Lumiere Durham 2025, UK

Lumiere is produced by Artichoke, the UK’s leading producer of public art, dedicated to making extraordinary art accessible to all. Lumiere Durham was the UK’s light art biennial and the country’s largest free light art event. Commissioned by Durham County Council, the event has transformed the historic city of Durham into an immersive nighttime art exhibition every two years since 2009.

Lumiere invites local and internationally-renowned artists to create works that reimagine familiar buildings and public spaces, changing the way we experience our urban surroundings. Through close collaboration between artists, lighting designers, technical teams, and local stakeholders, installations are sensitively integrated into the space to respect historic structures while maximising visual impact after dark.

Lumiere’s ninth and final edition in Durham featured over 30 light installations by artists from 11 countries and welcomed more than 120,000 visitors over three nights in November 2025, remaining true to its commitment to artistic ambition, technical excellence, sustainability and meaningful public engagement.

Living up to its 16-year reputation, the biennial combined thrilling large-scale spectacle with moments of intimacy and reflection, each piece requiring intricate technical installation to exacting standards and high production values, with collaboration from Graymatter Video (lighting and projection), IPS (technical production), and Unusual Services (rigging), OpenFormat and Neon Workshops (fabrication).

EVERYONE EVER, a new commission by US artists Elaine Buckholtz and Ian Winters, filled Durham Cathedral’s Nave with abstract projections and a sound collage, while Amelia Kosminksy’s (UK) Solace illuminated the Cathedral Cloister. Sculptural installations included Jigantic’s (UK) Elysium Garden on Palace Green, while Bobolito & Co’s (Belgium) Rhizome, presented a tangled web of glowing ropes that evoked the complexity of the way we build digital and social connections. In Shildon, part of Lumiere’s spotlight on County Durham, NOVAK’s (UK) Alight was a largescale projected piece that told the story of Britain’s passenger rail network.

Several of the artworks touched on environmental sustainability and our fragile natural world. Anastasia Isachsen’s (Norway) interactive POINT OF [NO] RETURN, merged luminous visuals with music by Nils Petter Molvær in a powerful reflection on climate change, with ice melting to water as audiences approached the installation. Jony Easterby’s (UK) The Garden of Shadows, presented a series of ethereal encounters with the natural world, incorporating light, sound and shadow, while Cedric Le Borgne’s (France) The River suspended three giant carp in the canopy of trees above the river path. This artistic focus was matched behind the scenes by practical action, with fewer generators used across the event footprint, contributing to a reduction in energy use and associated CO₂ emissions.

Lumiere Durham’s impact is both cultural and social. The BRILLIANT commissioning scheme nurtures early creatives to produce new work that is showcased alongside established international artists. Artichoke’s commitment to community engagement involved around 550 local individuals in 2025, bringing diverse voices together through the shared creation of art, including Glimmer – a tree adorned with lanterns shaped by contributions from groups of all ages and background, and Hannah Fox’s (UK) Iron Horse Junction.