We’re really excited to let you in on our big SECRET that’s no longer a SECRET!
Blackburn BID, working in partnership with Blackburn Festival of Light,Blackburn with Darwen, Blackburn with Darwen Library and Information
Service and Blackburn Museum has secured funding from Arts Council England (ACE) to support the delivery of an architectural projection lighting installation for @Blackburn Town Hall from November until early January!
So, no physical parade this year but an exciting new way to share the experience with photos/videos from the last few years along with the sounds of the event, too!
This is where we need your help! We have until the end of the month to get together as much footage of you, our audience and parade walkers, doing all of the things that we do best together but at home or socially distanced at the Bureau filmed in a safe environment for our ‘show’!
Want to get involved? We need videos of up to 1 minute long of you in illuminated or shiny costumes, drumming, dancing, doing Poi, holding a home made lantern, shadow puppetry or maybe even all those at once (in a safe manner of course)! You can upload your videos on our Virtual Parade- upload your videos Page
You can find tutorials on our YouTube of how to learn our parade routines, do the drumming of the samba band, how to make a lantern at home, how to make shadow puppets with one of our kits and even how to make your own sock poi! Our videos need to light up the side of the Town Hall and you might just make it into the projection!
Each projection ‘show’ will be just a few minutes long, run continuously from dusk, and will run for at least a week, so that it doesn’t attract large crowds over a short period. In addition there will be social distancing markers placed on Town Hall Square to help people stay safe.
With the expertise of Double Take Projections and funding from Blackburn BID and ACE, we are very lucky to be one of the ‘shows’ included in the following lineup projecting on to Blackburn Town Hall:
* 4 Nov to 11 Nov – Remembrance themed projection including images of Blackburn soldiers, wartime newspaper archives, local war poetry, and a poppies animation.
* 12 Nov to 26 Nov – Blackburn Festival of Light – a virtual version of the event with a collage of sound and images featuring previous festivals and new footage of artists and participants (recorded safely)
* 27 Nov to 28 Dec – Believe in the Magic of Blackburn town centre – animated illustrations from the specially commissioned book with narration by the author Christina Gabbitas
* 29 Dec to 6 Jan 2021 – New Year projections featuring images from local people capturing their 2020 experience (images will be found with a competition to be delivered shortly)
We hope you’ll be as excited about this as we are!