about LUP

As daylight fades, Poole will provide a dramatic backdrop to series of interactive digital Light Art installations designed to inspire, delight and enchant locals & visitors. Both emerging and International artists will showcase their ground-breaking work in a celebration of Poole’s cultural diversity, rich heritage and unique location. Interactive public spectacles and intimate installations positioned at key locations both indoors and outdoors, will challenge perceptions that art is elitist and allow more people to engage and experience great art, technology and culture.

The theme ‘Tides’ will challenge artists to be more ambitious and carefully consider the mix of landscapes from the industrial and historic Quayside and Old Town to the urban High Street leading to Falkland Square. Audiences will journey along and under imaginary shorelines blending art and science, illuminating the enduring magic of the sea.

‘Tides’ explores navigation, the stars, the gravitational attraction, interaction and pull between the earth, moon and sun. Our oceans like human souls are complex, wild and calm, dangerous yet sometimes innocuous, shallow then deep, alluring but somehow ambiguous, transparent and opaque, full of mystery, contradictions and the invisible.

“Half of me is filled with bursting words and half of me is painfully shy. I crave solitude yet also crave people. I want to pour life and love into everything yet also nurture my self-care and go gently. I want to live within the rush of primal, intuitive decision, yet also wish to sit and contemplate. This is the messiness of life – that we all carry multitudes, so must sit with the shifts. We are complicated creatures, and ultimately, the balance comes from this understanding. Be water. Flowing, flexible and soft. Subtly powerful and open. Wild and serene. Able to accept all changes, yet still led by the pull of steady tides. It is enough.” Quote by Victoria Erickson

2019 will explore four core principles in more depth:
• Artistic Excellence and Innovation

• Thinking Differently: the nature of this work attracts neurodivergent artists, and enabling the artists to meet audiences, inspires new ways of thinking

• Gender & Technology: The Tech Partnership’s Women in IT scorecard states only 17% of all UK specialist tech roles held by women

• Mobility and Accessibility: class can sometimes be a greater barrier than disability & gender; we’ll challenge this with the same level of commitment we respond to inequalities in primary characteristics of diversity.

Light Art is the perfect medium for challenging perceptions that art is elitist and can engage new audiences. It’s instantly accessible, offers no cultural or access barriers, presents an instant talking point, appeals to all ages and thus enables more people to engage and experience great art, technology and culture in a high-impact and memorable way.