitat for visitors of all ages.
Artists: Emergency Exit Arts (UK)
The butterflies will be roaming between: 6-6.45pm, 7-7.45pm and 8-8.45pm
Sea of Change: Sea de Change by Artist: Mama Dread’s Masqueraders and DOMA (UK)
Hybiscus Rising, Aire Park, Meadow Lane, LS11 5BJ
Performing next to Hibiscus Rising, this performance is inspired by protecting and healing our environment, reducing waste and creative recycling we use dance and carnival arts to inspire our audience to think about current environmental damage, consider the impact of capitalism and colonialism on our natural world, and see a future we can create together that respects and heals our world.
Performance Times: 6.30-7pm, 7.30-8pm and 8.30-9pm.
I want ur hands on me (unrequited)
The Attic, 3 Sheaf Street, LS10 1HD
Enter a hazy nightclub where a lone dancer moves through sculpture, sound and shifting light. Leeds-based artist K Walker draws on personal experiences of queer club spaces to explore the complicated emotions held within them. Joy, freedom and connection sit alongside loneliness and unrequited desire as the performer navigates a club-inspired sound work. Intimate and atmospheric, I want ur hands on me (unrequited) invites visitors to reflect on their own relationship with nightlife and the feelings that can surface when we gather, dance and search for connection. A Yorkshire Contemporary commission, with support from Yorkshire Dance.